Virgin Labfest (VLF) 2024 explores ‘uncertainty’, bringing audiences to the edge of their seats

Lino Balmes’s Ningas is a captivating play that utilises magic realism in its core concept, but director BJ Borja opted for a hyperrealistic staging. This beautiful contrast added a whimsical and ominous flavour for the VLF theatregoers who experienced this richly written play.

Ningas revolves around a woman asking a man to give her a name. As the play progresses, it is later revealed that the woman is a spirit in the man’s future life and is about to die in her timeline. With the man baptising her with a name, she will be born in the man’s timeline, rightfully as his child. But beyond the unrealistic storyline, the play tackles the kids-versus-no-kids debate. Questions of why a person must conform to societal expectations of building a family and having children went in a loop throughout the play, accentuated with triggering scenes that hint at one’s mental health, the need for a parent, and the arduous search for one’s life purpose.

Though seemingly complex, this play had a gratifying ending that one might not mind rewatching again and at full length.

Another cerebral (pun intended) offering at this year’s VLF is Rick Patriarca’s Love on the Brain. This play bravely elevates the conversations we hear in the usual Boys’ Love stories by putting HIV Awareness at the front and centre.

In Love on the Brain, former lovers Ryan and Jake realise how gruelling modern gay dating can be when the former’s current boyfriend, a popular social media influencer, discovers that they have HIV. Through the play, the creative team, helmed by director John Mark Yap, hopes to educate the audience about HIV and address the stigma about the sexually transmitted disease. More than that, it encourages the audience to protect themselves from misinformation about the virus.

This play offered many cathartic opportunities. However, it was the quiet moments and silent conversations left to everyone’s imagination that resonated the most.

VLF’s Set B was kicked off by Herlyn Alegre’s Sentenaryo, a hilariously satirical dramatisation of conflicting interests contextualised in the government granting PhP100,000 to Filipino centenarians.

Directed by Ian Segarra, Sentenaryo follows an unconventional family fighting over the birthday money of their patriarch. But the centenarian dies before he receives the money from the government official. What inspired Alegre to add dark comedy to this play is a news story from Japan she had come across before—about a mother and son who pretended that a family member was still alive so they could receive a pension and other benefits from the government. The scheme was later revealed when the man’s body was found. Alegre explored how this situation would play out if it were set in the Philippines.

Dip Mariposque’s The Divine Family would be a beautiful example of a family melodrama rendered lightly. Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were mandatorily put under one roof, the play narrates what will happen when individuals with secrets to hide are brought together in their family house and are forced to confront their realities. Mariposque wanted to explore the idea of writing about emancipation and played with the idea of writing without rules.

The Divine Family became more complicated as it unfolded—from one secret unravelling to another. Still, the actors portrayed their characters with wit and precision, with director Roobak Valle giving each one their shining moments. It wasn’t difficult to empathise with the characters and understand their individual struggles. However, it became more difficult to vilify a character when things became more connected and layered. Perhaps there was a reason why some things must remain secret.

One of this year’s crowd favourites that VLF fans and theatregoers shouldn’t miss next year is Jhudiel Clare Sosa’s Identité. For the conservative eye, this play may seem triggering for its vulgarity—with dildos of every size all over the stage. However, it is for this reason that its director, Meann Espinosa, carefully unravelled the conversation of the mother-and-daughter dyad. From shock comes delight. From confusion comes understanding.

In Identité, Luz and her daughter Regina navigate through their relationship. The play talks about the journey of self-discovery and identity, opening the conversation on how a person perceives himself vis-a-vis how others perceive them.

Joshua Lim So courageously retold one of the many stories during the COVID-19 delta wave through the thrilling play Pagkapit sa Hangin, which had set the tone of VLF’s Set C. Complete with PPEs and other isolation requirements of a medical response unit, the play transported the audience to a time marked with strife that pushed many to their limits.

Captivatingly disturbing, Pagkapit sa Hangin follows frontliners in an unnamed location in the Visayas. Due to the large number of admissions, they work continuously for over 24 hours at their workplace, the only hospital on the island. In this Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facility, the situation worsened when the delivery of oxygen tanks did not arrive. To save whatever they could, a doctor and two staff nurses rationed the oxygen supply for patients they knew were already on the brink of death. However, they were caught by a watcher, a patient’s attendant, who refused to accept that there was no longer any hope for his dying father.

Through this play directed by José Estrella, So tackled the moral dilemma medical frontliners faced at the height of the pandemic, which was shared with him by a doctor he encountered in his research. Theatregoers should not miss this play when it gets revisited at the VLF 2025.

Another play that spoke of hardships in one of Philippine history’s dim chapters was Ara Jenika Vinzon’s Lipistik at Pulbura. Directed by Charles Yee, this play was filled with lyricism apropos for its time setting yet teeming with questions we still ask today.

This play was inspired by the famous battle chant “Remember Erlinda!” of Filipino troops to remind them of the atrocity committed towards Filipino women. Back in Abucay, Bataan, in 1943, a woman who was brutally raped and killed by Japanese soldiers was believed to have the name “Erlinda” as a handkerchief was found beside her body with the said name embroidered.

Although this play is not a retelling of that, it explores the moral complexities faced by storytellers in times of war, particularly those on the losing side. Through the eyes of a writer grappling with the choice between fidelity and freedom, the story unfolds—all against the backdrop of a hair and makeup session between friends during lunchtime.

One of VLF 2024’s enjoyable stagings was Foxtrot, written by Chesie Galvez-Cariño and directed by Paul Morales.

During their last rehearsal for an amateur ballroom dancing competition, Anna, a middle-aged matron of substantial means, and Diego, a respectable and educated dance instructor, master the complexities of the foxtrot and their relationship. Their dance of words brings them to a very compromising position and revelation.

At a glance, it may seem like a romantic story, a May-December affair kept secret within the constraints of a dance studio. However, the playwright’s deliberate hesitation to be didactic makes this play mesmerising to watch. The two characters’ push-and-pull, witnessing them confess their feelings and doubts, make it quite heartbreaking to see a friendship (or relationship) gradually broken.

Neil Arkhe Azcuna’s bilingual play, Si Hesus Na’a sa US, features estranged couple Luna and Marlon recalling their relationship, facing the questions they never had the guts to ask each other and themselves, and realising what they want to do with their lives.

Staged by Phil Noble, this play opened Set D using a road trip as its narrative structure—a joyride through the past and into the uncertain future. Si Hesus Na’a sa US focuses on Luna, who is on her way to NAIA to pick up her foreign boyfriend and is presented with a chance to follow in her mother’s footsteps or to make her own.

Azcuna based this play on real stories from his hometown in Mindanao. Through this play, he pays homage to his grandparents.

Dustin Celestino’s Ang Munting Madilim na Sulok sa Isang Serbeserya sa Maynila also delves into love affairs’ irks and quirks. Directed by Toni Go-Yadao, this play opens with two characters, Gary and Joseph, psychology professors who are supposed to have a fun night out at a beer house. While waiting for Gary’s favourite GRO, they discuss their beliefs about marriage, love, and privilege.

Through this play, Celestino explores the general perception of Filipinos towards sex work and prostitution. It raises the idea that people who often go to bars project their insecurities onto the sex workers they encounter. The remaining half of the play focuses on the GRO and her manager, where manipulative strategies unravel.

Some audiences might have found the flip in the story’s perspective a laborious extension. But the last bit was actually interesting, as it tells more about the price behind the commodification of beauty.

Elise Santo’s Sa Babang Lahat, another crowd favourite among this year’s VLF entries, has also been selected to be revisited next year. Directed by Caisa Borromeo, this play fuses the circa 2000s notion of gender identity and sexual orientation with many false interpretations and understandings towards the Catholic faith. Set in an unnamed all-girls Catholic school, the play explores the interconnected journeys of three students figuring out their relationship with religion, sexuality, each other, and ultimately, their own selves.

Sa Babaeng Lahat is a feel-good watch despite being a reminder of the backward philosophies and discouraging expectations of society, thanks to the actors’ truthful portrayals and the text’s richness.

One of the revisited plays from 2023 is Andrew Estacio’s Ang Awit ng Dalagang Marmol. Of all the plays, this was the grandest in terms of its production value. Directed by Nazer Degayo Salcedo, it is a sarswela within a play and would be, in some instances, very intimate, as if one is watching an actual rehearsal.

In Ang Awit ng Dalagang Marmol, a group of artists and actors plan to reimagine a popular classic song and stage it as a theatrical production. As the group pushes through, an untold truth about the song resurfaces. Based on the continuing historical research on “Jocelynang Baliwag”, it depicts a local community theatre group dissecting the life and times of Pepita Tiongson, the character of Liwayway in the novel by Isabelo delos Reyes dedicated to Tiongson, and her uncertain whereabouts after the war.

What makes this play stand out is how the conflict between a director and a dramaturg was built up, clashed, and resolved. The witty banter and well-placed ad lib punch lines made the uncomfortable arguments humorous to watch.

The play ends with a spectacle—an elderly woman in her twilight years, most likely the muse of the song, heeding the audience not to forget her and those whose spirit and legacy are now only immortalised by poetry. The attempt to show what happens behind the curtain of any theatrical production makes this play truly special.

This revisited 2023 play must have been very timely as the nominations for the Order of National Artist draw to a close. Dingdong Novenario’s Dominador Gonzales: National Artist follows a playwright who is reuniting with his former mentor and lover for a possible collaboration that would greatly help revive his playwriting career. Directed by George De Jesus III, this play slowly unwraps the lies and abuses one commits to himself and the community they belong to for personal gain. Though the play focuses only on the two lead characters, the supporting character, who appears to be the houseboy of Dominador Gonzales but is hinted to be an object of desire, is also hard to miss in this equation of hidden agenda.

Zheg Arban’s Room 209 deserves the praise it received last year, and it’s thrilling to watch it among VLF’s revisited plays. Directed by Delphine Buencamino, this play uses physical acting and is perfected with precise choreography.

Set inside a military academy, the story tells of how a room can become much more for a young cadet—a testimony to a culture that has been passed on and serves as a witness to the lives it has touched.

This play tells the story of a freshman military academy student and how his fraternal connection to the higher-ups became a subject of insecurity among his seniors. His demise was very much explained in the play, as well as of those others who factually died inside the Philippine Military Academy due to hazing or bullying yet have been brushed aside by the authorities. Justice for these victims echoes in the final scenes of the play, which concludes with a video projection of the victims’ faces and names while actors remain kneeling to show respect.

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