Dulaang UP (DUP), the official theatre production arm of the UP Diliman (UPD) Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, stages Mga Anak ng Unos as its second offering for its 47th theatre season.
The twin bill production of Amihan at Habagat: Tensions in Climate featured two brand new plays that focus on pressing issues of the climate crisis.
DUP states it “continues to look into how Filipinos navigate political and ecological precarity. Just like the amihan and habagat, this season’s productions show the push and pull in the critical zones of the Philippines today.”
The first play, Sa Gitna ng Digmaan ng mga Mahiwagang Nilalang Laban sa Sangkatauhan (Sa Gitna ng Digmaan), presents the alliance between Philippine mythological beings (the bathalas and the other mythological creatures) and their move to punish the sangkatauhan for disrupting the balance of creation.
Written by Joshua Lim So, a Carlos Palanca Award for Literature Hall of Fame Awardee, and under the direction of José Estrella, Sa Gitna ng Digmaan follows the bathalas and other mythological creatures amidst a war waged against humans for destroying the sacred earth. Estrella is a professor at the DSCTA.
The second play, Climate in Crazies, is a collage of devised performances taking off from David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era. It looks at the expanse of global experience and zooms in on the local and more personal experience of this global climate emergency, highlighting the personal and collective efforts to address it.
Co-directed by Issa Manalo Lopez and Tess Jamias, Climate in Crazies intersects folklore, documentation, and scientific data on climate through the myth of Mebuyan, the goddess of underworld in the Bagobo mythology. Lopez and Jamias are both DSCTA faculty members.—With reports from DUP