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TIED to
a chair, the beauty queen struggled to remain defiant
under the ruthless interrogation of the general. Her
tormentor, a hulking man, whose booming voice made the
very air around them quake in fear, raised his beefy
arm, ready to beat the information out of the guerrilla
sympathizer, while his minion watched on. When the
general broke off in midsentence, a woman at the other
side of the room promptly cued him his line.
It was
days before the curtain rises on the Philippine debut of
Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, a multilayered
satire that pokes and prods into the lives of sharply
disparate characters during the tumultuous decline of
the Marcos regime. When I asked Atlantic Productions
creative head and director Bobby Garcia if he considered
the play a social or political commentary, he replied,
“I would rather think of it as a dramatic piece of
theater that reflects a crucial period in Philippine
history.” An honest appraisal of the cost of freedom, the sense of displacement, or a nation finding
its identity—the audience will just have to make up
their own minds when they watch the show.
 Unlike
Hagedorn’s roman à clef novel, which garnered a 1990
National Book Award nomination, the author’s own stage
adaptation abandons the time-bending transitions between
the ’50s and the ’80s, and sets the story squarely in
1982. But this hardly dulls the visceral pull of the
story, nor does it compromise its sprawling complexity,
because the soul of the play, just like that of the
book, is its plethora of characters.
A
filthy-rich tycoon who has more clout than the
president. An army general who revels in torture, rape
and dismemberment. A male hustler who sniffs drug and
spins vinyl at a third-rate club. A smart-talking drag
queen who can flick a switchblade as effortlessly as he
can twirl a fan. A porn star, an opposition senator, a
dictator’s crony. They’re society’s untouchables, from
the highest rungs of power to the lowest dregs that
trawl Manila’s seedy underbelly. The huge cast of
characters, including a waiter and a German film
director, form a disconcerting collage of a city as seen
through the eyes of the playwright’s stand-in role, an
expat who barely recognizes the birth country she left
behind.
“There
are no lead stars here. We have 40 characters played by
16 actors, so the actors take on double and triple
roles. It is an ensemble cast where the members also
change the furniture themselves,” said Garcia, who has
been collaborating with the playwright from the very
start. “We began casting in January. Before we cast, the
taped readings were first sent to Hagedorn in the US.”
Prior to this, he also worked with her on the same play.
“I was the assistant director in the first production in
San Diego, 1998,” he recalled, “and since then, the play
has enjoyed a good life, played by many companies and in
many cities.”
Multiple
threads of unconnected plotlines shoot through
Hagedorn’s dense theatrical tapestry that unfurls with
all the melodrama of a soap opera. Like the object of
the nation’s favorite past time, the play dishes out the
bad and the “beautiful” with great gusto—corruption and
debauchery existing side-by-side with the Filipino’s
obsession for beauty pageants, Hollywood and all things
American. But unlike a soap, its nonlinear approach to
storytelling demands the full attention of its audience,
as the various fragmented plotlines build to a climax in
the assassination of the reformist Senator Avila (much
like Ninoy Aquino).
Michael
de Mesa, who plays three roles (the richest man in the
Philippines, a Marcos crony and an NPA rebel), opined,
“It’s like a Robert Altman film with many different
characters. You follow the daily lives of the
characters, who were involved one way or another during
the Marcos regime, during the assassination of the
senator. Everything will tie up in the second half.”
How did he come by this play? “Bobby and I are good
friends. We’ve worked together in a lot of good plays—Rent,
The Rocky Horror Show, Urinetown, The Guys, Tick Tick
Boom. This is our seventh show together. When Bobby
mentioned it to me, I simply decided to join. Being part
of a show like this is an honor, because you show the
new generation who has no idea what it was like then.
And it’s important that we never forget, because who we
are now has been shaped by what happened in the past.
The Philippines now is because of how it was then, and
we should never forget that.”
Back at
the rehearsal, Garcia jotted down notes every now and
then as the actors went through their lines. The others,
waiting for their scenes, were scattered along the
perimeter of the room. Panels of Manila paper listing
scene breakdowns and set changes crowded one wall. In
the adjacent reception, the “scorer” Manman Angsico
fine-tunes on his Mac a segment of one of the many songs
integrated into the straight play that has enough
comedic moments to spare. Jon Santos’s outrageous
lip-synching of Donna Summer’s “Bad Girl,” for instance,
had Garcia and the cast rolling with laughter. They
couldn’t keep from chuckling either when the First Lady,
with all her imperial bearing, replied witlessly and
eerily Erap-like to a TV host’s questions about her
doomed film center. But everyone quieted when the
rehearsal progressed to the disturbing montage of sexual
depravity that knew no social barriers. In this
provocative juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane,
the general’s wife fervently chants her Hail Mary, as
sordid scenes from a motel room, an abandoned nightclub
and a penthouse simultaneously unfolded onstage.
Dogeaters is flamboyant, gritty, in-face-your-face, and
it makes no apologies.
Completing the roster of brilliant thespians are Chari
Arespacochaga, Ana Abad Santos, Richard Cunanan, Teresa
Paredes Herrera, Nicco Manalo, Jerald Napoles, Che
Ramos, Andoy Ranay, Leo Rialp, Lao Rodriguez and Joel
Torre, who reprises the senatorial role he first
portrayed at New York’s Public Theater. Also in the cast
is Gina Alajar, a superb actress more comfortable with
Filipino plays, who shared, “Dogeaters is the first
English or Taglish play I’ve done. Tagalista ako
and I think in Tagalog. May fear ako na baka
mag-buckle ako, I’d use the wrong words or
pronunciation. But I had to conquer that fear.” Her
greatest challenge, though, for the role of Leonor
Ledesma was constructing her psychological backstory
before she stepped into the shoes of the general’s wife.
“She’s a bit out of her head,” she said. “I had to do a
lot of storytelling, building a history about her
relationship with her husband, her relationship with her
community, and why she had become like that—always
inside her room and praying, because the play doesn’t
explain that, it only shows her like that in the end.”
Capping
over a decade’s hiatus from theater, dramatic film and
TV actor Rez Cortez revives his stage career by
channeling the character he referred to as General Ver’s
fictional persona. Jenny Jamora, who breathes life to
the beauty queen and three other roles, revealed, “There
are scenes in the play not found in the book which
leaves lots of room for actors to put his or her spin
on.” Yet juggling so many roles without the luxury of
retakes leaves little room for minor hiccups. De Mesa
explained, “The challenge is we all have to be on our
toes. The characters, the way our story is being
told—there is no certain buildup, wala siyang
pinanggagalingan. So when you’re onstage, you have
to be 100 percent there already.”
With the
show’s promise of a stellar ensemble and a riveting
yarn, the audience will certainly be there tonight when
Dogeaters opens at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater
in RCBC Plaza, Makati. Expect to see the author and
playwright herself grace the premiere. The play runs
from November 16 to December 2.
For
tickets and schedule, contact Atlantis Productions at
840-1187 or 892-7078. |
