SEASON ONE: THE GATHERING

SUZUE TOSHIRO’S MY FRIEND HAS COME

December 4-6, 11-13 2014

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S E A S O N O N E : T H E G A T H E R I N G

PIETAby Jay Crisostomo IVMay 23-25

GOD OF THE MACHINEby Jay Crisostomo IVJune 20, 21

ANG PRINSIPITOAdapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little PrinceJuly 16-19, 24-26

BAHAY NG LAGIM: ART HORROR FESTIVALNovember 6-8

MY FRIEND HAS COMEWritten by Suzue ToshiroDirection by Ricardo AbadDecember 4-6, 11-13

M Y F R I E N D H A S C O M ES E Q U E N C E O F S C E N E S

Scene 1 Me hears strange sounds: scratches and gurgling water

Scene 2 My Friend arrives in a bicycle: re-connecting seems to be a problem as the two do not seem to comprehend what each one is trying to say.

Scene 3 While My Friend sleeps, Me wonders if the persimmon tree outside is alive or dead.

Scene 4 Me and My Friend find common memories to share but a playful kendo match brings tearful memories from My Friend, a reaction Me cannot understand.

Scene 5 Me enacts another memory in a clubhouse gym where My Friend once embarrassed him.

Scene 6 The two relish, with laughter and a little shame, the memory of the clubhouse incident. My Friend finds a chance to recount his own painful memory but Me is too preoccupied with his own worries to sympathize with his friend’s plight. My Friend wonders if Me will ever understand him.

Scene 7 My Friend gets a chance to narrate his experience of drowning and its aftermath. Perhaps this gesture would prompt an emotional response from Me. But Me is unsure how to react.

Scene 8 My Friend gets a chance to finally tell me why he came to visit. But only after a violent kendo match. Me does not seem to appreciate the revelation and continues the kendo match. But the sounds of scratches and gurgling water again haunt Me. Seeing this, My Friend reveals what the sounds mean. Me is relieved.

Scene 9 After a playful argument where no one wins, My Friend is set to leave. He takes photos, drinks tea, feels whole again, and with Me in another room, takes his bike and leaves. Me returns, finds My Friend gone, and pretends he is sti l l there. He engages in a kendo match, the image of his friend fixed in his mind.

D I R E C T O R ’ S N O T E SM Y F R I E N D T O S H I R O

S uzue Toshiro and I first met in 2007 during a meeting of the Asia-

Pacific Bureau of Theater Schools at the Shanghai Theater Academy. While sipping coffee during a conference break, I asked him if I could read one of his plays in English translation. Toshiro bent down, reached for his bag, and produced an anthology of Japanese plays that included one of his plays, the award-winning Firef lies. I read the play that evening, l iked it very much for its sensitivity and nuance, and told him the net day that I would direct it for Tanghalang Ateneo one of these days. I did just that five years later, and got a Japan Foundation grant to invite him to the Philippines to watch the show.

Before he left for Japan, Toshiro gave me, as a parting gift, two of his unpublished plays in English translation and said he would like me to direct these sometime in the

future. When Jay Crisostomo asked me to direct a production for DITO, the first play that came to my mind was My Friend Has Come, one of Toshiro’s two parting gift. I quickly wrote Toshiro to ask his permission to stage the play. He responded with great enthusiasm and sought no royalties, but to send him, in exchange, a poster and playbill . I decided to send a video as well. Sadly, Toshiro could not revisit the Philippines this time owing to his tight schedule at the Toho School of Drama. My friend can’t come for My Friend Has Come.

Like Firef lies, My Friend Has Come is a difficult text to crack. That I am not immersed in Japanese culture adds to the difficulty, though my recent visit to Japan gave me a few insights on what the characters are going through. But enough is present in the text for me to sense the meaning behind the lines,

the beats, the images, and the sounds. I was moved when I first read the play, and so did the actors on our first reading. How to stage what we felt, given the non-linearity and the many symbolic representations of the text was another story altogether. Our reading may not be Japanese, more like the Japanese in Filipino eyes, but l ike Firef lies, the staging, I hope, would be one that Toshiro would find “refreshing.”

I hope audiences will muster the patience to receive the work, to seek neither a full narrative nor a logical progression of ideas, but to sense the moments of contact and separation that constitute the protocol of a kendo match.

I thank Ikarus and DITO for allowing me to direct this play - my first in this venue, the Japan Foundation for supporting key aspects of the

production, Raffy Javier and Prince Mallari for coaching us on kendo, Hiroko Nagai for composing the koto pieces, and Harold Santos for performing these pieces live as Hiroko’s alternate. My gratitude as well goes to Ateneo Fine Arts for letting us use the Black Box for rehearsals. I thank as well my actors, Sky and Mendy, for helping me discover the text, for expressing our notions on stage, and for keeping me company post practice; Jan Leyson who doubles up as Stage Manager and Light Designer; Rhem David who created the soundscape; and Jay, Pepe and the DITO staff for everything else - set, costumes, props, technical, publicity, marketing, you name it.

My friend Toshiro thanks all of you, too.

Enjoy the show! It’s a different kind of play. And do invite your friends to come.

P E R F O R M E R SP R O F I L E S

MESKY ABUNDO

Sky Abundo “wrote” a sweet haiku to fil l the space of his actor profile:

I love you baby,But it ain’t no lie babyBye bye bye bye bye

MY FRIENDMIGUEL ALMENDRAS

pain.. .swollen cheekscuts, brusiesinfected right legpeeling skinblood, tears

but it was worth it

ASST. KOTO PLAYERHAROLD SANTOS

Exploring non-western instruments and applying it in the Philippine performance/art context have always been my interest even before I entered the college of music. As soon as I entered, I started to learn the Japanese Koto; I have been studying the Japanese Koto for almost four years now. This is my first time to do live background music for a play since our education is more on traditional/

contemporary instrumental performances only. Working under Dr. Hiroko Nagai, an actual Japanese contemporary Koto performer, would be best for this contemporary play.

COMPOSER & KOTO PLAYERHIROKO NAGAI

The play talks about life. Music changes between three different scales, and moves towards hope in life.

P E R F O R M E R S P R O F I L E S

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M

P R O F I L E S

DIRECTORRICARDO ABAD

At the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, I sat with many tourists, mostly Japanese, on a long wooden bench looking at and contemplating on a rock garden as large as a half-size Olympic swimming pool. A dozen or so rocks of different sizes stood on textured white sand, some huddled close together while others set far away from that cluster of stones. Some of my companions saw the rocks as mountains, others

as medieval castles on a vast field of snow. I thought of them as people: the rocks huddled together representing a collective, the lonely rock on the distant corner an individual who chose to be alone, maybe wanting the company of others but more in tune with being oneself, free as much as possible from the constraints inherent in group life. And I thought of two characters of My Friend Has Come as two lonely rocks sitting far away from each other on a bare field of sand, rock one trying to reach out to rock 2, and vice-versa, yet unable to do so, perhaps because they fear the grip of a collective life. The play is about two lonely souls in a bare Japanese garden, each one seeking to build a relationship, somehow achieving it, but ultimately remain afar from one another, frozen in space and time like the rocks in the garden of the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.

PRODUCTION DESIGNER & GRAPHIC DESIGNERCLAUDINE DELFIN

Two years ago, my heart was set on being an il lustrator and a graphic designer (and maybe a painter if I get better at it). I’m not quite sure what happened along the way, but here I am clipping leaves off a dead tree in the middle of a concrete room, working my thumbs red to recreate Japanese walls, and ruining a perfectly good wicker basket to use as a prop. I think I got lost but thank god theatre’s kind to strangers.

PRODUCTION MANAGER & PROD. DESIGNERJAY CRISOSTOMO IV

Together with Claudine, I have been blessed with the privelege to tell stories in a medium which I believe to be the most sincere. As a member of this production and the Artistic Director of IKARUS, I invite you all to weather your fat, f ly, and touch your own sun. Burn passionately, no matter what the cost.

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M P R O F I L E S

SOUND DESIGNERREAMUR DAVID

“My Friend has Come” will be the first Japanese play that he’ll get to design sounds for. This will also be the first time that he’ll attempt to visualize a person through sound.

STAGE MANAGER & LIGHTING DESIGNERJAN LEYSON

Once again, I encounter a Japanese story full of isolation, social anxiety, ell ipses and symbolism. As an artist of what-so-ever, how do you express a hesitation of self-expression? . . . . . . . . .

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M P R O F I L E S

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHERRAFAEL JAVIER

“Polish the two-fold spirit hear t and mind, and shar pen the two-fold gaze per ception and sight.”

—Miyamoto Musashi

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHERPRINCE MALLARI

As one of their kendo instructors, I really had fun teaching them. From experience, teaching beginners can be very frustrating at one point but I didn’t feel that way when we were teaching them because I could see that they really are eager to learn and at the same time, they are having fun while doing it.

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M P R O F I L E S

PHOTOGRAPHERANTHONY CAW

“Photography is a way of f eel ing , of touching , of loving . What you have caught on f i lm is captur ed for ever… It r emembers l i t t le things, long after you have for gotten ever ything .”

— Aaron Siskind

SOUND BOARDSMANJETHRO NIBATEN

“Sounds ar e waves through the air. He must deny those waves.”

— Suzue Toshiro

A R T I S T I C & P R O D U C T I O N T E A M P R O F I L E S

P H O T O G A L L E R Y

P H O T O G A L L E R Y

M A J O R S P O N S O R S & M E D I A P A R T N E R S