Of catfood and songs
The Catfood Fiasco
[Read on the Rafa Santos catfood fiasco here]
Thing is: that isn’t the first time I heard the catfood analogy to theater pay. I’ve heard it before, from someone else in rehearsal room banter. That’s really what makes the difference: there are jokes you tell your friends, then there are the ones you don’t print or show.
Remember, remember, Joan Rivers and the eat your dog joke. It’s equivalent to the N word: fine and fun among friends, but it’s a media grenade onscreen.
While I’ve accepted his apology, and I do hope all the best for Rafa Santos, I also hope the community considers the repercussions of the statement. It takes guts to wade through the theater and freelance creative industry, especially one in a developing country. So far, I’m amazed that we continue to churn out talent and shows. We’re only as good as the gigs we get, and we’re very thinly protected by the labor laws.
For the most part, it’s a wild, wild, world out there. What I wish is that it gets us thinking of a standard for all engagements and companies to follow. We have the passion, we just need the regulations to allow us keep working at it.
Off into the world we go
Speaking of regulations, from what I know from working the trenches of the stage, I can take a guess as to why they imported a cast for the Songs of Andrew Lloyd concert. Abby wrote about the concert here, which also sums up my sentiments.
So, why the import? Let’s just say that just say that some companies didn’t abide by the fine print way back when, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
It’s a pity though, I remember before Miss Saigon got staged in Manila they’d frequently stage even grander revues with Philippine talent.
I enjoyed the show, but I firmly believe Pinoys could have done it better. I’m also slightly miffed that they got bigger showbuyers for it when they could have gotten a full show of equivalent, if not better caliber, for a competitive price.
Call me naive, but for all our accomplishments in the theater scene, I daresay we can market ourselves. It just needs the right push, and I haven’t seen that push in a long while.
Louder than words
“The sound you are hearing is not a technical problem. It is not a musical cue. It is not a joke. It is the sound of one man’s mounting anxiety. I… am that man.” -tick…tick…boom!
I remember a 60 year old woman who sat in our poetry class back in college. The woman – for the life of me, I forgot her name – spent most of her life abroad as a nurse.
After her retirement, she decided to go back to painting and literature, passions she put on hold when she pursued nursing and raised a family. She sat in different lit classes around Ateneo, soaking up everything from lit theory to poetry to creative wrting.
“You will always have time,” she once told me when I divulged anxiety about not having the time to achieve everything I wanted. ” look at me, I’m doing all this and I’m already 60!”
In time, I remind myself as I go through my schedule and tick off my to-do list.
In time. I have to think as I grit my teeth and tackle the drudgery that comes with a job.
In time, I sigh, as I struggle to put together the rhythm and lines I once weaved with ease. It will come, I tell myself, to shoo away little mental vampires that cackled in glee at the scrawls on my paper. Emily Dickinson’s poems were valued more after her death.
I remember Johnathan Larson’s “tick…tick…boom!”. Over time, it has spoken more to me than “Rent”. My sister criticized “Rent” for embellishing a life of deliberate poverty, of featuring spoiled “hipsters” who thought honest living was much too mainstream. tick…tick…boom! was more honest, I believed, having had the chance to see both shows. In tick…tick…boom! lay the moral lesson of making the most out of our talent, and the choices we make around them. Even if it takes us away from them.
“the tick tick booms are softer now. I can barely hear them, and I think if I play loud enough I can drown them out completely.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHBMxhxMYIg]
You can read more about it at the show’s wikipedia page.
RP612fic by Mia Marci
I participated in the RP612 twitter fiction movement to celebrate Philippine Independence day. Filipino tweeps contributed micro-fiction on twitter based on Filipino personalities and events. You can read the complete collection from other twitter users and myself here. My twitter username is miithinks.
Below are my contributions. It was the first time since forever since I last wrote fiction, let alone fiction that concise! It was really a fun, inspiring exercise in copy that made me fear my own mind.
The following twitfics are slightly revised from the original tweets. As a note, I am a fan and student of Ambeth Ocampo, which shows my approach towards Rizal and Bonifacio. References to actual persons are intentional, but it is largely a work of parody.
-(Dr. Who crossover) As the ink dried on the parchment, Rizal had one regret: he should’ve jumped into that blue box when he had the chance. (for my whotards, especially Yumi and Denice)
-“Soon, Ferdie, soon. After we link the OS to your body, Maharlika will rise again!”
-The second she opened the door, the maid swore she saw Hen. Luna and Bonifacio looming over Emilio in his last breath.
-My dearest Diego, these battles are for every time you sulked over my besting you at chess. Love, Gabi
-Angel L was surprised to see Rizal suited up & right under her window, holding a guitar. He gave a strum, “Uso pa ba ang harana?”
-“RH bill? Hell no. That means I’d have to register my services and get taxed.” harumphed the manananggal.
-In the nights lost to soothing a bawling, baby Kris, they all knew she would make a powerful weapon one day.
-Headline: Political dynasty reshuffling determined by a midnight playstation tournament of “Dynasty Warriors”. (for Billy)
-Maritess thought she had a better deal when she returned home, then laundered both Zaturnnah’s and Darna’s costumes.
-Overheard at Starbucks: “Ambeth O, dude, that was supposed to be an exclusive. Hijo de, I should have gone to Boy A instead!” -Pepe R
-Texts of the Revolution, August 30: “Hir n m. Wer n u? Sheht, ‘pre imba ng k0ny0!” -Andr3B0n1130 (This one’s for you, Sir Ambeth)
-The white lady has been seen on buses since the taxi fare hike.
Why Face the Facts?
Simple: cause almost everyone missed the point.
I’m glad that the church is challenged, I’m glad that there are people standing firm and saying that we are not the Friar state we used to be. But it really isn’t about that.
It is about the women and children who die at birth, who didn’t know the what and how to take care of themselves.
It is for an entire generation of women that were haunted by the trauma of their prom night, because they simply didn’t know any better.
It is about each scared high school girl who seriously believed that she could have an abortion by taking aspirin with coca-cola.
It’s about each teenage boy who couldn’t really understand what was happening to them, or comprehend the consequences of following what they felt.
For the parents who don’t know how to talk to their kids. For the kids who dared to ask, only to be punished.
For those who learned elsewhere but got lost in the fiction: in the magazines, the internet, urban legends, their adventurous friends.
The ones who learned in regret, in retrospect.
For lack of facts, we work with fiction and heresay.
These are the fictions that they believed in. Read it and weep.
With sexuality, ignorance is not bliss.
Add food for thought: we could get the right information out at zero cost.
Three little words: Face the facts. We need RH Bill 5043. We need to know.
Or face this fact: people will die from not knowing.
High School Life: A review of Jerrold Tarog's 'Senior Year'
Here’s my experience with Philippine cinema: I either had to wade through a lot of crap, or have to hack through the sociopolitical films to find something to enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the reminder that we have so much more to go as a country, but that can’t be the only thing I can watch. I’ve been CRAVING a “coming of age” story that isn’t glorifying a studio love team or talent. I want MY coming of age story told: high school cramming, tsimisan, kabarkadahan, awkward panliligaw, college entrance examinations, and intrams; with the brilliant wit and worldplay that is quintessentially Filipino. The generation before me had Bagets, the closest I got was America’s Clueless. I even caught Indonesia’s Ada apa dengan Cinta (translated: What’s up with Love? Cinta is the word ‘Love’ and is also the lead character’s name), which was overall corny, but I appreciated the peek at the day in the life of the average Indonesian teenager and how they dealt with their insecurities.
So that’s the novelty and brilliance of ‘Senior Year’. Philippine high school life it is: intrams, extended tutorial sessions with your batch crush, dealing with the joys and consequences of blossoming with age, while confused with what the world expects from you.
There are a few details I wonder, considering that it is set in present day Manila; As someone who has a young cousin in high school, modes of communication are via text, social media, and Sun’s unlimited calls offer. In this film, the students are still using the landline to call each other up. Direk, your nineties are showing! Between that and a timeline that darts between high school and the batch’s reunion ten years later, it’s quite jarring. I also object to a lot of the post-production after effects, it didn’t do anything for the story and we could have done without it after the opening credits.
But mucho kudos for getting our story out. It can be argued that a lot remains unfulfilled by batch 2010 of the fictionalized St. Frederick’s School in Muntinlupa as the credits scroll up, but I don’t think that’s the point of the film. The film is about the nostalgia for how a grade, a friend, a heartbreak meant the world in that era. I also deeply appreciate that it manages to brush on mature themes such as homosexuality and spousal abuse without falling into the preachiness trap.
So please, do this film justice by catching it at the cinemas. It’s already on its last few days at Ayala Cinemas, the limited run ends on April 19 at Glorietta 4 cinemas; but I’ve seen and heard that seats have barely filled up. Round up your friends, make an outing out of it. Hope you all enjoy!