Filipinos connecting across the world
The Earth revolves.
And each human soul on the planet revolves around their own personal worlds. Doing what they do, oblivious mostly to those outside their orbits. Until one day, we all woke up to a common reality. All our personal worlds are shattered .
COVID-19 is the first global experience of magnitude since the World Wars. The great shared misery of our time.
With singular experiences come collective sentiments. Filipinos reaching out to each other across worldwide borders of quarantine. Upended human spirits communing under a shared history of theatre.
And this is the story of a handful of amateur Filipino poets and actors from all over the world coming together. In isolation from family and friends, reaching out, connecting and creating this incredible collaboration over the digital space.
Putting together common, yet individual experiences in poetry and prose, creating an anthology of 19 monologues. Dubbed as Virologues, it is this generation’s oral history of human experiences.
From tabletop to theater
Carol Gancia, San Francisco-based alumna and AA technical director 1992, reached out to college friends in theatre for what was then a COVID-19 virtual reunion over Zoom. The handful of friends are all alumni of Artistang Artlets, the official theatre guild of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas, Manila.
The crew came away with an overall sense of positivity, and a desire to keep connecting through table reading of scripts, then quite popular amongst the Hollywood set, became the precursor to regular meets across time zones.
Little did anyone know that the beginnings of a maiden production was unfolding organically. Jay Españo, a Chicago-based alumnus, adapted his original short film screenplay into a one-act play now entitled, Sundowning. Meanwhile, Manila-based alumnus Bong Figueroa also began working on a collaborative writing project then only referred to as the monologues.
A weekly habit was borne out of Sundowning. Fun, stimulating, comforting across a generation of alumni between 1985 and 1996 on both sides of the globe. Until Jay asked, “Where do you want to take this?”
A simple question that Izzai Monasterio-Tejedor, AA artistic director 1989, responded to with a vision to pivot the theater experience for production teams and audiences. She put it simply, “A live performance of a one-act theater play on a virtual stage.”
In 2 months, all coordinated from Los Angeles, Izzai successfully staged the maiden effort with cast and crew across five time zones from Southeast Asia, Oceania and North America.
Covid 19 Virologues on the virtual stage
Covid 19 Virologues is a compendium of original monologues reflecting the collective sentiments of amateur Filipino artists on the transmission and effects of Covid-19.
The ambitious vision of Director Bong Figueroa took eight writers, nineteen monologues, cast and crew of thirty from the 1980s to the present to bring it to the virtual space. “We are, for all intents and purposes, creating an oral history of the pandemic through a curated set of monologues,” he shares.
“Each unique piece will be interpreted theatrically, with every performance pushing the boundaries of creativity within the rectangular stage that is Zoom. Live.” He adds, “One can say that our small crew is pushing the limits of what is possible, and exploring digital theatre in the global stage.”
With a virtual play in the works, a virtual playbill is also being developed. Every theater production always came with a souvenir program. In keeping with this tradition, Video, Music and Art Lead James Bernardo, AA business director 1988, saw it only fitting to feature the nineteen pieces in a libretto. “After all that’s been said and done, this is a collective memory, a stamp of victory, the scars of a war, a passionate love letter, a whisper above the din, and a sliver of light in the darkness.
Several artworks from AA alumni, and kin, accompany the prose and poetry. The libretto will be published digitally, and down the line, in print.
ADVT