From Sole to Spirit

It’s been said that "an actor’s talent starts from the soles of his feet".

We set foot on Makiling with very little knowledge of acting, or theater in general. But as students of the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA), the only specialized school in Asia that combines arts and general education, we had to prove ourselves worthy of the label "Iskolar ng Bayan".

The PHSA was established in 1977 by then First Lady Imelda R. Marcos and Dr. Onofre Pagsanghan to serve as training ground for exceptionally-talented students in the fields of music, dance, theater and visual arts. Later on, a program for creative writing was added to accommodate gifted young writers in the country.

Studying at PHSA can be more difficult than studying in a regular high school. A normal school day at PHSA is divided into the General Education classes, which we take in the mornings, and the Arts classes in the afternoons. If there are upcoming productions or performances, the evenings are spent rehearsing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun, because what we do is fun!

We feel lucky to be learning from fine mentors–graduates of theater from the University of the Philippines as well as seasoned stage actors.

Herbert Go, Tanghalang Pilipino’s associate artistic director, handles improvisational theater for freshmen and directing for 3rd year students. The two classes are combined in a four-hour session every Monday, which makes it convenient for juniors to use the freshmen as their actors for the assigned scene studies.

Directing is not an easy thing to do. However, because Sir Herbie is a director himself, he is able to meticulously guide us through the difficult process that a director undergoes everytime a production is mounted. He helps us make hunches, brainstorm, eliminate unnecessary ideas and highlight the strengths of the material that we are assigned to direct. One important thing that we learned in this class is that simplicity is such a complicated thing to achieve. And sometimes, giving too much emphasis on details can be very harmful to the production.

Joy Paginado teaches Philippine, Asian and western theater histories, as well as production methods. Our theater history classes made us appreciate the kind of theater other countries have and the kind of plays that they do. Words and concepts like tragedy, comedy, farce, melodrama, proscenium, thrust, arena staging, deus ex machina, verisimilitude, mudra and mie have been made familiar to us. She introduced us to plays by Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, Nick Joaquin, Severino Montano, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller, Kalidasa, Shakespeare, even Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes!

Mailes Kanapi and Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino handle the main core of the theater program: the acting class. Ms. Mailes teaches Beginning Acting for 1st and 2nd year students, while Ms. Shamaine supervises the Intermediate Acting class for 3rd and 4th year students. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, the entire afternoon is devoted to theater exercises and improvisations while learning new insights into the craft of acting. At the same time, we get to release all the stress and strains through fun theater games and insightful discussions on analyzing scripts, understanding subtext and determining the intentions of the character.

Our acting class contains so many fun-filled activities that one would think we are just fooling around and having fun instead of having a proper class. And that is how we best describe theater in Makiling: Fun! We have so much fun learning new things that the difficult job of memorizing lines, blocking a scene and mounting a production never becomes a reason for us not to like what we do. In fact, performing in a play–and getting the lead role–is always the most awaited moment in any PHSA theater arts student’s life. As there are only 23 theater majors–9 seniors, 4 juniors, 4 sophomores and 6 freshmen–the pressure is strong. We have to prove ourselves as worthy scholars; thus, competition cannot be avoided. But because our teachers have instilled in us the value of working as an ensemble, our bond as a group is solid. We guide and support each other since all we have is one another.

This year, our bond shall once more be put to a test as we make our dreams come true by starring in, directing and mounting our grand recital production. We will showcase our brilliant thespic skills–the product of four long years of hard work and discipline–in two Filipino translations by renowned English and Czech playwrights.

Ang Unos is Rody Vera’s translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Magic, mystery and adventure fill this enduring tale of forgiveness and healing of old wounds. R.U.R. is a translation by the late Rogelio Sicat of Karel Capek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, the play that first used the word "robot" in the 1920s. It is a sci-fi play about the tragedy of creating synthetic life.

The two plays will be presented in repertory at the Tanghalang Huseng Batute (CCP Studio Theater) on March 6 to 9. Showtime is 7 pm with matinees on March 8 and 9.

As these productions cap the end of our high school education at PHSA, it also marks our last year in the school’s Theater Arts program–a year filled with so many pleasant memories, laced with hilariously embarrasing boo-boos on stage, and yet packed with so much information to last us a lifetime.

We mentioned at the start that an actor’s talent begins at the soles of his feet. Here in Makiling, it ends in a spirit that can vault beyond the stars.

We guess that’s what theater, Makiling style, really is.