Lea Salonga in three acts

MANILA, Philippines - Lea Salonga is waiting in the next room.

It’s a Tuesday, the tail end of a press junket, and Lea, by now the young grand dame of local theater, is waiting for her final interview. Assumption is at the core of an interview and with Lea Salonga — someone whose image and voice you’ve grown up with—it’s inevitable to have preconceptions.

Maybe she’s strict and quick-tempered. She’s so experienced and professional that she must expect utmost perfection from everyone around her. She’s probably nice, albeit professionally so. After growing up in the spotlight, she would probably know her way around an interview, more than any rookie journalist, definitely.

After all, this is Kim, Eponine, Jasmine, Mulan. This is a woman you first encounter in your grade school history book, the woman your teacher trumpeted as one of the country’s best performers and a source of never-ending pride. This is a name you have to memorize in class, a name you remember.

Act One: The Overture

I come upon her sitting gracefully on the chair, opposite an empty chair waiting for me. The picture of poise and professionalism, she greets me with a wide smile and a handshake firm enough to tell you not to mess with her, but soft enough to tell you she once sang as a Disney Princess.

It’s only been a few minutes and I feel like doing something drastic — like dropping an f-bomb — to upset the poised professionalism. The princess of Philippine culture, blessed with a golden voice and lethal charm of Julie Andrews proportions. At 39, she still has the signature Lea Salonga smile — generous and ever youthful. How do you create a connection — essential in any good interview — with a historical figure?

“Gerald Anderson,” she says. “He’s hot. He’s probably young enough to be my son but I think... he’s grown up very, very nicely.”

In the middle of trading stories pre-interview, she drops the c-bomb (the cougar bomb), effectively demolishing any hypothetical f-bomb and establishing some q&a rapport.

Later, she will tell me that this is one of the misconceptions about Lea Salonga. “People don’t think... [I can be] jologs. People don’t think I’m crazy,” she explains.

Throw out everything you know about “Lea Salonga,” Lea Salonga begins.

Act Two: Lea Salonga

A professional since seven years old, Ms. Salonga has been doing this, the interview, the PR game of getting your name out, for years. While most journalists stay on the straight and narrow path, some will cross a line, start intrigues and ask rude questions.

“The older I’ve gotten, I’ve realized it’s just another chess piece,” she explains. “You can’t play chess without any one of those pieces. There are 16 pieces on each side and if one is missing then you can’t play. Intrigues are part and parcel of what I do.”

Lea is a professional, an actress of such repute you have to bring your A-game. There will be no intrigues, only questions about passion and philosophy.

Passion is an important element of the Lea Salonga psyche, the thing that drives her and possibly sustains her.

“I don’t think I would’ve been performing this long if I didn’t love it sincerely, to the degree that I do,” she says. “It’s not enough to like it. Dilettantes like things. Professionals love things and I consider myself a professional. I don’t dabble in this. I’m immersed in this.

Immersion in theater, of course, demands a lifestyle change so disciplined, it’s almost monastic. “I pride myself in the fact that in the six months tour of Cinderella, I didn’t take one show off,” she says.

It is this discipline that has effectively kept her in the headlines for the better part of the last 20 or so years. There’s been Miss Saigon, PLDT’s Tagumay Natin Lahat, roles in a Disney movie or two, a Tony Award, Broadway plays, West End plays, a marriage, success, and Bayan Ko.

In a way, she is the country’s, everyone’s daughter, or sister, or tita. When we were mourning, she punctuated the life of a hero with a triumphant send-off (Bayan Ko). When we were with our family, enjoying some of the best family entertainment has to offer, she appealed to us with shiny, shimmery splendor.

This month, Lea takes center stage in the local production of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats. The show runs from July 24 to August 15 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo. In yet another milestone, she is the first Asian Grizabella.

Act Three: The Denouement

Today, she’s 39 and she seems to think the end is near. “We need a new crop of leading ladies and leading men,” she says. “I can’t be an ingenue forever and I wouldn’t want to be.”

It’s a surprising sentiment, coming from someone who still has as much fame and cache as Lea Salonga, but all the more, a graceful, generous one, as befits her bearing.

She wants a new crop of artists, more talented than her generation. “You’d better be more talented than us or I’d be very disappointed,” she says half-jokingly. “You’d better be 10x more talented than we ever were, then I’d feel happy and proud because I’d feel like I would have left a legacy behind.”

But what legacy is there left to ponder, for a 39-year-old already so much a part of our culture, a part of Philippine history so concrete she’s in our history books?

“I don’t know where you go from there,” she says plainly. “To create more history, I guess? Build more on what you’ve already accomplished?”

She chews on this for a minute or so and then throws it out. “I just hope to have more opportunities to do it,” she says. “From here on in, that’s really all I can really wish for. There are a lot of actors who wish there was a next play, a next musical. As an actor I guess that’s all I can wish for, the next role, the next opportunity.”

“The goal was to do what I love to do and hopefully to make a living at it and secure and get some savings and live a nice life. I never thought I’d end up in somebody’s Araling Panlipunan book. It’s pretty awesome, if you think about it.”

With that, we exchange pleasantries and say goodbye. And as easy as she put on her “Professional Lea” hat, she takes it off and becomes Lea. “I get to go home now and see my kid,” she exclaims.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is presented by LunchBox Theatrical Productions, David Atkins Enterprises and Concertus, in association with The Really Useful Company and Citi. Tickets are available at all Ticketworld outlets, selected National Book Store branches, Robinsons Department Stores, and Ayala Center and TriNoma cinema booths. Tickets are priced from P750 to P7,000. Senior citizens enjoy 20% discount, while students get 10%. Groups of more than 30 get a 10% discount.