Photographs courtesy by Nina Jazmin
It was my first time to watch a monodrama and I’m glad I did say yes to my friend’s invite for Monodrama Manila in February.
After grabbing seats and the proverbial speeches and opening remarks (which were short thankfully), the first of the two featured monodrama started.
Skyx Labastilla opened Monodrama Manila at Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Huseng Batute with Queen Kong. Labastilla owned the stage from the moment she stepped in. I was glued and she captured me. Well, maybe because it was my first time and I wanted to savor every scene and every word. She changed from character to character to character. Her voice pierced through every tissue of my ear which is a good thing because I fully understood every word she said…but then, about 50 percent of the dialogue is Visayan. Nevertheless, she was able to make me understand the predicament of an overseas Filipino worker who had to deal with her husband’s philandering and her children’s caprices for material wealth.
Queen Kong was written by Fray Paolo Maria Diosdado Casurao Y Granados of the Institute of Drama for the Development of Peoples.
The second monodrama was Antigone and was presented by acclaimed Lithuanian theater actor Birute Mar. She also wrote the script and directed it. Sans language barrier, Mar did not only own the stage but she owned me. Unfortunately, the act was in Lithuanian which according to the synopsis given before the program said is one of the oldest (living) Indoeuropean languages so there’s no way I could ever understand what she’s saying. Epic sadness.
Just when my mind would go astray, Mar would recapture my attention with her powerful delivery of lines. I’m also amazed at the different “eerie, dark, and chilling” background screen images. Sometimes, the screen images stole the show from Mar, well at least for me. I also had a hard time determining if Mar had already shifted to the different (six) characters but that was easily solved when she changed the timbre of her voice.
“Antigone is a monoperformance based on the classical Ancient tragedy of Sophocles.”
That first taste of watching monodrama made me yearn for more and I hope the International Theater Institute Monodrama Forum will stage more of this in the future.
