Fifteen shows, over a span of four days. This year marked the 19th iteration of the Virgin Labfest (VLF), an annual festival that showcases untried, untested and unstaged plays. VLF19 is themed “PINTOG,” which means to swell or burst.

As usual, VLF19 has five sets, consisting of three one-act plays. One set, Set E, contains the three revisited plays from last year’s VLF18: HITIK. Marco Viaña and Tess Jamias are the festival’s artistic co-directors. Set descriptions were lifted from Jamias’s dramaturgical notes.

So, here it goes.

For these reviews, I shall go through each set, and write down my thoughts and comments for each play in no more than 280 characters–the length of a tweet! To aid readers, I added keywords and star ratings (over five).

Set A: Dilema

Hard decisions … to stay on track or to set off to another trajectory.

Vengeance of the Gods

Playwright: Hans Pieter Arao

Director: Hazel Gutierez-Marges

The stage is bare. Arguably, set design really revolved around the light and sound designs. The play fundamentally mischaracterizes the nature of public interest lawyering. You don’t simply go to the community and urge them to be your clients. You live with them, you integrate with them.

Keywords: Minamata disease, countryside, progress

⭐️

Ningas

Playwright: Lino Balmes

Director: BJ Borja

I apologize if it’s a skill issue. I did not get the play’s message. In the postmortem, though, the play revolved around the tension of having a child or not. Saving grace: Possibly one of the best set designs–the realistic rain saved the production!

Keywords: fire station, traditional family, children

⭐️⭐️

Love on the Brain

Playwright: Rick Patriarca

Director: John Mark Yap

The set’s saving grace. The play masterfully depicts hard realities within the LGBTQ+ community that the stigma of HIV/AIDS remains a thing. And when you’re a PLHIV in a relationship with a social media influencer … expect things to be even more difficult.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, queer relationships, stigma

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set B: Bingit

Traversing the borderlines of legality, morality, and sanity.

Sentenaryo

Playwright: Herlyn Alegre

Director: Ian Segarra

Ito ang paborito ko sa VLF19. The audience laughed the hardest during this play, because why not? It’s not everyday that you see a dying old man slide so naturally off a rocking chair as the government scrimps his well-deserved P100,000 cash gift. It’s not everyday that the issues surrounding senior citizens are tackled in theater.

Keywords: DSWD, death, financial problems

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Divine Family

Playwright: Dip Mariposque

Director: Roobak Valle

The COVID-19 pandemic brought families together. That’s not necessarily a good thing–just like in this play. The play’s absurdity–a triplet-pregnant-mother, a sex scandal-riddled queer son, an ex-convict daughter–delivers stinging social realities to the audience who laughed hard until the end.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, Filipino family, social realities

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Identité

Playwright: Jhudiel Claire Sosa

Director: Meann Espinosa

Nakakita ka na ba ng sandosenang dildo at vibrator sa entablado? Pa’no kung mahuli ng iyong conservative nanay ang iyong mga sex toy? The play reframes the discourse surrounding female masturbation–it becomes a way to reclaim one’s bodily autonomy.

Keywords: vagina, female pleasure, taboo

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set C: PuTim

Life choices are seldom clear and simple, never conveniently defined as white (puti) or black (itim) but existing in gray areas (PuTim).

Pagkapit sa Hangin

Playwright: Joshua Lim So

Director: José Estrella

The play depicts the hard–but often overlooked and ignored–decisions made by health care workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Confronted with scant resources, doctors are often forced to choose who lives and who dies. That shouldn’t have been the case–and in this point, I think, the play failed to hold the powers-that-be accountable.

Keywords: medical ethics, moral dilemma, COVID-19

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lipistik at Pulbura

Playwright: Ara Jenika Vinzon

Director: Charles Yee

The problem with depicting esoteric historical narratives is that the audience will rarely appreciate them at first glance. And that is the problem with this play. The 20 minutes or so passed by rather quickly. While the story attempted to interrogate the intersection of literature and propaganda, that was the play’s mere sidebar.

Keywords: World War II, Philippine literature, resistance

⭐️

The Foxtrot

Playwright: Chesie Galvez-Cariño

Director: Paul Morales

The play’s rendition of Dilaw’s “Uhaw” was already enough to make the entire play interesting. Perfecting it were a mirrorball, and the impeccable performance of JC Santos and Liesl Batucan-del Rosario. Relationships, it seem, are just as complex as the various ballroom dances. But the first requisite remains: You must be one the same pace and page.

Keywords: relationships, age disparity, dance

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set D: Di-Tiyak

Navigating the ambiguities of relationships, truth and memory.

Si Hesus Na’a sa US

Playwright: Neil Azcuna

Director: Phil Noble

Though the play may have been static, the production maximized the use of a video projector to represent Luna and Marlon’s awkward trip to NAIA. Confronted between leaving for greener pastures (supposedly) and living with her no-good- husband, Luna made the right choice. For the play, neither an AFAM nor a lowly taxi driver will save a poverty-stricken woman.

Keywords: migration, AFAM, Filipino families

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ang Munting Liwanag sa Madilim na Sulok ng Isang Serbeserya sa Maynila

Playwright: Dustin Celerino

Director: Toni Go-Yadao

Often, we are confronted whether sex work is work. This play went beyond that. While it presented an alternative view of sex work–that is, women sex workers provide “salvation” to empty men, it fails to interrogate why sex work remains an imperative for many. It didn’t glorify sex work, but it remains dehumanizing. Even Bea knows that.

Keywords: psychology, sex work, relationships

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sa Babaeng Lahat

Playwright: Elise Santos

Director: Caisa Borromeo

Mary conceived without sin, and Marie tried to emulate that–perhaps too realistically. I think what made this play great is not its story nor its execution–both are, in itself, already immaculate. The entire storytelling was simple and genuine, and those were enough. This play deserves to be revisited in VLF20.

Keywords: Catholic all-girls school, ideological state apparatus, sex education

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set E (Revisited): Sagad

Plays from VLF18: HITIK that have ripened with age and have been chosen to be revisited.

Dominador Gomez: National Artist

Playwright: Dingdong Novenario

Director: George de Jesus

Buti, pumayag silang isama ‘to sa VLF18/19 at ipalabas sa Cultural Center of the Philippines. Alam kong running (internal) joke ito sa loob ng literary at art circles, pero ang produksyong ito ang unang nagsiwalat ng kalakarang ito. Sana naitawid lang na ipanawagan ang pagkakaroon ng ligtas na espasyo, lalo na sa larang ng sining at panitikan.

Keywords: workshops, cancel culture, predators

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

Room 209

Playwright: Zheg Arban

Director: Delphine Buencamino

The Philippine Military Academy and the country’s military institution is hopelessly irredeemable. There will be no saving grace for a macho-feudal institution, built on institutionalized violence and blind obedience. The military, after all, is an institution designed to kill. I hope the play has made those points more explicitly.

Keywords: macho-feudal, repressive state apparatus, chain of command

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ang Awit ng Dalagang Marmol

Playwright: Andrew Estacio

Director: Nazer Salcedo

I think this play tried to cover a lot of things and in doing so, it failed to weave them more coherently. Juggling the narration of a historical event and introspecting on theater and art production was something that the play struggled to execute.

Keywords: dramaturgy, art production, historical

⭐️⭐️

Update (July 1, 2024): Sa Babaeng Lahat, Identité, and Pagkapit sa Hangin will be revisited for VLF20.

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