‘Ghost projects, duplications, geo-tagging inspections, it is a familiar dance of exposure and evasion, of concealment and consequence. And so, we are reminded: there are no permanent secrets.’
IN Filipino kitchens, silence is rarely empty. It hums between the scrape of metal on porcelain, lingers in the hiss of oil, and clings to curtains carrying the scent of adobo and sinigang. There are silences born of comfort, but there are also silences that weigh the kind that sits heavily, waiting, patient, until it can no longer hold.
This is the silence that Karne invites us to confront. The Far Eastern University Theater Guild (FTG), now on its 91st season, stages PETA’s Dudz Teraña’s haunting adaptation inspired by Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter, set in Lubotan, Negros Oriental, in the 1980s. On the surface, it is about Mary and Patrick Patrosa, played in rotation by Maria Mayano, Julia Nicole Ramas, Janae Dionisio, RB Pascua, Aaron Bayani, and Arvin Javier and their evening dinner that begins ordinary, but slowly unravels into revelation.
But what Karne truly serves us is a mirror: that secrets, no matter how carefully wrapped, ripen in their own disturbing time. Because in our homes, in our cities, even in the nation itself, we are no strangers to the quiet art of concealment. We cover, we mask, we deflect. Until something, a word, an act, a single shift of circumstance, undoes the stitching, and everything spills. This is not only theatre. It is the story of who we are.
Take, for example, the still-unfolding flood control controversy under the DPWH. For years, whispers have floated softly, as though too delicate to confront: phantom projects, anomalous allocations, familiar surnames orbiting the same billion-peso contracts. And yet, like the slow simmer of sauce on a stove, the silence was always temporary. On September 1, 2025, during the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s “Philippines Under Water” hearings, the country finally heard what it had long suspected. Sarah Discaya, businesswoman and wife to Curlee Discaya, admitted that her companies had indeed competed against each other for DPWH flood control projects, an open secret, now dragged into the light.
The very next day, 28 luxury cars linked to the family vanished from their compound, as if the shadows were desperate to swallow their tracks. But what lingers in memory, more unsettling than the disappearance itself, is the image of the massive tarpaulins that for months covered their parking building, tarpaulins once emblazoned with bold campaign promises from their failed and deeply embarrassing attempt to unseat Pasig’s long-standing mayor, a figure regarded as a rare embodiment of good governance. Those same banners that once promised hospitals, progress, and renewal became the very fabric that concealed symbols of excess and privilege. The dreams we were sold were the same curtains used to hide the truth. It is almost theatrical: life imitating Karne.
Just as Mary in the play dresses her intentions in domestic ritual, we as a people have become accustomed to dressing fractures with borrowed hope. The tarpaulins are not just covers; they are allegories. Of how we wish to be seen, versus who we have become. Of the stories we tell ourselves, versus the realities we cannot escape. What Karne whispers to us is this: secrets choose their own time.
The longer they are hidden, the deeper they ferment, until the moment comes, unexpected, inconvenient, and often violent, when silence collapses. What begins as small, personal concealments grows into something collective, and inevitably, corrosive.
In the wake of the hearings, the Commission on Audit has launched a fraud audit on DPWH projects in Bulacan, revealing ballooning allocations from ₱2.77 billion in 2023 to ₱7.85 billion this year.
Ghost projects, duplications, geo-tagging inspections, it is a familiar dance of exposure and evasion, of concealment and consequence. And so, we are reminded: there are no permanent secrets.
Only stories waiting for the right moment to be told.
For 91 seasons, the FTG has been telling Filipino stories, not always comfortable, but always necessary. With Karne, it holds a mirror to our kitchens, our communities, our government, and ultimately, ourselves. It is an unsettling reminder that silence is not peace, and concealment is not freedom. Because sooner or later, in homes or Senate halls, at kitchen tables or on tarpaulin-covered lots, what we bury returns to the surface. And when it does, we are left to face not just what was hidden, but why we chose not to see.
Karne will run this year at the FEU Center for the Arts Studio on the following dates:
• September: 11–13, 18–20, 25–27
• October: 2–4, 9–11, 16–18, 23–25, 30
• November: 6–8
