TFTS: The Philippines

schedule

Curator: Charles Yee

Charles Yee is a Chinese-Filipino artist-educator from the Philippines. He recently completed an MFA in Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) through the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, the Asian Cultural Council, and a Lillian Disney Scholarship. As an artist, his works have been presented at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), the Ateneo de Manila University, the University of the Philippines, as well as in various spaces in Los Angeles, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. He works in the Philippines as professional artist and as faculty of the Fine Arts Department of the Ateneo de Manila University. You may contact him at cyee@ateneo.edu

moderator: Dominique La Victoria

Dominique La Victoria is a playwright, dramaturg, and performance scholar from the Philippines. She finished her MA in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her works have been published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines - Intertextual Division, and have been staged in the Philippines, Japan, US, and UK. She is a recipient of two Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. She is a faculty at the Fine Arts Department of Ateneo de Manila University.

WRITER: Mixkaela VillaloN, The Report

Mixkaela Villalon is a ficitonist and playwright. Her plays Streetlight Manifesto and High Stakes debuted at the Virgin Labfest at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and her jukebox musical 3 Stars and a Sun featuring the music of Francis Magalona debuted at the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). She worked on the film Beastmode, a documentary on violence and spectacle, and wrote the zombie film Block Z. Mixkaela served as creative lead, artistic director, and producer for Ko lateral, a music album on the Philippine drug war. She released Interregnum, her collection of short stories, under Gantala press in 2021.

Moderator: Olivia Kristine D. Nieto

Olivia Kristine D. Nieto is a performance maker and an assistant professor at the University of the Philippine Diliman. Her areas of interest include Acting for the stage, film, and television; embodied/physical dramaturgy; performance on digital and online platforms. For more details, please visit www.olivenieto.com

DIRECTOR: Adrienne Vergara, The Report

Adrienne Vergara is an actor, mascoteer, voice actor, host, and has directed online hybrid performances — Titser Kit, dance-film The Man is Not Your Friend, and Kwentong Bata (The Children’s Hour). Mga Balo is her directorial debut onstage at the CCP. Her mascot work, Yenyen de Sarapen, toured in Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich), and Asia TOPA Festival XO State Dark (Melbourne). Sailor Yenyen was exhibited in UP Vargas Museum. She studied Theater Arts in Philippine High School for the Arts and in University of the Philippines — Diliman. ienne-ienne won the 67th FAMAS Best Supporting Actress award for Dog Days.

WRITER/DIRECTOR: Joshua Lim So, A QUestion of power

Joshua Lim So has received eight Palanca Awards, is twice awarded by the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition, and was a BNS Creative Writing Center Fellow for Drama. He has directed performances, including "Joe Cool: Aplikante", "Cubao Pagkagat ng Dilim", and "Acts of Piracy". His fiction received citations from "The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 20th Annual Collection", and "The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing". He graduated from De La Salle University. He resides in Manila, but considers Davao home. He also writes, develops and produces films and series. He can be reached at joshualimso@gmail.com.

WRITER: Serena Magiliw, Kasarian 101

Serena Magiliw is a transpinay actor, performance-maker, and cultural worker based in Manila, Philippines. She utilizes transmedia storytelling to present queer narratives with a sense of moving and participatory experience to the audience as an invitation and active engagement for an in-depth understanding of what it means to free oneself from the boundaries of the binary. They study Filipinology at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and a member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines, an organization of Filipino artists and cultural workers from various disciplines that work towards people's movement for freedom of expression, justice, and democracy.

CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR:  Edwin Quinsayas, Into the fold

Edwin Quinsayas is a performance-maker and cultural worker. He fuses his practice in Performance, theatre and contemporary dance and integrates lived experiences, advocacies and struggles of disadvantaged communities in the Philippines. He heads Tanghalang Mulong Sandoval, the performance programme of urban poor cultural organisation SIKAD. Among his recent works include Sa Digma ng Halimaw (Monster’s War, 2018-2020), Gapok (Fragile, 2016) and Nanay Mameng, Isang Dula (Mother Mameng, A play, 2014-2015). 

He has participated in Jejak-Tabi Exchange (Roxas City, 2020), World Reversed, (Asiatopia International Performance Art Festival,Bangkok, 2018), Solidarity in Perfomance Art International Festival (2016-2017), and Kampnagel Laokoon Festival (Hamburg, 2004).

WRITER: Junsly Kitay, Ba’t ako

Junsly Kitay is a senior artist-teacher of the Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts (YATTA) in Dumaguete City. He facilitates community creative workshops on various themes using theater arts as a tool for advocacy. Apart from performing, his role in YATTA has expanded into playwriting, directing and production design. He wrote Ahh Bakus! (The Belt) a musical theater promoting positive discipline, Scharon Mani (a musical theater about a young girl's dream that brought music and community together), Baling Mingawa (a satire about the situation of Filipinos during the Duterte administration). He also directed plays such as Dumpawa’s Lullaby written by ethnomusicologist Priscilla Magdamo. Kagawasan, Lali Bertad and various short plays. He also heads a team of YATTA writers for radio championing children and women's rights.

WRITER/ACTOR: Noel Pahayupan, Ola

NOEL A. PAHAYUPAN is a Marketing graduate at the University of Saint La Salle, Bacolod. He began his theatre experience with Maskara Theatre Ensemble. He is an Arts Manager and a Theater Artist. He is competent in technical, management, and creative aspect of a production. In 2018, He was awarded as the Most Outstanding Student in the Field of Performing Arts.

He has also been involved in various collaborative theatre and cultural initiatives in the city: organizing and conducting workshops in cultural activities with local government units and national projects with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

He is currently the Executive Director of The Performance Laboratory, Inc.

WRITER and DIRECTOR: Neil Arkhe P. Azcuna, Check Point

Neil is the Executive Director of the Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) the resident theater company of the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology where he is also a full-time faculty teaching History and the Humanities. He also works as a dramaturg, musician and playwright in the company. Neil's work traverses between film and the stage. He had directed short films and music videos and his theater directorial debut was the devised "TIGHOD: Tide of Times" with co-director Jan Pagarigan which premiered in Hanoi for the Asia Pacific Bureau of Theatre Schools in 2019. He was also a fellow of the National TRANSCRTIPT Dramaturgy and Playwriting Workshop. Recently Neil have been working hydrized forms of theater like his recently concluded sequel Eplay: Closed Spaces that explores the cross between film and play and his project with Pelikulove for the film-play hybrid "WHEN A MANANANGGAL LOVES A MAN" to be premiered in the Shoutout Film Festival this September.

WRITER: Kiki Baento, Libing Dead

Kiki Baento is a registered Civil Engineer from Mapua University and a Senior Artist-Teacher of Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA).  She is an actor for theater, TV, film and commercials. She became part of the PUM festival in Mindulle Theather in Korea featuring her original one man show Dog Peach.  She writes scripts for events and showcases of theater workshops for children, teens and adults. Actor, teacher, director, PD, SM, PM. Now, with a new endeavor of being a writer. A versatile artist fluent in Fagalog. Kiki believes she’s an “African-American gay diva” in her past life.

Additional Cast members

The Report
PLT Jolly: Thea Yrastorza
Nita: Teena Mendoza-Cardenas
Sherwin: Manfred Cardenas

A Question of Power
Interviewees: Names withheld 
Special Thanks: RESBAK & Silingan Coffee Shop

Into the fold
Videographer: JL Comia

ba’t ako:
Videographer: Mellard Manogura, Benjie Kitay
Editor: Nowell Teves
Sound: Nowell Teves
Dramaturge:Dessa Quesada Palm
Batman: Dan Kevin Folio
Ding: Reymark Palen
Interrogator: Earnest Hope Tinambacan
Dalawang taumbayan: Mellard Manogura, Marianne G. Raya

Ola:
Cast: Hayde Portal, Noel Pahayupan

Check Point:
Performers: Archibald Pacana, Kurtney Adorniga

Libing Dead:
Cast: Robertino Thaddeus Obach-Acosta, Lian Renz Silverio

PERFORMER/RESEARCHER: Alon Segarra, A Question of power

Alon Segarra is a freelance actor, finance manager, cultural worker, human rights activist. She volunteers for RESBAK (RESpond and Break the Silence Against the Killings), an interdisciplinary alliance of artists, media practitioners, and cultural workers advancing social awareness, and the fight for justice for the killings by the Duterte administration’s “war on drugs”. She also volunteered in SAKA: Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo (Artist Alliance for Genuine Land Reform and Rural Development), an anti-feudal alliance of art and cultural workers that support and advance the peasant agenda of genuine agrarian reform, rural development, and food security.

PERFORMER: Jzar Tabilin, Kasarian 101

Born in the outskirts of Manila in 1999, then raised in a small town agricultural region of northern Luzon, Jzar has always situated themself among the interstices. This informs their work as a bakla cultural worker & community organizer. They used to write and perform for their university protest and guerilla theatre collective. They love collaborating/ playing with comrades and sisters. They also integrate community theatre in their organising praxis. 

Currently, they are a community organizer, working with a non-government organisation and local grassroots fisherfolks and coastal communities in the Alabat Island region of Lamon Bay. Lamon Bay connects the southern part of Quezon province to the Philippine Sea, a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean.

CO-WRITER/ACTOR: Terence Krishna Lopez, into the fold

Terence Krishna Lopez is a community-theatre maker, urban poor rights activist and agroecology advocate. He was part of Tanghalang Mulong Sandoval’s productions such as Sa Digma ng Halimaw (Monster’s War, 2018-2020; Writer/Producer), Gapok (Fragile, 2016; Writer/Producer), Nanay Mameng, Isang Dula (Mother Mameng, A Play, 2014-2015; Producer).

He is a team member of Food Today, Food Tomorrow, a group of individuals working with urban poor communities to build collective power through community kitchens and community gardens. He currently works at PAN-Asia Pacific, a regional advocacy network in Asia Pacific that works towards elimination of highly hazardous pesticides.

DIRECTOR: Benjie Kitay, Ba’t ako

𝘽𝙚𝙣𝙟𝙞𝙚𝙆𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙮 is a 29 year-old theater actor, facilitator, playwright, lighting designer and a director. He is currently the President of the Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts (YATTA) and also a member of D'Salag Collective. He is the co-writer of the play DAGIT which was performed in Singapore as part of the Asian Youth Theatre Festival and other parts of Visayas and Mindanao. He also wrote and directed Saving the Blue last 2019 performed in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. He has written scripts for radio promoting positive discipline and marine protection.

WRITER/DIRECTOR: Venise Buenaflor, Ola

Venise Buenaflor is a theatre actor, playwright, and director and currently a member of the Performance Laboratory Inc. She also directed various short plays and portrayed lead and supporting roles in several local plays and made her first acting debut on the CCP Stage as part of the CCP’s Virgin Labfest Main Festival of Plays where she performed a monologue titled “Wala nang Bata Dito” by Sari Saysay. Some of her original plays were featured during the Staged Readings in CCP under the Women Playwrights International and chosen as one of the Top 10 fellows in the VLF Writing Fellowship Program 14 under the mentorship of Glenn Sevilla Mas. Her play “Tuhoy” was also invited to the writer's playroom in WPI Montreal 2021.

DIRECTOR: Karl Alexis C. Jingco, Libing Dead

Stage actor specializing in both Scripted and unscripted (improv) plays. Founder of the 2nd oldest Improv group in the Philippines "One and a Halfmen Improv" and founder of "Shorts and Briefs theatre festival and "Story Nights Manila", he is also the youngest Teacher, specializing in Improv & Art Comedy for the Actors Company for Tanghalang Pilipino in CCP. 

He is also working with CCP arts education to spread "soul spa/Healing Theatre" as a method of teaching and learning.  Cited as one of the 2016 Young Talents of the Philippines and 2012 Outstanding Youth Leader for Region IX. He also host a radio show every sunday in DZME, TV host on Gametime TV in Cignal Cable. 

Performer, Director, Producer, creator and over all creative.