A scene from Niyebe
From what I know about the theater productions of yore, the star of a play usually had an alternate performer who’d take over the lead part during the matinee performance. This allows the star to have a break and enough rest for the evening show. A lot of theatergoers want to see the star, so they make sure their tickets are for the evening performance.
Using an alternate cast is not a common practice in American productions. I think actors over there are hired specifically to serve as the understudy to the star. The understudy gets to go on if the star can’t make it to the theater. When that happens, the bulk of the audience walks out and asks for a refund. When the star goes on a month-long vacation, a well-known actor is cast in the lead and goes on for that entire month. The understudy isn’t asked to take over because historically, a tremendous drop in ticket sales always happens.
Today, local theater companies have an alternate cast for almost all the actors in the play. Last weekend, I went to Far Eastern University (FEU) to see Niyebe, a Tagalog musical based on the short story The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Presented by the Far Eastern University Theater Guild, Niyebe features a cast composed of theater arts students. Being unfamiliar with their work, I didn’t worry who was playing that night. Along with the impressive staging by Dudz Terana, the youthful cast delivered and made the evening for the audience—despite the play’s wrong approach to the material. It’s about a honeymoon gone wrong when the bride dies suddenly. The gravity of the calamity is lessened by the original easy-listening songs. It takes an opera with a string of heartbreaking arias to tell Marquez’s tragic story through music.
Nevertheless, Niyebe has so far been the most watchable production of the FEU guild. The show I caught featured the alternates, and they deserve high marks from their mentors. Were the actors who performed on opening night better? I would never know, because it’s too grueling to make another trip to FEU to see the other set. From where I live, traveling to the university belt is in itself a major production number.
A few weeks earlier, we attended the media launch of a new Tagalog musical, Liwanag sa Dilim. The show gets it title from the classic song of rock star Rico Blanco. The rest of the songs were also lifted from the great Rico Blanco songbook. Written and directed by Robbie Guevara, Liwanag sa Dilim also features two sets of actors, many of them familiar faces on television and film.
The launch was held at the Mirror Studio Theater, which I wrote about earlier this year. One has to traverse Makati’s red-light district to reach it. At the studio, my colleagues and I were made to wait in a dark and cramped reception room with just one sofa and no air-conditioning. I joked to my friends, “It’s like we’re waiting our turn to audition for a part.”
We attended the media launch of ‘Liwanag sa Dilim,’ from the classic song of rock star Rico Blanco, and were made to wait in a dark and cramped reception room—like we were waiting our turn to audition for a part
Khalil Ramos
Alexa Ilacad
It was really no laughing matter. We were squeezed together, bumping TV cameras and tripods, and stepping on each other’s feet. Happily, the cast did its best to make our wait worthwhile. Khalil Ramos and Alexa Ilacad of ABS-CBN’s Star Magic performed a number of Rico Blanco’s compositions. It was easy to get starstruck.
Director Robbie Guevara and his cast were mum about the plotline he had written for Liwanag sa Dilim. It’s going to be a surprise, he said. Judging from what the actors sang during the press briefing, it seems audiences are in for a morose evening at the theater. They could have sung Rico Blanco’s all-out rock tunes that would have had us dancing on our chairs. Since they refused to discuss the story, the press crowded Khalil Ramos and asked about his longtime girlfriend Gabbi Garcia. His plans for their fifth anniversary became the topic of the day.
Ramos has proven himself to be a versatile actor and singer. His fans will have to make sure they get tickets for the nights he’s slated to go on. Otherwise, they’ll be seeing his alternate, Anthony Rosaldo. Rest assured Rosaldo is also worth seeing. He’s just as talented and he can impart the message of the songs in such a tender way. You can’t lose if you see either one. The two young men are both magnetic performers.
Anthony Rosaldo
Anthony Rosaldo told The diarist.ph that although they’re playing the same character, he and Ramos won’t be giving carbon copy performances. The star of the recent production of Rent said, “Robbie encouraged us to do our own interpretation. He directed us separately. We do get to watch each other rehearse.”
Guevara explained why it’s essential to cast such popular young stars. They’re household names and they have a considerable fan base composed of youthful TV audiences and social media followers. Cast the likes of Alexa Ilacad, and you turn her thousands of followers into avid theatergoers. The downside is, you can’t have them in every performance. They have other commitments; telenovelas, TVCs, concerts, and movies. An alternate cast is thus required.
Last year, Guevara directed Once On This Island starring Sam Concepcion, who was also headlining One More Chance at the same time. Having an alternate player made it possible for Concepcion to be in both shows.
This somewhat goes against the grain of the shows being produced in the US. The late Lauren Bacall, imperious star of a number of long-running Broadway productions, best described the life of an actor involved in a play: “Your life becomes the play. All else is secondary—actually all else gets in the way. Anyone not connected with the play is hopelessly outside… Actors and directors become closer than husbands and wives.”
A campus production like ‘Niyebe’ understandably requires more than one set of actors…Too many extra-curricular activities can affect a student’s academic performance
Many of her peers would probably disagree with what she wrote. Unlike Broadway-produced plays, our local theater productions play only on weekends and run for just a month or two at the most. And since they’re not as highly paid as Broadway stars, our theater actors are given time to earn a living in other mediums. But Bacall’s dedication to her craft is the stuff that legends are made of. It’s also the very reason why neglected children of Hollywood stars write tell-all books like Mommie Dearest. Still, the kind of commitment Bacall gave to the plays she starred in was what separated a legendary diva from mere mortals.
Khalil Ramos’ leading lady Alexa Ilacad is too young to be a legend, and too congenial to be labeled a diva. The rehearsals, she said, are exhausting, but she’s giving it her all. The vivacious singer actually put the recording of her next CD album on hold so that she could focus on Liwanag sa Dilim. Apparently, she isn’t one to engage in two projects simultaneously. One of the two is bound to suffer. Bacall would have been proud of her.
A campus production like Niyebe understandably requires more than one set of actors. It makes reviewing a play more complicated, but the kids have other academic subjects to worry about. Too many extra-curricular activities can affect a student’s academic performance, especially if one is engaged in theater arts. I just hope FEU’s theater players are given the kind of star treatment the players of the FEU Tamaraws enjoy.
This brings to mind a chat I had with the late National Artist Andrea Veneracion many years ago, when I interviewed her for the Philippine Collegian (my campus extra-curricular). The esteemed founder of the University of the Philippines (UP) Madrigal Singers, or MADz, lamented the fact that the UP Maroons were rewarded with a free trip to Hong Kong. The Maroons had just won the UAAP (University Athletic Association of the Philippines) championship for the first time in decades. The MADz, she pointed out, had been winning international competitions left and right. But they always had to raise their own funds to finance foreign trips.
Perhaps it’s time for us to urge our universities to adjust their priorities and have them acknowledge the importance of culture in education. After all, in the acronym DECS, the letter C (for “culture”) is positioned ahead of the letter S (for “sports”).
Niyebe is currently running at the FEU Center for the Arts, on the ground floor of the FEU Engineering Building in the university’s Manila campus. Performances continue on February 26 to 28, March 1, 5 to 8, 12 to 15, 19 to 22, and 26 and 27. The show begins at 6 pm.
Liwanag sa Dilim opens on March 7 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza Makati City. It will run on weekends, 3 pm and 8 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and 8 pm on Fridays.
