Ang Penitensiya at Baguio’s SLU

MANILA, Philippines - Lowland people can learn a thing or two about other people or things upland, especially when it comes to theater and how to sow the stage wind. (And vice versa, one might say.)

But first things first.

Some people must have hit it on when they picked St. Louis University’s (SLU) staging of Luciano Valencia’s Ang Penitensiya ni Tiyo Renato as the Best Non-Musical Production of a certain 2013 season. The play, as written, is almost actor-proof.

But as mounted in the highland, however, it is not impervious to bad or poor acting, from both sides of the equation — the raw all-student performers (except for Kenneth Aglubo, a former radio DJ with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication degree from SLU) and the rowdy student audience. How does one distract a play being played?

The gym noise notwithstanding, the frenzy of preparations, was quite obvious — first on the stage set (to the tune of the P70,000?) and then on the entire theater setting. Evidently, the Baguio folks take their theater experience to heart, and they’re really hearty about it.

The general admission fee at P100 is practically a song, considering the contagious energy of, and on, the show. The Palanca people must have sensed something when they awarded Valencia’s work second prize in the full-length play category, Filipino division, 2012.

The play’s cathartic ending is enough reason to find the director and the university-scholar performers. To single out Benjan Rusby Natividad, who was outstanding as Tiyo Renato, would be a disservice to the ensemble of very competent young actors in the SLU’s 15th season.

Dan Rommel Riopay also serves as the artistic director of Tanghalang SLU, the school’s resident theater company.