CAFAs and the Play Mansyon

Last Tuesday evening, Oni and Bili hosted a bienvenida dinner of sorts at their house. The guest of honor were Nore and Didi who are helping their daughter resettle her family in Hongkong. The CAFAs who came on short notice to see the two were Alice (Jose), Emi and Alex. 

There were other guests however. To make the event more interesting (as well as to avail of a captured audience, heh heh), Oni simultaneously staged a reading of the script for his stage play project - a drama called "Mansyon". The idea was to elicit comments from the guests. Aside from the CAFAs the other guests were theater enthusiasts friends of Oni, sisters of Bili, young musicians (tasked to finalize the music score of the play) and young people who participated in the reading exercise. 

Emi with her theater background is of course the main influence in the implementation of the reading. She knew the English first version of the script and is now ready to critic this latest version.  This time the play dialogue is in Tagalog and more songs were added. While the reading was in raw form (done by amateurs using badly xeroxed material), the participants and the audience seemed to get 'into' the activity anyway.

After the show, constructive comments if not polite (?) comments from the guests were a-plenty. Alex for one was saying he would like to know the musical overture since this would set the mood for the play. I didn't think of that. Emy, Alex and Didi indicated which among the songs is their favorite. Alex advised Oni that the plays best number should be identified and promoted to create awareness for the show. (There are 13 songs in the play). 

The next step is to finalize the music score and the demo vocals for submission to prospective producers. Being an amateur playwright and composer, the whole venture is a learning process for me. Its still a long way to go and where I'm aware that this project may even fail to get produced (no matter what I do).   Be that as it may, I'm experiencing that - for this venture - the joy for me is really in the journey and which is fine with me if that's all it's gonna be. 

Onimayo

It is interesting to observe the success of "Heneral Luna" - an unexpected hit movie in Manila today. This was written 17 years ago but developed for the cinema only now.  Hope I do not have to wait that long for my play to see the light of day.  Heh heh. 

See slide show for more photos.