Tony Mabesa: A Lifetime Onstage

Antonio O. Mabesa’s acting career, and his lifelong love affair with acting, began at a very early age.

"I remember, in my school in Laguna, back before the war, I would pretend to be sick. When my teachers would send me to the school infirmary, I’d use that chance to sneak out of the school to watch the film crews shooting on Mt. Makiling," he recalls. "The area was very scenic, so there would be a lot of people shooting every now and then. I was so much into movies, I’d stand in front of the mirror at home and ask, ‘Can I be an artista?’ But really, I wasn’t gwapo enough to be in films!"

Tony Mabesa, now at a lively 71 with a deep-throated laugh and a head full of stories, is an icon in Philippine theater and cinema. He is one of the pioneers of modern theater in the country, the founder of Dulaang UP in the University of the Philippines, and has been the mentor of hundreds of Filipino students of film and theater. "Sir Tony," he is universally called around the U.P. campus in Diliman, where he regularly walks his beloved chowchow, Shira ("that dog is more famous around here than I am!" he quips).

Today, he is in the Wilfredo Guerrero Theater in Diliman, overseeing a rehearsal of Dulaang UP’s Hamlet: Redux, and regaling us with stories about growing up and wanting to be in theater:

"Of course, like every child, I was asked to sing, or recite a poem, when visitors came to our house. I got serious about performing, I think, when I was in first grade. We had a contestant in a school contest who had to recite a poem, but his barong didn’t look nice. Since I was his size, the teacher asked me to take off my barong and let him wear it for the contest. I did it, but it didn’t sit well with me. I promised myself then: ‘Next time, I’ll do the performance myself, so no one will have to take my clothes!’"

His mother took him to movies, when he was older, to cinemas in Escolta, which, during the Occupation, were later converted into venues for stage shows, when Hollywood films were banned. There, he got his first taste of theater, and it drew him in. It was a fascination that would last his entire life.

He took part in plays in high school, and remembers the first play he ever directed. "Our teacher had a boyfriend, so she spent more time with him than with the play. She told me, ‘Just take over the reheasals,’ and I did, and that was my directorial debut. Because may manliligaw siya.

"Years later, the U.P. Dramatic Club came to Los Baños to perform. When I was watching them, I decided: when I go to college, I want to go to Diliman, and be part of that."

Mabesa’s father, a scientist for the Bureau of Forestry and Dean of the School of Forestry in Los Baños, had reservations about young Tony’s passion for theater. At his urging, Mabesa took up a Pre-Med course instead of the English course that he originally wanted.

"He was a man of science, my father," Mabesa says, "and very practical. He told me, ‘You can’t support a family with an English major,’ and he was concerned that theater was being a distraction from my studies."

So the dutiful son took his Pre-Med. "But I also joined the Dramatic Club under [the late Philippine National Artist Wilfredo Maria] Guerrero, where I auditioned and landed a role in the play Waiting for Lefty. I remember it very well. My role was ‘Man in the Audience Five.’ During the play I was supposed to sit right there," he motions to an empty seat in a row in front, "and stand up and deliver two or three lines. I might have been a big man in Los Baños, but it was very different in Diliman," he laughs. "But I didn’t mind, because at least I was in the Dramatics Club like I wanted."

More roles followed, but after his first two years in college, he realized that his grades weren’t high enough for the exacting standards of the College of Medicine, so he returned to Laguna in 1954 to finish a course in Agriculture. But even there, he was involved in theater, where he was invited to direct Detective Story, his first real directorial role. He worked as both actor and director, and it was at that time that Tony’s father began to come around.

"The Los Baños of my youth was a very small community," says Mabesa. "Everyone knew about everyone. Soon my father was having people congratulate him for some of my plays, like West Side Story, telling him ‘Your son is so good!’ and then he knew that I was really doing what I loved. When I graduated from college, and told him about my plans to study theater in the U.S., he gave me what financial support he could give. Really, he just gave up trying to change my mind," he laughs.

"That’s what I tell my students when they tell me their parents are against their acting: ‘If you love what you’re doing, and you just keep doing it, they’ll catch on. They’ll give up also.’"

Accepted at the University of California at Los Angeles on a tuition scholarship, Tony found himself in an exciting new world. "You have to realize that there was practically no formal theater training in the Philippines at that time. What we knew, we learned from watching movies, or reading theater arts books and magazines. I had tried to read as much as I could, but I wanted to really see it for myself, in the U.S. So I worked my way through college, I worked in the Ticketing Office of UCLA for 20 hours a week while I was a student. I didn’t mind, because I was just so hungry– hungry for all that stuff I was learning. And I knew, even then, that I was going to return to the Philippines, and teach everyone what I learned."

For twelve long years, Tony Mabesa immersed himself in his craft. He took a Master of Education in Delaware, studied Asian Theater in the University of Hawaii, and backpacked through Europe to watch the best theater companies stage performances.

"We weren’t systematic in Philippine theaters back then," remembers Mabesa. "Wilfredo, when he directed, would be there, at stage left, keeping busy with the crew. And we had no stage managers, no one to take our blocking! We were just getting along by feel. School of hard knocks talaga.

"But when I got back from the States, and got a job in U.P. Diliman’s Department of Speech Communications and Theater Arts. There was wasn’t a lot for me to do–people didn’t know me, I’d been gone too long. I spent my time spearheading the development of the curriculum. I wanted to do Shakespeare, which, at the time, had never been done before in U.P.!"

Wanting to do something big with what he had been learning for the past dozen years, he approached the Chairman, who gave him a P5,000 budget, and a chance to produce his own plays. In1976, the Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, the production arm of the Department, was born.

"I didn’t want it to revolve around me, so we invited guest directors. We staged Shakespeare, in Filipino. I worked with so many students and directors. One thing that came from that was that eventually, my students were writing and directing on their own, some of them in cinema. Some wrote roles for me in their movies, and invited me along. So I finally got to fulfill my dreams of being an artista," he says, laughing. "My first role was in a movie called Bawal na Pag-Ibig." Mabesa says the title with a dramatic whisper, like a cinematic narrator. "It was with Rico J. Puno and Alma Moreno, and Behn Cervantez," he laughs as he reminisces, with the child-like glee of the six year-old who wanted to be a movie star. "Doing movies is just so much fun."

"It’s a different discipline, shooting for movies and TV. One of the first things you have to learn is to wait. You could easily wait six or eight hours before you go on-camera, but every time that happens, I remember a quote from Peter O’Toole: ‘I get paid to wait. I act for free.’

"And the cinema is very egalitarian," he continues. "Theater, whether we like it or not, has always had a certain elitism, because the audience is smaller. But everyone loves the cinema. I’m such an unabashed fan. When I was acting with Rosa Rosal in Vietnam Rose, I was telling her, ‘I watched you in Anak Dalita! I’m a huge fan!’ and she was laughing."

Over the years, Mabesa has appeared in movies by Lino Brocka and Joel Lamangan, taken roles in movies like Mano Po and Jose Rizal, and appeared in a number of drama series on TV ("some people, to this day, call me Don Manolo, from Villa Quintana!"). "I always seem to get priestly roles," he observes, laughing. "Do I look holy to you?"

When asked how long he thinks theater will be around in the Philippines, he says, "You know, I’ve heard that question so many times over the years. I heard it when vaudeville was popular: Theater is dying. I heard it when movies, and then television, came out: Theater’s days are numbered. But we’re still here. In my day, there were about four theater groups in Manila. These days, you could watch four performances in a weekend, if you knew where to go. There is a resiliency in theater that means that it will always be there."

To date, Tony Mabesa has appeared in more than thirty movies, been directing plays for fifty years, appeared in over 140 plays all over the world.

After officially retiring two years ago, the University of the Philippines gave him the title of professor emeritus, and he still prduces at least one play each year with Dulaang UP. Last year, he founded the Angeles University Foundation Repertory Theater, and still goes all the way to Pampanga two or three times a week to help out there. These days, he’s busy filming Mano Po 5.

Has he considered slowing down? "I’m already doing it," he says, smiling. "This is already a change of pace. I’m blessed that at 71 I can still do all that I can. And I plan to be around for as long as anyone wants me."

And, fortunately for this generation’s young actors and those of the next, Sir Tony possesses a resiliency much like that of the craft that he dearly loves.

Hamlet: Redux runs until December 10, 2006 at the Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero Theater in UP Diliman. For more information, call Dulaang UP at tel. 920-5301 local 6441 or  0927.2464946.