Audie Gemora: Serving in the theater of God

It’s hard to imagine articulate and confident Audie Gemora ever being a misfit. During recess at the International School, the young loner would escape to the library where a laudable diligence could mask his isolation. Only Gemora didn’t really go there to study–he went because he didn’t have any friends in school. Tired of being unpopular, he accepted a teacher’s invitation to join the school production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, where he played the vaguely sinister ranch hand, Jud Fry.

"I was like a duck in water," says Gemora, who inexorably became Drama Club President. "It was a complete transformation for me. I played the contravida. By the end of the run of that play, I had become one of the more popular kids in school! All the kids that did not want to associate with me were all of a sudden moseying up. I found my value and my aptitude."

The rest, as they say, is history, albeit a convoluted one. After high school, Gemora auditioned at Repertory Philippines. He got in, no sweat. The nascent talent that endowed him with self-worth in junior high would also give him direction in college. He dropped out of a UST architectural course after one semester and took up Business in La Salle. "After another year of trying to get through my Accounting, I decided to go with something complementary and took up Communication Arts," he recounts.

After starring in numerous Repertory productions, Gemora took up Filmmaking at NYU, persuaded by Rep colleagues that further studies would serve him in good stead in the theater company’s forthcoming film department. Three years later, Gemora returned, armed with the degree for a film department that was no longer in the pipeline but was now merely a pipe dream. He was in limbo.

"I was floating around for a long time. I didn’t want to go back to Rep after so long and do the same things again. A lot of my friends had become pop artists–Raymond Lauchengco and Lea Salonga. My friend Freddie Santos was already the top concert director. I asked how to get into this. It seemed like a lot of people were having fun–a whole new generation of artists like Martin, Gary and Zsa Zsa bloomed over the three years I was gone. When I left there was hardly anything you could call opm. When I came back, there was a whole opm world in the concert scene and it was thriving and exciting. I was very drawn to it."

He signed up with Angeli Valenciano’s Genesis Entertainment, challenging her to transform him into a pop star. "It threw her off completely," he laughs. "She said she would manage me if I stayed a theater person because she used to watch my plays. She asked me if I really wanted to go into concerts since I was AB and didn’t speak Tagalog."

Valenciano would learn what many have since also accepted–a resolute Gemora is an irresistible force. Against her better judgment, he landed hosting jobs and even cut a successful album. But a creeping loneliness, its first twinges already felt while he was still performing for Rep, was becoming more oppressive. The bright lights, standing ovations and rave reviews had always given Gemora a shot of adrenalin. But the high was increasingly fleeting.

"You were in such a wonderful position where people admire you and yet you’re broken inside. After you take your bow, you go home and it’s just as empty as it was when it all began. It was so meaningless," says Gemora.

The emptiness was apparently shared by some of his peers. One after the other, his friends such as Freddie Santos, Mari and Enchang KAIMo and Luna Inoxian became Born Again Christians. Gemora’s soul was in turmoil and the newfound peace experienced by his friends attracted him. "They sort of drew me in. I was really searching and was very desperate at that point. We had a spiritual renewal of sorts and it was a life-changing experience for all of us."

Brimming with gratitude, the talented converts could barely wait to share their gifts. It was Santos who first had a vision of forming a "Theater for God". Santos, Gemora, the KAIMos, GMA 7’s Butch Jimenez, Gina Alajar, Ray-ann Fuentes, Carla Martinez, Carlo Orosa–there were others in the nebulous group–founded Trumpets, Inc. in 1987. Gemora is currently its president.

He recalls, "We didn’t know what ‘Theater for God’ meant. Up to that time, religious plays were so boring–they were either senakulos or these horrible Christian cantatas from abroad, so staid and predictable. When Trumpets did Joseph the Dreamer and First Name, we put in all the elements we knew–Broadway and pop music. The music to First Name was written by Gary Valenciano and choreographed in a hiphop way, which had never been done before in theater. We sort of revolutionized theater, in a sense."

Belittled at the start for catering to a small Christian niche market, Trumpets is now regarded–not without some consternation–as a major force by the more established theater groups. It was easily dismissed during its first years as its founders struggled to come up with original material. For some seven years, Trumpets was considered a one-production wonder, churning out one Joseph the Dreamer performance after the other. Admittedly uplifting, the play written and directed by Santos was nonetheless beginning to wear thin.

"We have to write our own stuff after all because there’s nothing out there, unlike Repertory, which can import all these Broadway and West End plays," explains Gemora. "Nothing out there is acceptable–it’s not entertaining enough, too religious, or too God-in-your-face and people don’t like that. So we have to create entertaining vehicles that somehow include Gospel messages and have an eternal impact. It takes three years to write a musical. It’s a life process for a lot of writers. Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, they were very prolific but only wrote about seven or eight musicals. It’s not like writing a sitcom."

The Little Mermaid and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe gave the theater company the variety it sorely lacked, but not after giving its creative minds throbbing migraines. "The Little Mermaid was a seed of an idea that a friend gave me and I pushed for it. Nobody wanted to do it in this company. Every step of the way I was met with resistance. They didn’t see the message, which was the love of dying for somebody else. And for people to applaud it and feel changed…performing can’t beat that feeling," says Gemora.

It took Trumpets a full year to gain the approval of CS Lewis’s Estate for JAIMe del Mundo and Luna Inoxian’s version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and another year to convince Douglas Gresham–author, preacher, speaker, broadcaster, CS Lewis’s stepson and artistic advisor of the estate–to see the play.

Says Gemora, "By the second run, he came, probably not wholeheartedly as he was on his way to visit his daughter in Australia and decided to pass by. We gave him a free ticket and arranged for a hotel. He was floored! He was so impressed he watched it again after leaving Australia. Then he watched it a third time with his wife Merrie after he returned home to Ireland. He even paid for his own trip."

Gresham has since become the most relentless advocate of the Trumpets’ version of his stepfather’s play, championing its placement abroad. There are legal impediments, though, as Paramount has purchased the five-year US rights to the play while the London rights have been assigned to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Gresham has seen the RSC’s production and was hardly awestruck. Risking the ire of the artistic director of the 123-year-old company, Gresham suggested they bring the Philippine production over. "He’s bringing some British producers to come see it," says Gemora. "It’s just a matter of seeing is believing."

Trumpets’ triumphs are not limited to its stage productions, which earn enough for them to run the organization. Playshop, a theater workshop for children, is an enormous success. Parents are impressed by the pedigree of the mentors and mollified by the group’s Christian leanings (in some workshops, tales abound of romantic interludes between students, same sex or otherwise).

"Playshop is the most fulfilling for me, to see a whole generation of performers come up, whether they take it on as a profession or not. To know that we have a hand in their coming to discover their talents and know God in the process is absolutely fulfilling, more fulfilling than a performance. It started in 1993 but we haven’t even begun! Our curriculum keeps on getting bigger and bigger. In fact, the competition keeps on following our curriculum," says Gemora.

The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) is currently using Trumpets as a model of a successful theater group, although perhaps the venerable management experts are scratching their heads at the group’s unorthodox ways. "After we incorporated Trumpets, we took in members, mostly actors but also some of our first workshop graduates. If they get voted in, they become board members. Trumpets therefore is a ministry. Nobody owns it–we all do this voluntarily. The founders were the incorporators. We vote in a board every two years and it’s a working board. We don’t get paid. Everything we earn from our workshops and plays goes back to the development of new material. Being in the mall is also very expensive. The only people who get paid are our staff and the actors as they work. One of our visions was to provide work for Christian artists," says Gemora.

Because Trumpets mounts just one big play a year, many members were forced to seek employment elsewhere. They ended up longing for the special atmosphere of Trumpets. "We’re like a family here and treat each other with great, great respect," he says. "We’re not perfect and we have a lot of problems but everything is resolved in a manner that’s very Christian. Once you taste what it’s like to perform with an eternal objective, iba na."

To counter this seasonal migration, Gemora and Butch Jimenez founded Stages, an events management company that caters mostly to blue chip corporations, whether it’s for a concert on the beach, a luncheon at the Palace grounds for a visiting head of state, a full-length musical, or an interoffice sportsfest. Gemora also dreams of setting up a School for the Performing Arts. "We need to save up for that. We need to look for a space to buy–we can’t be in the mall forever. I’m praying for a building. Can you imagine a school for the arts, something as wonderful as that?" he gushes.

Gemora’s motives have been questioned and he has been accused of self-aggrandizement. "One of the more painful things thrown at me is that I’m building my own kingdom. No I’m not! This is such a selfless thing that I’m doing. That’s the pain sometimes of seeing things before everyone else sees it. Sometimes people get myopic and that’s part of the stress of being a leader. I guess that’s just between God and me," he says philosophically, without any trace of conceit.

Trumpets’ guiding principles, as espoused by Gemora, may force even the most enlightened AIM professors into some serious re-thinking of their treasured management dogmas. "The whole purpose of secular entertainment was the art itself. In Christian entertainment, it’s just the means. Our end is to bring the Gospel to people. In secular entertainment, the artist is immortalized. In Christian entertainment, all glory goes to God. When you plug into the source, you never run out of current. In secular entertainment, whoever was the most talented was celebrated. In Christian entertainment, we are like servants. The first will be last."

Trumpets will re-stage "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" from August 2 to September 15 at the Meralco Theater (Ortigas Avenue, Pasig). For details, call Trumpets at tel. 633-4387.