Bart Guingona and JC Santos mark their return to the stage in Red, the highly acclaimed two-character play. While both actors have been visible on film and TV they’ve been raring to return to their acting roots, the theater. (Red runs June 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, and 18 at PETA Theater Center, 5 Eymard Drive, New Manila, Quezon City.)
Guingona starred in and directed Red 10 years ago. “And it’s been six years seen I’ve been on the stage,” he tells TheDiarist.ph. “JC has been wanting to do a play again and urged me to produce Red. He’s absolutely right for the part he wanted. I laughed and I said, ‘Oo nga naman, why not!’”
The two met years ago, became good buddies and “almost like brothers” doing the teleserye Dirty Linen. They’ve been planning Red this since the pandemic ended but they just couldn’t find the time to begin rehearsals and choose playdates.
“Right now I’m acting in three teleseryes,” says Guingona. “I wake up in the morning and I have to check my schedule to find out which show am I taping today. And where am I supposed to go, is it Antipolo or Marikina? So what JC and I did initially was we’d meet for dinner once a week and study the play. When we finally started rehearsing, we had already memorized all our lines.”
Written by John Logan, Red is set in late 1950s New York in the studio of American abstract painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Rothko (Guingona) is lamenting the emergence of “pop art.” Ken (JC Santos), Rothko’s fictional assistant, defends the likes of Andy Warhol to his employer. It’s enough for his boss to start a tirade, even as he accepts a commission to paint a mural for a chic New York restaurant. Ken starts calling him a sellout. Thus the heated debate begins.
Red was inspired by a book about Rothko, The Artist’s Reality, edited by his son, Christopher Rothko. The play opened in London in 2009 with Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne. The production moved to New York in 2010 with the same actors. It collected six Tony Awards including Best Play for John Logan, and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Eddie Redmayne.
Co-stars and close buddies Santos and Guingona present the poster of the play to the media.
It was in 2010 when Guingona first encountered Red. “I didn’t see the original production, but I got to read it. I was thinking; I don’t know if I am ready for this. But three years later, I read it again and I decided, kaya ko na ito.”
Guingona is familiar with Mark Rothko’s works but at the time he first staged the play, he preferred the art of Jackson Pollock. “For me he (Pollock) was easier to understand. But now, Rothko, I love more because his works require more from the viewer. You really need to commit to his art,” he says.
He explains that painters like Rothko were in excellent form when they were expressing themselves, being true to themselves. “But the moment they had commercial success, they started to lose their identity. Suddenly, their lives became a contradiction between commerce and integrity.”
As for the theater, Guingona doesn’t think it’s beneath an artist to do commercial work. “Commerce is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the bigger dichotomy is good theater versus bad theater. It doesn’t matter if it’s a musical or if it’s commercial. Basta it’s good.”
Now pushing 60, Guingona was as gregarious as ever at the play’s press launch. He turned himself into the bitter old man when he got into character to perform an excerpt. He’s been a familiar face to theater lovers, appearing in the productions of Repertory Philippines. He then founded his own company and produced plays with thought-provoking themes, among them, David Mamet’s OIleana. He did the lead role, a university professor accused of sexual harassment.
“Like Red, Oleanna is a two-handed play. Two-character plays are cheaper to produce and less complicated to stage. But everything rests on the shoulders of the two actors who must hold the attention of the audience for 90-minutes. It’s really a challenge,” he points out.
“But since I’m also directing, I can always tell if a scene we’re rehearsing isn’t working. At times I might tell an actor if he’s coming on too strong. I also have an associate director who acts as our third eye. He helps in policing us,” he says.
JC Santos is an artist with no qualms about baring himself naked—both emotionally and physically—onstage. His first major screen role was in the homoerotic indie film version of Esprit de Corps. In 2016, he hit the mainstream with a splash, in his first big TV role in Till I Met You. He garnered almost as much attention as his popular costars, James Reid and Nadine Lustre.
Since then he’s appeared on the small screen and some of Star Cinema’s saccharine romcoms. Before the pandemic, he was cast in the lead of Tanghalang Pilipino’s musical version of the Ilocano epic, Lam-ang. He’s hailed as a screen heartthrob yet he didn’t present that image at the Red press launch. Except for the Harley Davidson motorcycle he arrived in, he was without the trappings stardom—no entourage and no sunglasses. He likes to remind everyone that he is first and foremost a theater actor. “Hindi ko kasi culture ang film and TV,” he explains.
His enthusiasm for Red was heightened by the fact that Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne had starred in it. “I wanted to do my own interpretation of Ken. I expected to make a lot of mistakes during rehearsals. Kuya Bart has done the play so he knows what’s right for my part. When we’d meet, we ‘d read through the play and each time, we gave varying interpretations. We’d discuss new ideas on how to play a particular scene. Maganda ang collaboration,” he said.
Working like a real painter was one of the hurdles Santos faced. “We would be painting on the stage and it has to look convincing and innate,” he said.
Santos has worked with the legends of Philippine theater, some of whom approximate Rothko’s temperament and artistic philosophy. “I acted in Dulaang UP’s plays and I would say Tony Mabesa is my Mark Rothko,” he says. “He was my mentor. He could be a terror but he taught me to be a disciplined actor. I made sure I knew my lines and I’d arrive on time, para hindi ako mapagalitan. Because of his training, I’m grateful to him, and also to Anton Juan and Alex Cortez.”
He says it’s only natural for the likes of Rothko or Mabesa to be upset by transitions. “Aging is cruel. Now there’s an even younger generation that’s about to take over my generation. I don’t want things to change but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a cruel world,” he said.
Having seen Guingona and Santos do an excerpt from the play, we’re convinced it will take much longer for younger generations to take over from these two thespians. Red is meant for an intimate venue. In the small bistro where the press launch was held, the audience could catch the nuances. We feared the performance might be diluted in a large setting like the PETA Theater, where it’s slated to run starting June 9.
We expressed our reservations about this to Guingona. His response was simple yet firm, in a mockingly clipped and theatrical voice: “Wait …and … see!”
JC Santos plays the fictional assistant of the late artist Mark Rothko played by Bart Guingona.
The Necessary Theater’s production of Red runs June 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, and 18 with matinee and evening performances on Saturdays and Sundays at the PETA Theater Center, 5 Eymard Drive, New Manila, Quezon City.
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