Saliw - isang panalangin.

TONYO

The Rural Bank Of Itogon and The Office of the City Mayor, Baguio City

in cooperation with

Open Space Projects present...

TONYO - a performance art piece on the life of Gen. Antonio Luna by Rene Villanueva. Directed and to be performed by KM Altomonte.
June 28, 2008, Saturday, 6:30PM, The Atrium, SM City Baguio.

Admission is free.

On the eve of Zari's birthday...

A few days ago I got a text from Zari: "Happy birthday to me." Thinking it was Zari-ese for, "you forgot it's my birthday!" I immediately replied with a greeting. And then she replied: "Sa Monday pa, excited lang ako." I was in the middle of running the opening ceremonies of that CPAs' convention at the Baguio Convention Center. That morning started out slow - arrived at 8am to get a headstart on the many things we still needed to do before the house opens at noon.

Focus lights.

Sound check.

Finishing touches on the set design.

Polish opening dance number.

Finalize backstage traffic.

One last runthrough of the sequence.

By 8:30AM I've had two cups of instant coffee, on top of the two mugs of our home brew earlier. I needed it, I had to stay up all night to finish editing that 9-minute video for the opening dance number. At 9:00AM MV arrived with his LCD projector, the one we're gonna use for the center screen (there are two other on either side of the stage). Idol's supposed to bring the extra two projectors, and he arrived half an hour later. Still no lights and sound crew in sight.

I start clipping the papier mache foliage in the back, moving the papier mache tree trunks here and there and the dancers started showing up one by one. It's almost 11:00AM, do you know where your crew is? No. Nah, I did, but I wasn't sure. I fire off text messages one after another: none meritted a reply. F. arrived at, though earlier than most, a wrong time, since I was ready to explode. I regret not having the ability to be pleasant that instant, the memory of the last time I wasn't in a holy mood was still fresh.

The sound guy is taking forever setting up six microphones on individual mic stands on stage. And the lights guy is running around like a headless chicken. I don't have a copy of the script, not even the sequence guide. I call for a company call.

The gyst of what I said is: If everybody else is preparing for the same show I'm preparing for, then that show should be ready in an hour, and I'm wondering why everyone seems to be taking their time and at the rateThey go back to their respective areas of responsibility with a bit more sense of urgency they're going, they're not gonna make it in time for my show. this time.



The rest of the staff arrives: I got my script, my sequence guide. I'm happy. These days, it takes so little to make me happy.

The client comes up to me and asks if we could take down the two extra sheets of greenery we hung at the back the night before... I looked and saw that he had a point, and said yes. He goes up on stage and starts taking it down, A. asks me if I knew about what the client's doing, I said yes, I did.

Finally, the set's ready, but focusing the lights took a while. As soon as I'm done focusing a set of lights and move on to the next, a spot light or two would go off for unknown reasons. They said it's the white lady that lives at the Convention Center (the one that was caught by a camera phone the previous night). I didn't know whether to climb up the ladder to check on the bulbs myself or to do a ritual to appease the soul of the lady. But after going back and forth the two light towers, we finally focused all the lights. And the set looked good - it looked so much better than how I saw it in my head when I put it down on paper. For how the set turned out, the staff's blood, sweat and tears weren't in vain. Let it be said, I appreciate it very much.

The next we knew, we had to open the house already. And the rest of the afternoon was like a blur: an opening production number, a prayer, a march, opening remarks, welcome remarks, the symbolic key to the city brought in by a guy on horseback, another dance number, and blackout.

There were mush less people the next day: a certified public accountants' national convention should be a walk in the park, though it took a while to get the walk-in-the-park rhythm going, we got it on the second day.


J. didn't have to be there, but was there anyway to take photos and double as impromptu deputy stage manager. E. and D. assisted backstage. JC showed up and did a great job hosting the evening's program (with two song numbers that brought the house down, to E.V.'s virtuosity on the guitar).

As the thousands started leaving the theater when the house lights went on, I scanned the slowly emptying theater: on that same stage I've performed a monologue in Ilokano, directed the first musical I wrote, staged a Broadway hit, directed a beauty pageant, and planned to do a production later this year: Serapio in-the-round. That would have to be put on hold for a long while. The walk in the park was really exhausting, it would take some time to recover from it. And I will.

Aren't we supposed to go out with a bang? Zari asked me on the eve of her birthday - we were at a friend's son's birthday eating menudo and candied tamarind and chocolate cake.

Nah, I said, a period would do.

Today is Zari's birthday. Happy birthday, Zari! May this day be the beginning of something great for you (as I'm sure it will be).

*photos by Jojo Lamaria

Curtain Call

“ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE. AND ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS…”

Looking back at over twenty years of life in theater, I heave a sigh, unsure whether its one of relief, happiness or to exorcise regrets and other demons. From performing in front of crowds aiming at bringing a dictatorship to an end in the streets of Manila, to the glitzy, chandeliered theater lobbies of the capital’s various cultural centers, to obscure towns in the boondocks and lowland town plazas, I have dedicated a good part of my life to telling stories on stage.

A good story hits you, and it won’t let you rest until you’ve shared it with others who share the same passion for telling stories, and you gather round over cups of strong coffee and cigarette smoke to plot how to share this story to a much bigger crowd. For weeks on end you get together, slowly bringing the characters of the story to life, painting backdrops and making hand props, sewing strange looking clothing, “…AND ONE MAN IN HIS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS.”

The high of hitting upon a good idea and everyone agreeing that it is so, or of finally moving on to work on the next scene after struggling for so long with the previous one. The joy of putting that script down for the first time and delivering lines with your hands free making gestures to add color to the literature –
fingers slightly bent as you reach out to the light up ahead, arms spread out to let it all out, or wrapped around shoulders to keep it all in.

It has brought me hundreds of kilometers from where I learned about it and where I grew up to a highland oasis that I now call home. There are no fancy cocktails on opening night, just the excitement of finally completing the art process by presenting it to those who believe that the collaborative effort was worth taking time away from the rest of the world and sitting in the darkened hall of multipurpose building to listen.

After a decade or so since that very first walk on part, it inspired to form a ragtag group of kindred souls, Open Space Projects, a group that struggled no matter what to get it to opening night every time that that one good story came along. The vision of the group can be expressed simply: A good story must be told, and told well, so let’s.

From rehearsals in the comforts of my living room to cold rainy nights in different covered areas of the city’s public parks, a theater brimming with students required to write a paper on the presentation, or one with more people onstage than in the audience, we journeyed from one good story to another.

The lives of the characters in the script intertwined with the life of each storyteller, and each storyteller’s life intertwined with another’s, where at times it forms a strong bond or, at other times, a tangled mess. We shared laughter, cried together, loved each other, and at times walked away from one another with nothing more than a shrug and a cold shoulder.

We’ve told the strange beautiful story of enduring love, of heroism, of a young girl’s tragic journey to seek her one true love, of passion, of children’s right to happiness, of one man’s dream to go beyond what society expects of him, of an actor’s nightmare, or an artist’s lament, and every single time we thought we all agreed: art for art’s sake.

But every now and then I wake up realizing that the group never changed from the day it was formed: it still stood firm for the principles on which it was built upon, but the individuals’ faces have changed time and again through the years: I did what I could to nurture the group and make it grow by taking care of every single person in it, and now I realize that that may not have been the right way: though the group endured, it stayed as it was and always has been: a ragtag group, and though the philosophy, the guiding principles, the aspirations of the group may satiate the souls its members, it won’t fill their stomachs, and choices and drastic decisions have to be made.

Open Space has a vision, nay, it is a vision, one that will remain for as long as there are those who believe in it. That vision does not have ups and downs, good times and bad times, unlike people. And if the people who make up Open Space aren’t there primarily for what it stands: then it ceases to be.

I say thank you to those who, at one time or another, then and now, journeyed with me and Open Space Projects. It’s been rough, but no regrets, it was good while it lasted.

“THAT ENDS THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY, IS SECOND CHILDISHNESS AND MERE OBLIVION, SANS TEETH, SANS EYES, SANS TASTE, SANS EVERYTHING.” - William Shakespeare.

Theater rush

The multimedia bug bit me early last year, and bit me hard. A good part of the past year was spent behind and infront of the camera, and it's been a while since I last went on stage, or brought something onstage, and then suddenly in the last two weeks we were rehearsing two productions to be performed only a week apart.

Despite the very limited/limiting budget, Jesus Christ Superstar, the rock-opera classic by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, went onstage last Good Friday at the entertainment center of the mall up there. It was our group's first time to perform in that kind of set-up and it was quite an experience. We had no idea how the audience would react to something like JCS, a rock opera, and performed on a Good Friday at that. The group had only a full week to prepare, but with musical director Ethan Ventura's discipline, no time was wasted during music rehearsals. Though not being able to do a full dress rehearsal at the venue was quite a challenge, it took only the sight of a good crowd and the warmth of the par 64 spotlights to get the performers going. By the time Ethan made his guitar sing the first few notes of the overture, the stage was overflowing with energy, and the passion and dedication of the performers broke through the so-called fourth wall of the stage, and the audience responded very well.

Just a couple of days later and we were back at rehearsals, this time for the re-staging of our production of Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll for the Cafe by the Ruins' 20th Anniversary celebration. This production was what brought me to Baguio, actually, when I first staged it in 1996 together with local actor, Ferdie Balanag. Then, we rehearsed the play in some abandoned school building in Campo Sioco without any promise that the play would go on stage at all - we weren't sure how the audience would react to a play with such a provocative title, and content. But after a couple of weeks of line-throwing and blocking, we got a call from then BCF Arts and Sciences dean, Sonia Dao-as, who wanted to feature the play in the school's golden anniversary celebration. With a cast of two and a staff of three, we performed the play to a couple of full houses before bringing the play to UP Baguio for another run. Since then, Ferdie and I would perform the play in various venues including the cafe's 10th Anniversary in 1998.

And last Thursday, ten years later, we were back there, not sure if we can still pull off performing the characters in the play: 10 years does a lot to one's eyes and waistline. Again on a tight budget, and given only 1 hour to set up everything: band instruments, sound and lighting system, props: our group went in and did the usual dance of pre-performance preparations. Stage managers Freida Fernandez and Mai Fianza were at the Cafe's gazebo finalizing the sequence guide and the props, multimedia artist and costume mistress Madelyn Calventas was stapling trash bags for Ferdie's "Dirt" monologue, technical guys Andre Soriano, Boybi Sarmiento and Astrud Delo were laying out the wiring for the improvised par 38 spotlights, and Ethan began tuning his guitar. Production manager RL Altomonte and photographer Jojo La Maria prepped the cameras for the documentation.

And then we were on, in front of old and new friends who patiently listened to our stories for almost two hours. Kidlat de Guia gamely laughed when his name came up in one of the monologues, and filmmaker Mark Gary and choreographer Denisa Reyes couldn't get enough of it, and an hour or so after the last monologue one man whose name I can't remember anymore still didn't know what hit him: and I thought, great, that's what were here for: get you out of your comfort zone and throw that truth pie in your face - wipe it off or lick it up, it's all up to you.

No unnecessary issues, no unnecessary tension, nothing but pure passion for the craft: it was one of those nights when the first thing almost everyone asks after the curtain call is: what's our next story?

Ahhhh, theater, what a rush.

(A repost of my column, Tales From A Hill Station, in Cordillera Today March 30, 2008 issue)

They come and go

Among the things I enjoy about moving to a new house is packing: documents and photos specially. I came across an article by Vince Cabreza for Sun Star magazine back in 1996 when we first mvoed to Baguio: it was a feature on Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll. Browsing various souvenir programs of our productions in the last 12 years made my day - from the xeroxed pages of SDRR to printed sepia cover of Pangarap to the full color poster of Jesus Christ Superstar.

I was reminded of James, who played Pepe in one of our stagings of Tonyo at Pepe. James lived with us for a year or so when we were with Ado and Meg in Leonila Hill up to the time we moved to Wing's glass house in San Luis. we spent countless nights discussing acting, directing, various playwright's. James was not in school when we met him, since joining our productions under OSP, James has moved on: finishing his studies and eventually publishing two or three books (one he authored and two book of poems he edited). Last december he visited us and brought copies of those books for us, signed by the author (him)self.

Russell was a lanky freshman taking up masscom in SLU when we first met him... he didn't immediately get to join our productions but he would always be there at the gate manning the ticket booth, or ushering people in, or assisting backstage. He would come straight to our house in Malvar from school, and just hang out. He finally went onstage in that play on children's rights that I wrote: Taguan, Habulan, Patintero, and then the musicals Pangarap and Once on this Island after that. Since then he has worked for a call center, a media network giant, and currently asevents manager for a mall. He recently got in touch with us: he wants to feature excerpts of our productions at the mall he's working for, and the possibility of performing full runs of thos productions there.

Amar was the reluctant leading man in A Prelude To A Kiss - from a supporting actor, he was promoted to lead star when an actor backed out and we had to re-cast the play. He performed as Pepe also, two runs ahead of James. When we're not director-actor, we we're kuya-ading. He would come, enter our house as if he also owned it, which is quite true: I did the same whenever I'm at their house. Auntie Susan, Amar's mom, was like a mother to us and was a great lola to Leon when he was a baby: taught him to eat rice with coffee (Yice and feefee!), buy potchi at the sari-sari store, how to duck-walk, and gave him the nickname: Yankee, binaligtad na Kiangan, where RL's maternal relatives come from. Aabha, Amar's sister, toilet trained Leon. Amar and another ex-OSP artist, Ronald, once felt it was ok to break into our house in Q.M. to wait for us right there in the comfort of our living room. We arrived late at night and found both of them asleep: they needed help writing a letter. Amar also marketed some of our productions, and is now based in Manila and is into sales and marketing and will be a father himself soon. He called recently just to ask how things are with us.

Mad was a junior when I was an artist-in-residence in Brent. She was introduced to us by her English Teacher and big OSP fan, Bryan Powles (who left Brent in 2001 but has still maintained contact up to now) right after graduating high school and took a year off from school to work with us. She joined the prduction staff of a Tonyo/Pepe production, helped with make-up and production design of Manifest Destiny and Pangarap and Once On This Island... She is now in New York studying filmmaking, and despite the distance, has managed to remain close to OSP. She's coming home next month with my brother.

Some of them stay, some of them go, some of them remain close, some of them don't even look back. Some of them once believed, and and stopped believing, some even mock the ideals of OSP after they leave.

May mga ibang may napala, may ibang wala, may ibang naniniwalang walang mapapala sa mundo ng teatro, lalo na siguro sa Baguio. The latter isn't exactly untrue.

In our journey to provide the community with an alternative form of entertainment that would consistently present relevant social issues, we remain...

Letters from OSP usually end with the above lines... I'm just glad that at least there are some, who may have moved on to something else, but have remained believers and have not lost faith in the vision of Open Space Projects. - and whatever it offered, provided and stood for and against.

Composing for "Bintao"

The prospect back then of oil hitting $100/barrel pushed me to say yes to Ferdie when he asked me to compose the music for the play, Bintao. I dabble in music, but I only have the guts to compose music for myself.

Truth is, after composing the songs songs for my plays, "Taguan, Habulan, Patintero" and "Pangarap", I would fiddle with my guitar once in a while, or pound on a piano whenever one's available, and I really thought there's nothing left in me as far as music is concerned.

So I said yes. I will do it. 12-15 songs. In a month or less. I scanned the script of Efren Yambot, and asked if I could re-write some to give it a meter I could easily work with... I was given permission to re-write as I please.

Some of the songs reminded me of some of my previews compositions... thanks to Roman reminding me that this song reminded him of that song from "Pangarap " or "Taguan." Well, I never really exerted any effort to make this sound like or different from any previous compositions. I just wrote and played them as they came to me. So there.

I don't read nor write notes so "writing" music for me entails humming a tune and hoping I don't forget it until I record it, or at least until I've taught the melody to the actor who's gonna sing it. In one of the pieces in this collection, I asked Ethan to help me with the vocal arrangement - and he notated the song for me.

I should learn how to read notes.

Here they are. Hope you enjoy listening to them as much I did making them:

http://altomonte.multiply.com/music/item/32/Bintao_-_The_Songs....

PS: Bintao opens on Jan. 26 at the University of the Cordilleras... for more info, checkout: http://bintao.multiply.com/

It is common knowledge

How can I?

So there we were. Ten years later, running around hours before the concert, hauling lighting and sound equipment 5 floors up to VOCAS, buying cases of beer to be sold at P40 each during the show so we can have free booze for ourselves at the end of the performance, xeroxing copies of the repertoire.

Ten years later we didn't have to rent everything we needed anymore - though our very own sound system still wasn't enough for the concert, we didn't need to rent lights: we had to make do with our dozen or so par 38's and 8-channel dimmer board.

Ten years later there are a lot of new faces, and a few old ones, but the last few months blurred the line between the two - everybody felt like everybody's old friend.

Ten years later, half of the cast came in an hour late for the 3pm call time, so our sound check started at 4:30. That's ok.

Ten years later, and a few days' rehearsals later, we were ready to begin, so I went up the stage and asked everyone to rise for the National Anthem. And then, the opening remarks...

Halfway through, someone interrupts my speech from the backrow, I looked for the culprit and found him seated at the steps, looking really wasted. Ferdie got up, excused himself for being rude, and came straight up on stage. I gave him a mic.

"F*ck you, I'm not a drug addict... sorry I had to interrupt you tonight... here's the situation: I need your money... I could have a knife up to your throat right now, but I don't wanna do that... the only difference between you and me is that you're on the ups and I'm on the downs, underneath it all we're exactly the same, we're both human beings... I am a human being... I say f*ck you, I'm not a drug addict..."

For a while the performers onstage were worried that I was gonna lose my temper and maybe just drag Ferdie off the stage, until they saw me mouthing the exact words Ferdie was saying. It was from "Grace of God", one of the monologues in "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll". Our very first production in Baguio, back in 1996.

Ferdie ends his bit, I continued with my speech. Ethan hands over the acoustic guitar to Arkhe who in turn hands it to me... we opened the show with one of the very first songs I composed, "Awit sa Bata," from the play about children's rights I wrote in 2000. We also did "Taguan" and "Dakila Ka" to my amatuerish guitar playing with the help of Ethan on his electric guitar.

And then there was the "Pangarap" suite... followed by "Once on this Island" and "Jesus Christ Superstar." For our encore, the group sang "Why We Tell The Story" from "Once on this Island." After ten years of telling stories, it felt really good singing that song.

Rewind performed a set of Reggae songs afterwards, and I just had to join them on the conggas, and in a moment everybody was on their feet dancing. Later the gongs came out and so did Kawayan who started a bonfire in the middle of the dance floor.

Ten years, a few cases of beer, countless bottles of GSM Blue, lots of handshakes and hugs and kisses... How can I possibly get out of this insane, noble, harsh, wonderful, magical, infinite world of artistic possibilites that is theater?

Opening remarks

The anniversary concert went really well... thought I'd tell the audience that night a brief story about Open Space... this is what I told them:

One night, more than ten years ago, actually, I was in Malate, standing in the middle of Remedios Circle, a few paces from the famous Penguin Café. I was with a good friend and a great actor, the late RJ Leyran. We were a few nights away from JC-Live, a benefit concert for Bahay Tuluyan, a shelter for streetchildren in Malate which was in danger of closing down at the time due to lack of funds. The concert featured music from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar to be performed by various artists like The Manila Youth Symphony Orchestra, the band Waling-waling, Pablo Molina, Bernardo Bernardo, Lolit Carbon, Jett Melencio, Raul Roxas, Paul Morales, and many more. We have convinced the artists to donate their time and talent for the cause, and, to be able to convince sponsors to support the event, we needed to be representing some kind of a group, a theater group, a performing arts group, a company. We needed a name. Standing there in the wide open space of Remedios Circle, it came to me… Open Space.

That was 1995. And even though the sponsors decided to ignore the event, a sign of things to come, the concert was a success… and Open Space began to officially exist.

A year later, I was in another café, 5 hours away from Manila, a few paces down the road from here… in Rumours café. My wife, RL, introduced me to one Ferdie Balanag, theater artist, director, actor, lighting designer… I mentioned to him a play I’ve been wanting to stage, a play called Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll – a series of monologues about present-day survivors – I described to him the characters in the play – a panhandler denying his drug addiction, a philandering yuppie, a has-been rock star trying to make a come back, a paranoid artist (aren’t we all?) - and we agreed to stage the play in Baguio.

In October of 1996, Ferdie and I would meet every single day in an abandoned school in Campo Sioco, sneaking past the building caretaker with our scripts, to rehearse the play. And Sex, Drugs Rock & Roll opened at the BCF Theater, and eventually had a run at the UPCB Theater, and I decided that here, in Baguio, is where Open Space Productions will take root and hopefully, bloom.

I envisioned a theater group that would explore all artistic possibilities in presenting an alternative form of entertainment that will consistently present relevant social and cultural issues. A theater group that would not be stuck to a particular genre – we staged whatever hit us right here – there was Craig Lucas’ “A Prelude to a Kiss”; the trilogy “Mga Ina ng Bayan”; we wrote our own plays, “Taguan, Habulan, Patintero”, “Manifest Destiny,” “Pangarap;” coming from doing intimate productions due to budget concerns, we became ambitious with the musical “Once on this Island,” and later, a dream play; “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

We have performed at the BCF Theater, at the UPCB Auditorium, at the SLU-CCA Theater, at the Dap-ayan of the University of Baguio, at the Griffiths Theater of Brent School, at the gallery of the Workshop for Creative Survival in Guisad, at the CAP auditorium (the one in CAP Building near the post office, and not the one in John Hay: at P100,000.00 a night, we can never afford to mount a play there), at the CCDC Theater in La Trinidad, more recently in Kabayan, Benguet, then down in Tayug, Lingayen and Dagupan, Pangasinan, in San Fernando, La Union, all the way to Candon and Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur. Once we found ourselves way down south in Daet, Camarines Norte. If we weren’t performing, we’re conducting workshops in some school in Baguio, or in Ilocos Norte, or for some community theater group in Ifugao or Benguet. We dipped our fingers in all sorts of things – we were introduced to multi-media and started incorporating this in our performances, and eventually even produced independent works on video. We tried various approaches to play production as in our experimental production of Rene Villanueva’s “Tonyo,” a multi-sensory theatrical performance that was designed for the visually-impaired.

And more than a hundred curtain calls later, here we are.

In those hundred or so curtain calls, through the years, we’ve worked with established artists, aspiring ones who’ve either moved on to Manila to pursue their theater careers there or work in a call center or have gone abroad in search of greener pastures, so to speak. Can’t blame them, being an independent theater group in Baguio is not easy. Our reputation, or reputations, precedes us – we’re the ones who hold open forums at the end of each show, the ones who’d stop a performance when the audience becomes unbearably noisy and rowdy, we’re the ones who opened a play an hour late at one time, half an hour in another, we’re the ones who had a lousy sound system, and, the one that perhaps sticks out above the rest – we’re the ones who are always broke. We owe this lights and sound provider, this and that artist, at times we pay in kind – a TV set to a guy we rented lights from, a watch to an actor we owed. Our house belongs to a much bigger family beyond me and my wife and our children – it’s a set and props construction space, a rehearsal venue, a photography studio, an editing room, and a lot of times, a halfway house for runaway artists.

The stories go on and on, and with all the struggles, the hurdles, we’re still here, after ten years. One might ask why.

As a line in “Why We Tell The Story,” a song from the musical, “Once on this Island” goes, “life is why, pain is why, love is why, grief is why, hope is why, faith is why, YOU are why....”