Tanghalang Pilipino dares to stage Mike de Leon’s Kisapmata

On December 19, 2020, when most people were cocooned at home due to the pandemic, master filmmaker Mike de Leon treated cineastes and all lovers of good films by streaming, for free, the restored version of Kisapmata (In The Wink Of An Eye).

It was a Saturday, six days before Christmas, and de Leon made it available from 7 am to 11 pm on his Casa Grande Vintage Filipino Cinema, the Facebook page he was moderating originally devoted to showing the surviving films of LVN Pictures, the movie-making pioneer owned by his family led by the de Leon matriarch, Dona Narcisa Buencamino de Leon.

Produced during the decades considered by film historians as the Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema (1976 to 1990), Kisapmata was based on National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin’s reportage, The House on Zapote Street.

It was among the films in competition in the 1981 Metro Manila Film Festival and reaped a total of 10 awards, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, and Best Director. In 1982, it was shown at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, with de Leon’s other opus, Batch ’81.

Now considered a masterpiece of world cinema, Kisapmata is basically about an autocratic father who runs the household like a dictator would a third-world country.

Joaquin’s original story that was published in Philippines Free Press in 1961 chronicles how Pablo Cabading, a 50-year-old Ilocano police detective, shot his own wife, daughter, and son-in-law, before blowing his brains out.

He was married to the soft-spoken Anunciacion, 48. They had a daughter, an only child named Lydia Cabading-Quitangon, 24. At the time of the crime, she was a medical intern married to 35-year-old Dr. Leonardo Quitangon.

The crime took place on the afternoon of January 17, 1961 in the Cabadings’ house on Zapote Street in Makati, then a remote residential village still under Rizal Province.

In Kisapmata, the dictatorial father is retired Ilocano policeman, Sgt. Diosdado “Tatang Dadong” Carandang, played by the great actor Vic Silayan. He has an incestuous relationship with his daughter, Milagros or Mila (played by Charo Santos), while his submissive wife, Dely (Charito Solis), out of fear, turns a blind eye to it.

Mila, who works in a bank, decides to break free by marrying her boyfriend, an officemate named Noel Manalansan (Jay Ilagan).

The film begins when Mila tells her parents she wants to get married because she’s pregnant, infuriating Dadong. He throws a fit but eventually agrees. The wedding happens, but still, Dadong tries to keep Mila trapped in their family home.

To the younger generations, this may sound like a trending Netflix crime thriller. So when Tanghalang Pilipino (TP), the resident theater company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), recently announced it was doing an adaptation, or as they termed it, a “devised play” combining the film and the reportage, also titled Kisapmata, for its 38^th season, the questions for excited fans of Joaquin and de Leon boiled down to how TP would re-create the gripping story for the stage. Incidentally, the theme for TP’s upcoming season is “Revolt.”

Another lingering question: How were they able to convince de Leon, known to be reclusive and elusive, to let them use his film’s title and adapt some of its scenes to the stage?

How were they able to convince de Leon, known to be reclusive and elusive, to let them use his film’s title and adapt some of its scenes to the stage?

The TP play is being written and will be directed by Guelan Luarca, and will be staged from March 7 to 30, 2025, at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez (CCP Black Box Theater).

“I don’t know if factor siya, but I adapted his Batch 81 in 2019 to Tanghalang Ateneo production. Kung paano ko naman napa-oo siya noon ay dahil my father was part of the film’s cast,” Luarca, the artistic director of Tanghalang Ateneo, told TheDiarist.ph.

Guelan’s father, Ward Luarca, played Pacoy Ledesma, one of the college students who endure the hardship of joining a fraternity, in de Leon’s Batch ‘81.

From March to April in 2019, Tanghalang Ateneo staged Alpha Kappa Omega, the title of the play that Guelan adapted from Batch ’81.

“When there was a screening of the remastered version of Batch 81 some time in 2018, I think, ‘yun na ‘yung way para matanong si Sir Mike,” Guelan told TheDiarist.ph. “Pero, kung hindi naman factor ‘yon,” he added, laughing, “it’s because Tata Nanding (Josef) reached out to Sir Mike to ask permission for Kisapmata.”

Veteran actor Fernando “Nanding” Josef is artistic director of TP, who apparently has de Leon’s trust and confidence. Josef played the Baguio house caretaker in de Leon’s 2018 film Citizen Jake. His memory could be hazy, Josef told TheDiarist.ph, but he recalled he was also part of the aborted Jose Rizal film starring Aga Muhlach that de Leon directed for GMA Pictures, then called Cinemax.

Josef said that last year he emailed de Leon, asking permission for Kisapmata’s adaptation, including the use of the title, and de Leon said yes.

Josef shared with us that it was a pleasant email exchange. He allowed use of some portions that won the approval of the reclusive film genius.

De Leon seemed delighted about the plan. He wrote Josef: “Nice to hear from you and your plans for Kisapmata/Zapote Street.

“There was a point when I didn’t know how to end the film (based on the screenplay by Doy (del Mundo) and Raquel (Villavicencio), and I (as co-writer),” de Leon wrote. “But when I read the original article by Nick (Joaquin) and the police report again, that’s when I knew how to end the film.”

De Leon continued: “I’d be very curious about what Guelan will do for the stage adaptation. The title is entirely your decision.”

He ended his email with a vote of confidence and continued support: “Best and good luck. If you or Guelan have other questions, just email me.”

Josef also sought permission from Rosario “Charo” Joaquin-Villegas, president of the Nick Joaquin Foundation, for the adaptation of The House on Zapote Street.

It can be recalled that in 2018 TP staged an adaptation of Joaquin’s short story for children, How Love Came to Juan Tamad. The play was brought to Moscow as the Philippine representative in the 2018 World Theater Congress.

Joaquin-Villegas, in an online message to TheDiarist.ph, said that with the royalties paid for How Love Came to Juan Tamad and advanced royalties for The House on Zapote Street, the estate of Nick Joaquin that she represented gave the go-signal.

De Leon wrote the screenplay of Kisapmata with Raquel Villavicencio and Dr. Clodualdo “Doy” del Mundo.

Joaquin, under the pen name Quijano de Manila, wrote the reportage in January 1961 for the Philippines Free Press magazine, the same month the crime happened.

The piece became part of Reportage on Crime, one of Joaquin’s anthologies of non-fiction pieces from his years with the Free Press and Asia Philippines Leader magazines. The book was first published in 1977. Copies of this gem are available in bookstores and online shops today, with other Joaquin’s anthologies like Reportage on Lovers and Reportage on Politics.

There are a few major distinctions, however. The family crime that shocked the country happened on January 17, 1961, which Joaquin reported in The House on Zapote Street.

De Leon’s Kisapmata is set two decades later, and the crime happens five days before Christmas Eve. The film has a date for the tragedy, December 20, 1981, a Sunday.

In his visual memoir Last Look Back, copies of which are still available on Casa Grande Vintage Filipino Cinema for a special price of P3,000, de Leon wrote that he wasn’t satisfied with a few scenes from the shooting script, which had undergone several revisions, so he did his own research on the actual crime from police reports and newspaper clippings at the National Library, veering away from Joaquin’s Free Press article.

When Joaquin, already a National Artist for Literature in 1981, saw the film, it was reported that he was impressed with the final outcome.

In Last Look Back, de Leon said, “He told me that he thought I had access to the actual police reports because there were several scenes in the film that showed details that were never released to the public.”

When Nick Joaquin, already a National Artist for Literature in 1981, saw the film, it was reported that he was impressed with the final outcome

To write the stage adaptation, Guelan told TheDiarist.ph that he will have more brainstorming with the four senior members of the TP Actor’s Company: associate artistic director Marco Viaña, Toni Go-Yadao, Jonathan Tadioan, and Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan.

Josef calls them TP’s “Tough Four.” Viaña, Tadioan, Go-Yadao, and Nuevo-Tadioan have been with TP for more than a decade. TP is known for its rigorous training and selection process.

As the saying goes, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for actors to be selected to stay in TP, like the Tough Four. Then again, that is just my personal opinion.

Viaña told TheDiarist.ph he is, as of press time, assigned to play Noel Manalansan, the character played by Jay Ilagan in the movie. Tadioan will play the autocratic father, the retired Sgt. Diosdado “Tatang Dadong” Carandang, the role played by Vic Silayan.

Nuevo-Tadioan will play Dely, the submissive wife of Tatang Dadong. Go-Yadao will play Mila Carandang, the daughter of Tatang Dadong and girlfriend of Noel.

Guelan said there’s no final draft yet. It’s too early to say how the story will go because they are still in the process of rewriting and revising. “Sa workshop sessions with the four Actor’s Company senior actors, we’re mixing things up from Joaquin’s text and from the screenplay. So, everything’s fluid at this point. Even the character names are halo-halo, woven with Joaquin’s and the de Leon-del Mundo-Villavicencio text. Ang aga pa ng development! Wala pa ‘kong maitaga sa bato!

“Soonest, I need to lock myself in my room and start writing the play,” he added, seriously.

There was an excerpt performed by the Tough Four during the recent 38^th season launch at the CCP Black Box theater. The scene was the start of the movie, when Mila tells her father that she is marrying Noel because she is pregnant.

“About 60 percent of the text will come from the movie, the rest from the reportage. But like what I said, everything’s fluid for now,” Guelan said.

Viaña, in Facebook Messenger, told us that the text in development would be an adaptation by Guelan and them, the TP Actor’s Company, based both on Joaquin’s crime reportage and de Leon’s movie. “So the characters are not entirely from the movie,” Viaña said.

For those not familiar with the film, the unrestored version of Kisapmata has been uploaded on several YouTube channels. Joaquin’s Reportage on Crime has been re-issued by Anvil Publishing many times. It is highly recommended, especially for vloggers and influencers, to check those two sources of Kisapmata the play.

So, contrary to some earlier releases on Kisapmata the play, the household of the Carandangs is the exact opposite of “a haven of domestic bliss, a home of love and order, and a portrait of the perfect Filipino family.” It is a story of a far-from-perfect Filipino family, ruled by fear from the start.

Tatang Dadong is one of the most detestable characters in Philippine cinema. De Leon, in an earlier interview with this writer, said it’s his subtle critique on the Marcos dictatorship and Martial Law. It can be recalled that from the 1970s to 1980s, de Leon was also an activist filmmaker. He was even briefly detained by the police for a night of interrogation because he was joining rallies. The first documentary he shot, Sa Bisperas, was about the First Quarter Storm, the uprising of student activists. Batch ’81 and Sister Stella L (1983) were no-holds barred criticism of the conjugal dictatorship.

In my article for GMA News Online titled The Saga of Kisapmata published in December, 2020, de Leon described Kisapmata as the most macabre Christmas movie.

For Guelan Luarca and Tanghalang Pilipino, there’s plenty of time to develop the material because the more immediate TP production for the 38^th season is Balete, an adaptation of National Artist Francisco Sionil Jose’s novel Tree by Rody Vera and to be directed by Chris Millado.

 

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The play was initially staged by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) in 2002, also adapted by Vera and directed by Millado. TP attempted to stage it in November 2019 to mark Sionil Jose’s 95^th birthday, but it didn’t push through.

This time, Josef said the TP version is a “devised” play being worked out (“workshopped”) by Millado with the TP Actor’s Company using three references: the original English novel Tree by F. Sionil Jose, the Tagalog stage adaptation Balete by Rody Vera, and Puno, the new direct Tagalog translation of the Tree by Aurora E. Batnag.

The more immediate TP production for the 38^th season is ‘Balete,’ an adaptation of National Artist Francisco Sionil Jose’s novel ‘Tree’ by Rody Vera and to be directed by Chris Millado

Josef said it is also a devised play. He explains to TheDiarist.ph: “In a devised play, the director facilitates a process which allows, motivates, guides the actors in the analysis of the reference materials and in the improvisations of scenes which contribute a lot in developing the plot, and in creating the dialogues.”

Millado told TheDiarist.ph: Balete is devised by actors and creatives “under my direction and (assistant director) Delphine Buencamino, based on the original English text of F. Sionil Jose and the Filipino adaptation of Rody Vera.

“We can’t determine yet how much ‘writing’ needs to be done till after the devising phase,” Millado added.

Balete will run from September to October this year, headlined by veteran actor Nonie Buencamino.

In another online message, Josef told TheDiarist.ph that the TP artistic committee consisting of him and the Tough Four did not originally plan to make the 38th season focused on National Artists.

“We first decided on producing Balete to celebrate F. Sionil Jose’s 100th birthday this year, 2024. Then, I was informed by Marco that Guelan wants to direct TP’s Tough Four in a play that is going to be based on Mike De Leon’s Kisapmata, which excited all of us,” Josef said.

“The next thing I learned, Guelan shared with Marco and others that Kisapmata, as written by Doy, Raquel, and Mike, and was really based on Nick Joaquin’s crime report. So, all the more we got excited kasi the works of two National Artists are featured for TP’s 38th.”

For the Christmas season, TP is bringing back Sandosenang Sapatos, a musical written by Layeta Bucoy based on the short story for children written by Dr. Luis Gatmaitan, with music by Joed Balsamo and Noel Cabangon. It will be directed by Jonathan Tadioan, and will run also at the CCP Black Box Theater from November to December this year.

During the “Revolt” season launch on Saturday, August 3, at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, it was announced that TP has become the first national performing arts company for theater designated by the CCP and National Commission for Culture and the Arts under Republic Act No. 11392 or the National Performing Arts Companies Act (NPACA).

The announcement was made by TP board member John Arcilla, with TP chairman Tonyboy Cojuangco, after the Q&A with media. The designation covers 2024 to 2029.

Based on the National Performing Arts Companies Act, a copy of which can be viewed online, the designated group is entitled to a P10 million grant a year.

We checked with the CCP board of trustees member Margarita Moran Floirendo. In an online message, she told this writer that apart from TP, the other groups named under the NPACA are the Philippine Ballet Theater (for dance) and the Philippine Madrigal Singers (for choral group).

Apart from training, education, and research, TP’s task as designated company is to develop original works “that will help define the country’s national cultural identity,” which is something they have been doing since the group was founded with their first artistic director Felix “Nonon” Padilla, with pioneering members Nonie Buencamino and John Arcilla, nearly four decades ago.

Then again, the “financial grant” under the designation will be useful to continue their original, daring, out-of-the box material, as concocted by Josef and the current TP Actor’s Company. Their battlecry: “Utak, Puso, Bayan.”

We congratulate the whole TP caboodle and its guest artists as they continue with their uncompromising, brave and brilliant new works.