My Work: The Tanghalang Pilipino Experience

This is what I've been busy with last month. I was tapped by Tanghalang Pilipino to do consultancy work on their costumes for their latest series of plays. I worked closely with the directors to come up with a color palette and design recommendations for each play. They're all set in current times, so there was little designing required. It was a matter of playing up each character through their costumes. One play, a comedy, is set on an MMDA overpass. For this one, the director and I decided to pump up the colors to match the tacky pinks and blues of MMDA structures. Another play features a senior couple who are retired university professors with an activist daughter. We put in subtle touches like round, wire-frame glasses for the father and ethnic jewelry for the daughter. These photos are from yet another play which features 2 ghost characters. These are Marco Viana and Martha Comia from Tanghalang Pilipino's Actors Company. They are fine actors and they did a stellar job as ghosts in this play (They also play leading roles in a comedy). Here, we dressed them up to look like Japanese ghosts in all white with just a touch of red. Their make up was designed by Paolo Rodriguez, who is also an actor who dabbles in theater make-up. The combination of special effects make-up and the texture on texture, all-white costumes worked really well onstage and they really looked dead and ghost-like, without looking like zombies, which we avoided.

My short stint with Tanghalang Pilipino was a dream come true for me. I have always wanted to design for theater. In my high school days, I would always be the costume, set and lighting designer. I even did make up in some productions then. My fascination began at a very young age when I saw my first play at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). I would dream of working backstage at the CCP, then go onstage to take a bow and receive a garland of flowers from the ushers on gala nights. I credit the CCP for opening my eyes to magical world of the performing arts and my mind to the limitless, creative possibilities of design. So finally, I did it. Thanks to Tanghalang Pilipino, and Direk Riki Benedicto for recognizing my passion in this. Please try to catch the shows. They're ongoing until mid-February. Here's their link: http://tanghalangpilipino.org.ph/main/news/eyeball-new-visions-in-philippine-theater.html

And there's more coming up this year. Including an epic musical which will feature original costume designs by me, Joey Samson and Martin Bautista. I will keep you posted on that. 

I tore up an old dress and added torn bits of textured fabric for Martha' costume. 

Marco's costume is an old white shirt with a torn t-shirt inside and white headband.
We channeled Ka Dencio in Sister Stella L. here.

The creepy make up by Paolo Rodriguez was achieved using regular eyeshadows, theater face paint, lipsticks and poster paint.

Marco and Martha hamming it up in the dressing room. They should get acting awards for best performance as ghosts!

We had an impromptu pictorial outside the CCP for a scarier effect.