Tanghalang Ateneo’s Sintang Dalisay Joins National Theater Festival
Tanghalang Ateneo’s Sintang Dalisay scores another triumph as it gets chosen to be one of 12 productions featured in this year’s 4th National Theater Festival to be held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) from November 8-18 this year. Performances are slated at the CCP’s Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino on November 11 with showings at 3p.m. and 7p.m. Tickets are available at the CCP Box Office with discounts for students and senior citizens.
The National Theater Festival, an event held once every four years, showcases the best theater practices and most talked about theater productions in the country over a four-year period. The scope is national with selected theater groups in Metro Manila and the provinces invited to come together at the Cultural Center for forums, workshops, and public performances. The festival, which began in 1992 and has in past few years been experiencing funding problems, now bounces back at full steam with 12 productions and 4 special performances, including one by the Silly People’s Improvisational Theater (SPIT), a company composed largely of Ateneo graduates.
Tanghalang Ateneo joins the festival for the first time. It would have been part of the 2008 festival, with a production of Shakespeare’s Otelo, had the event pushed through. With the success of Sintang Dalisay in local and international circuits over the past two years, Tanghalang Ateneo bounces back as well, ready to show the nation its own innovations in theater performance.
Joining Tanghalang Ateneo are three other student theater groups: the Iligan Performing Arts Guild based at the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-ITT), the Xavier Stage based at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, and Dulaang UP of the University of the Philippines in Diliman. The remaining groups are professional or regional theater companies.
Soon after the Festival, Sintang Dalisay will have two performances on November 24 at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, to celebrate the Center’s anniversary. It will also join Tanghal, the National Student Theater Festival, when it opens in Cagayan de Oro in early February 2013. Meanwhile, invitations have been received to perform the play in Lithuania, India, Belgium and Canada.
Sintang Dalisay is a creative take of the classic Romeo and Juliet using as basis an awit version of Shakespeare’s play written in 1901. The story, set in an imaginary Muslim community, is told with movement and live music, both drawn from local performance traditions, with set and costumes designed by the late national Artist Salvador Bernal.
Directed by Ricardo Abad, choreographed by Matthew Santamaria and music designed by Edru Abraham, Sintang Dalisay is poised to win more audiences to its side as it follows the tale of two lovers, Rashiddin and Jamila, whose love for each other dares cross boundaries and whose deaths end a bloody parents’ strife. Kalil Almonte plays Rashiddin, while Natasha Tañada and Jacinda Lopez alternate as Jamila. Brian Sy reprises his role as the Imam who secures the lovers’ fate and whose chant begins and ends this story of more woe.
For more information on the Festival and its performance schedule, check out the Cultural Center website at http://culturalcenter.gov.ph/single-tickets/view-event/?id=1402519.
