‘[H]e won PhilStage’s Gawad Buhay Best Original Script for Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Nekropolis”’
Theater genius Guelan Luarca arrived in the Philippines a few weeks ago and just last Tuesday, he won PhilStage’s Gawad Buhay Best Original Script for Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Nekropolis” and has worked on two productions that are outstanding tributes to one of his mentors, Ricky Abad, namely the recently concluded “Mga Multo” and “Sintang Dalisay,” which will have its shows this coming weekend in Arete, Ateneo de Manila University.
Guelan is a published playwright and translator, actor and director for the stage. He has twice won First Prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for his one-act plays “Mga Kuneho” and “Bait.” He recently adapted and directed “Desaparesidos,” based on the novel by Lualhati Bautista (cited as Best Theater of the Decade by The Philippine Daily Inquirer) about the underground struggle during the Marcos dictatorship, and an adaptation of Mike de Leon’s film “Batch 81,” under the title “AKO: Alpha Kappa Omega” (cited as Best Original Filipino Full-length Material last year, 2019), about fraternity-led violence, a thinly-veiled critique of macho politics under the current dispensation. He directed Malou Jacob’s “Batang Mujahideen” for Tanghalang Pilipino about the Moro conflict during the 2000s in Mindanao, Southern Philippines. He has participated in the Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting (TPAM) in Yokohama, and the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM), and many other international festivals, often giving seminars and lectures or delivering papers about Shakespeare, Adaptation, Translation, and other Theater Practices.
He is currently developing a collaborative playwriting process called “Actors-sourced Playwriting.” He teaches Directing, Shakespearean Performance, and Theater Theory in the Fine Arts Department of the Ateneo de Manila University. He is the current artistic director of Tanghalang Ateneo, the longest-running college theater company in the Ateneo.
How does it feel mounting two productions in honor of his mentor Ricky Abad?
“It feels gratifying but emotionally taxing, too,” he admitted. “In ‘Mga Multo,’ all I had to do was share in translating the text with Sir Ron, then making sure that the process goes smoothly for the actors and the prod team. Of course, as with almost all productions, some mistakes happen, especially with a student organization, the students are learning the craft as we go along, so inevitably there’s tension and drama. But that’s nothing new. In ‘Sintang Dalisay,’ I’m a bit more involved, especially since I’m directing it. Thank God for Brian Sy and Sir Matthew Santamaria. By the time I got into the process early June, nakalatag na most of the choreography. It was only a matter of watching over the actors’ performance, and blocking and adjusting Ricky’s staging for the bigger Hyundai stage.
“Oftentimes I had to forget that this is in honor of Ricky’s legacy, our collective way of mourning and celebrating his memory. I get so emotional sometimes, especially since I never really got to mourn him with this community when Ricky passed away; I was in the US then. I pretty much mourned him alone, which did not feel like actual mourning, because grief, I learned, has to be communal. So ngayon pa lang ako ‘humahabol’ sa grief, but I can’t be breaking down every moment. It was actually only during opening night when I finally allowed myself to cry – or was it that my body refused to hold it in any longer. Brian, Sir Matthew, Sir Ron, and D really helped me stay sane.”
How did the whole process happen – how was he convinced to direct these pieces?
“D Cortezano, who was Arete OIC before Dok Jerry Respeto took over Sir Ricky’s post, is the producer of ‘Sintang Dalisay,’ and when Ricky passed away, he told me while I was busy with my thesis in NYC to prepare to come home as soon as I can to take over the direction.
I never felt it was something I could say no to.
“‘Mga Multo,’ on the other hand, is really special because the actors – especially Yan Yuzon, Mirren Alvarez-Fabregas, and Joseph Dela Cruz, including director Ron Capinding – are some of the best of Ricky’s ‘babies’. They were the ones who experienced Ricky at his most classical – by the time I got to know Ricky, I guess he was what you could call his ‘late phase’ where he was much more experimental and started to veer away from the classics and got really fascinated with contemporary works and devising. So to see this high classic style – it’s been quite a while since we last saw classic theater on stage, what with the passing of Tony Mabesa, with the changing of the guard in many of our theater companies, admittedly including TA– is refreshing, revitalizing, a glorious reminder that TA and Ateneo theater in general is rooted in the classics. It took Ricky’s passing for me to be reminded that we have to keep these two traditions equally alive: the classical and the contemporary/experimental. Because these two traditions were very much alive in Ricky, this is basically his legacy. ‘Mga Multo’ is a proud return to form for TA. Personally, this is also the theater I grew up watching in Tanghalang Pilipino under Sir Nonon Padilla. It’s the kind of theater I grew up hearing stories of. In fact – and it’s another reason why Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ is special to me – my Dad, Ward Luarca, played the role of Oswald Alving in Rolando Tinio’s translation and direction when they did this at the CCP in Teatro Filipino. As TA’s artistic director, it’s essential for me to reintroduce this classicism back to our repertoire, which means training the current student members in this tradition. And what better way to start than to make them witness how it’s effin’ done! Miren, Yan, Joseph, Bina, and Mark, under Sir Ron’s direction, and design by – surely, future national artists – Gino Gonzales and Monino Duque definitely showed how it’s done! I’m very, very proud of this beautiful production. We’re planning on restaging it this coming October or November.”
“Sintang Dalisay” though is a very dear project to Guelan. He revealed, “I was a sophomore student when Ricky one afternoon went up to me and asked me to work on the script of ‘Sintang Dalisay’ with him. What business does a sophomore student have to get to pen a script for Ricky Abad?
“This play basically gave me my break as a playwright,” he added.
“In the larger picture, ‘Filipinizing Shakespeare’ has always been a lifelong project of Ricky.
He started off directing Shakespeare in TA only because Shakespeare is a classic, therefore is free domain – no added fees for the company! Then later on, Ricky got fascinated in finding a native clearing within the very Western Shakespeare. It started with staging Tinio’s translations, then playing around with setting, and eventually, this Filipinization project got really radical. ‘Sintang Dalisay’ is Ricky’s most radical Filipinization of Shakespeare. Not only is ‘Sintang Dalisay’ a textual amalgam of Tinio’s translation of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ it’s also 80% from an old 1904 poem titled ‘Ang Sintang Dalisay nina Romeo at Julieta’ which was written by a certain G.D. Roke (we don’t know who they really are). Ricky also decided to reset the play in an imagined Mindanaoan setting, thus the lovers are turned into Rashiddin and Jamila. Ricky worked with his lifelong collaborator, Dr. Santamaria, who is an expert in the Tausug and Badjao dance called ‘Igal.’ So putting all these things together gave birth to ‘Sintang Dalisay.’ It’s special because I think it is one of Ricky’s best works.”
