(Bobby Garcia, the Filipino theater director and producer who won acclaim here and across the world, passed away December 18, 2024, at 55 years old. His was a relatively short life that left a deep imprint in theater—more than 50 plays and musicals in Canada, across Asia (China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia), especially in the Philippines, where in recent decades, he shook up the scene with award-winning productions under Atlantis Productions, bringing to the local audience a number of global masterpieces. Last October, the critically acclaimed ‘Request sa Radyo’ he directed was staged in Metro Manila.
Bobby Garcia behind the scenes with the theater artists of ‘Request sa Radyo’ (IG thebobbygarciaco) led by Lea Salonga and Dolly de Leon
Below is an unpublished story the author wrote before the pandemic about Atlantis and Bobby Garcia, her friend from Bobby’s youth, to be included in a commemorative book on Atlantis. The book was not published during the pandemic—just as Atlantis ceased its productions— but the author was able to ask the editorial team to retrieve it for publication in TheDiarist.ph. The author is grateful to the editors behind the book.)
2018
It is Saturday, an Edsa-hell day (but what day of the week isn’t Edsa hell?), yet one is determined to take an alternative traffic route to the RCBC building on Ayala Avenue to make it to Atlantis, or to commute all the way to Quezon City where there are other theater venues. Saturday is now theater day.
Since when?
Not even the more assiduous arts reporter would be able to pinpoint the date or year theater became a Saturday activity for many a Metro Manilan, but it is accurate to say that the past decade has seen a dynamic, vibrant theater scene, such that theater-going has become an option to-do for the weekend.
This didn’t happen overnight.
In the ’80s and the ’90s, a Saturday theater day was, if not unthinkable, sheer wishful thinking. Those were the years when not even weekly theater releases or feature stories in our lifestyle sections could pack them in. Trying to develop a theater audience was nothing short of a heroic act on the part of the theater artists and producers. As Lifestyle editor, I became used to the regular newsroom visits of some artists, from the stars to directors (Soxy Topacio and Onofre Pagsanjan, among them), handing out press releases of their theater run. No task, not even messengerial, was too menial for these artists to whom theater was life.
Thank God, we—and many of these artists—lived to see the day when theater has become an exciting weekend habit for a small but growing, discernible, and committed segment of the city population.
Again, since when?
When people—young and old, Filipinos and expats, from the affluent to the lower middle-class—realized that the theater is worth their weekend, that the theater is a fun, enriching, ennobling, thought-provoking, cathartic experience, which could take them away from their harried, mundane existence, and lift them to the heights of imagination and fantasy (In The Heights, Rock of Ages), or pull them down to earth to their angst, fears, and neuroses (Next to Normal, God of Carnage, Fun Home).
In short, when we realized that theater is an experience we simply enjoy (no need for rationalization), and is worth a lot more than the ticket we pay for.
That is what Atlantis has done, though not single-handedly, however. The seeds of Philippine theater were planted by the heroes and heroines of the arts who lived for it, and tirelessly raised funds for it—it was my privilege to have gotten up close and personal with Rolando Tinio and Zeneida Amador—and who bred the generations of artists that would catapult the Filipino artist to the world stage. The Filipino woke up one morning to the news that our very own Lea Salonga, Monique Wilson, Leo Valdez, Pinky Amador, Junix Inocian—among others too many to mention but who are nonetheless etched in the nation’s heart—were the stars of the West End, and in time, the world.
After Miss Saigon’s stellar success, somehow we in media found a growing readership for theater, and theater itself became a source of pride for Filipinos, even if having to sustain it remained a tall order.
To a significant degree, Atlantis has introduced the Filipino audience to a theater-going experience worth paying for, in the manner of Broadway or the West End. In the hands of Atlantis, local theater has ceased to be a charity case or a dole-out. Thanks in part to Atlantis, theater-watching has gone beyond the realm of arts advocacy or political activism, to a highly personal experience that one invests time, money—and passion—in.
It was a girl, barely 10 then, who made me realize this convincingly about Atlantis years ago. My friend and I brought Justine, a Montessori grader then, to The Little Mermaid at Meralco Theater. I watched her as she watched the stage, in awe, consumed, giddy, with sheer happiness. I wanted to see how a child like her, who grew up with the iPad (she knew her dad’s password even before she could read books), animated films and games, would take to the theater—its story put to life, not with digital special effects, but through the sheer human artistry and hard-earned craft of the artists, the director, and in this children’s fare, the production designer.
Not only did Justine enjoy The Little Mermaid immensely, she also asked her mom if she could see it again, this time with her classmates.
There was my concrete proof that Atlantis founder and director Bobby Garcia had sparked the future generation’s love affair with theater.
To our generation and that of Justine, Atlantis theater is love unforced and uncontrived, not solely dictated by the verdict of theater critics and arts academicians. After years of watching Atlantis productions, I’ve come to realize that Garcia’s strength is the genius of connecting to his audience and keeping it enthralled—he knows how to choose the material that the local audience will go to the theater for (yes, brave the traffic) and, with the director’s craft, makes the material relevant, and never boring.
His staging is snappy and brisk, with the flourish of a confident helmsman—yet with the heart of a man who can tap into your raw emotion when you least expect it (Jersey Boys, Kinky Boots). You become his spectator who discovers your own humanity each time you sit before that stage, feeling smug that you are safely at arm’s length; you’re not, in fact, which is why you need that tissue paper in your bag, just in case.
And just as important, he mines the talent of the Filipino artist for a highly authentic performance, the high standards of which enable Atlantis to export our theater to Southeast Asia (his staging of Saturday Night Fever, for example). He is able to polish an actor’s craft into a gem of a performance—children, no exception. Matilda made the parent in us so curious about how Garcia was able to coax a high-level performance out of the young girls (unknown to the theater world until then), prompting us to assign a story on how these children were trained, and how parents could raise a theater talent.
Here is one Filipino theater ensemble that puts the audience and the artist above anything else, even above the theater critics
Here is one Filipino theater ensemble that puts the audience and the artist above anything else, even above the theater critics. Atlantis got to where it is today because it rekindles in us the love of theater—an unpretentious, unadulterated love of theater. This was, I believe, how it was able to grow an audience the past 20 years—by its fidelity to art and its audience.
In the end, what matters is what you, the theater-goer, is taking away from the night in the theater. Pinky Amador’s Piaf stayed with me for some time—not only her music, but also her tragic frailty—so that whenever I’d run into Pinky, I sensed she already dreaded my nagging question, when are you doing Piaf again? Ghost—you can’t get more clichéd than that, yet why was it that around me that night at Carlos P. Romulo auditorium, there was muffled sniffling, and hardly was there a dry eye, as Cris Villonco played her moment onstage (who needed the Hollywood camera)? At that moment, the audience reclaimed its power over theater critics and analysts, to determine what theater it loved and didn’t love, and we, as editors out to develop a theater section, could only be wise to heed it.
It was also then that it became clearer to me how Bobby Garcia—whom I used to see as a precocious boy romping around in our newsroom (his late father, Bob Garcia, was chairman of Times Journal, where we started our career) —has filled a niche in local theater: he’s able to stage a contemporary, popular (Bridges of Madison County, Addams Family), even cutting-edge, material, on his own terms, to draw the local audience. Good theater is good theater, no matter if it’s foreign or local content.
Perhaps learning from his predecessors, Garcia, in partnership with two stalwarts of the broadcast and entertainment industries—Bobby Barreiro and Tony Tuviera—worked to make theater viable, as a business and as a profession of those who have committed themselves to this art. It is good news to me every time Atlantis plays to a full house, be it at Carlos P. Romulo theater or Meralco theater—and it always does.
Just like any human endeavor, the arts, to survive and to thrive, must capture its market relentlessly. By offering irresistible theater, Atlantis has done just that.
And more important, Atlantis has thrust Philippine theater and the Filipino artist onto the global stage. It makes you feel proud as a Filipino. In the next 20 years, Atlantis could only broaden its reach—to the next generation of Filipinos who will see theater as part of their lifestyle, or even as a profession (time was when kids wanted to be designers, then chefs, so why not theater artist?).
In Atlantis, theater becomes what it should be, in the words of Sir Ian McKellen, a shared experience between the audience and the artist—you are both in the moment, hanging on to that every word, every breath, every move.
And the past 20 years, Atlantis has been my special experience.
