‘Choosing’: Ice Seguerra and Liza Diño’s stage play shows authenticity and truth’s liberating power

As Juan shared during one of the show’s curtain calls, the trio behind this play began devising the script right before Holy Week 2024. Guided by Juan’s process of playwriting, where in workshops towards productions, he asks questions that emergent playwrights would answer to write their scenes from. They began answering Juan’s questions as Diño and Seguerra—to open the portals for the personas of Stella and Mitch.

At the press conference for Choosing, Diño recalled the script-devising process and how they would have different recollections of some significant moments they shared in their decades-long romantic relationship. This was evident in the finished script during the play’s first act, adding to the many hilariously entertaining scenes that balanced the play’s weight.

Chronologically sequenced and time-marked by the actors’ monologues whenever they state their ages, Choosing navigates through the lives of two people on the gender spectrum from childhood to adulthood. Some scenes are dialogues between the two, while most are parallel narratives of sexual awakening, dating, and emotional maturation, in which the actors showcase their versatility by playing other characters.

Also true to its pun-intended subtitle, “not a straight play”, Seguerra sang a song in one of the scenes, delivering to the theatre his acclaimed prowess in singing and songwriting. But another interesting to note was its curvaceous stage design by Ohm David. A paisley-shaped centre stage supports the dynamic blocking of the actors, like two persons congruently dancing with each other from a distance. The curved ramp with railing on stage right and the bootcut-shaped ramp on stage left as its asymmetrical counterpart offered a visually appealing raked perspective for the pristinely white stage.

One of the key moments as well of the play was the explanation of what a transman and an assigned female at birth (AFAB) are during the play’s second act. Apparently, one of the play’s objectives was to educate audiences about sexual orientation and gender identity, may they be in the LGBTQIA+ community or not. GA Fallarme’s video projections for this and in some scenes that would require additional visualisation were helpful for some audiences to understand the play better. Surprisingly, The naivë visuals added humour to the play, aiding the actors to break the fourth wall and directly interact with the audience.

But despite its entertaining mass appeal, Juan’s artistry, as seen in the incorporation of butoh as well as his signature ‘forgotten object’ monologue writing workshop, and Vincent de Jesus’s musicality, expectedly added sophistication to the play. Juan’s polyvocal and dialogic directorial style, where the actors speak to the ghosts from their past by facing either of the four ring lights surrounding the stage, was clarified by De Jesus’s ambient music played on cue. In objectifying their personnae and the “memory ring” music, we see spectres as additional characters to the play—invisible yet deeply felt.

With the technical direction of D Cortezano and lighting design by John Batalla, the play was worth seeing at the Power Mac Center Spotlight Blackbox Theatre, a longstanding theatrical space of Ayala Malls Circuit Makati that welcomed the LGBTQIA+ community in this year’s Pride Month celebrations. Hopefully, this play will also be seen in other LGBTQIA+-friendly spaces like Quezon City or Marikina.

Choosing is a beautiful addition to the ever-growing queer literature as it tackles gender transitioning, a topic barely scratched on the surface in theatre. It offers truthfulness to the point of shameful acceptance evoked by its actors. Seguerra, during the press conference, shared that before he understood he was trans, he chose to be safe by affirming the term often associated with him—‘tomboy’. Yet in 2014, he came out as trans, not merely by choice but by acceptance.

Acceptance reverberated throughout the play. As Stella and Mitch slowly did, albeit vexingly, to fathom each other’s similarities and differences. The audience, in turn, did not find it hard to embrace their truths and let the love of oneself and for each other to triumph.

Change is constant, and so are choices in life. One choice may lead to another change. Hence, we find any transition fearful, for we are unsure of what lies ahead. As Stella said in one of her final lines, “I don’t want to lose us. That in finding yourself, we’re losing each other.” But as Mitch held Stella’s hands in the end, may the people at the crossroads of their lives filled with doubts and fears also be brave in asking, “If this is who I am, who do you choose to love?"

For true love knows no change or superficial choices but rests on the truth within.

Choosing was produced by Fire and Ice PH, a production company founded by Liza Diño and Ice Seguerra. It is tentatively scheduled to return onstage in November 2024.

NOW READ

Tanghalang Pilipino’s ‘Pingkian’, a musical based on Emilio Jacinto’s writings

‘Bawat Bonggang Bagay’, a fab Filipino adaptation of Duncan Macmillan’s ‘Every Brilliant Thing’

The 2023 staging of ‘Zsazsa Zaturnnah’ revisits LGBTQ+ issues and pushes conversations forward