The lawyer as theater artist

MANILA, Philippines - When he was a child, the parents of Vincent (Vince) Tañada would emphasize to him that being a Tañada, scion of a clan prominent in politics and the legal profession, he was destined to be a lawyer.

And so, being a dutiful son, Vince, after graduating from La Salle Greenhills (where he was, incidentally, a member of the Kundirana choir) took up law at San Beda College, passed the Bar, and became a successful lawyer specializing in annulments.

But he was not happy.

What he wanted to do was to sing, act, dance, and to write and direct his own plays. And, would you believe, without any formal training and with the blessings of his parents, this is exactly what he was able to achieve in the next 10 years.

Along with seven other friends, he founded the Philippine Stagers Foundation. It was hard going at first; the expenditures mounted and five associates backed out of the enterprise. Then Vince thought about marketing his plays — mostly musicals about famous personages like San Lorenzo Ruiz, Moses and Mahatma Gandhi — to the schools.

He called this “creative profitability” and the strategy worked. Soon Philippine Stagers was prospering; the five partners wanted to return to the group, but their overtures were rejected.

“Medyo nag-boom,” Vince recalls. “For me, theater is a good instrument for learning. (PETA also has this advocacy). The performing arts complement classroom learning. We roamed around Metro Manila and encouraged indigent students to audition. Last year, 700 auditioned for our free workshops, but we only got 200 because there was no more space in our studio.”

Of the 200 who participated in the workshops, some 20 to 30 became regular employees of the foundation. This is done every year.

“We have to pay all our actors, all our staff and personnel on a monthly basis,” Vince says. “That is unusual in the Philippine theater industry. We have to sponsor our members who are in school through scholarship. We have our various charitable institutions, our beneficiaries.”

He adds, “Theater is not my bread-and butter. I do not earn a single centavo from this theater company. I am a lawyer, and earning.” Theater is his passion, he asserts.

The plays he has written and directed have earned for him three Aliw Awards: One for Best Actor, and two for Best Director. Part of the success of the foundation’s musicals may be traced to the composers (Pipo Cifra) and the choreographer (John San Antonio).

The Philippine Stagers’ bestsellers have been Ako si Ninoy (Best Musical Aliw Awards), which has chalked up more than 350 performances all over the country (from La Union and Pangasinan to Palawan and Davao), and still counting, and its sequel, the current Cory ng EDSA, which is on tour here and in the provinces ([email protected]).

So what have all these rich experiences taught him? Vince (who is a single parent) concludes that “life is too short. You need not have second thoughts about (doing) what you really like in your life.”