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‘King Lear’ closes Fringe Manila fest
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All photos courtesy of Studio Connections International
The all-male cast “King Lear,” led by veteran actor Bernardo Bernardo, is the Studio Connections International maiden production. It opens on Feb. 27 and runs until March 8 in partnership with the DLS-CSB-SDA.
Labeled as the “world’s largest and internationally acclaimed multi-arts festival,” the Manila version of Fringe showcased about 300 performances and 90 events during the festival’s 18-day run at 20 venues, ending on March 1.
Fringe Manila coincided with the Philippine National Arts Month celebrated every February.
“King Lear,” first staged by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) from Jan. 27 to Mar. 4, 2012 at the PETA Theater Center, had Teroy Guzman as Lear, with the roles of his daughters essayed by Gary Lim (as Regan), Nor Domingo (Goneril), and Abner Delina (Cordelia).
The 2012 PETA production and Studio Connections’ 2015 version of “King Lear” used the Filipino adaptation and translation by National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera of the original tragedy by William Shakespeare. Both the 2012 and 2015 productions have the venerable Nonon Padilla as director.
In 2014, Bernardo as Lear, together with the PETA Kalinangan Ensemble received favorable critical reviews with their staging of “King Lear” at the Kuandu Arts Festival in Taiwan.
'Much to learn from Shakespeare'
In an interview, director Padilla said “writers can learn much from Shakespeare. If I had the power to arrest and shackle every writer of ABS-CBN, Channel 7, and Channel 5—and not to forget those winners galore of literary contests—isolate them on an island surrounded by sharks, and force-feed them Shakespeare scripts, I am confident the quality of local dramatic writing will improve a thousandfold.”
“My devotion to this Renaissance playwright has been steadfast. He is the greatest dramatist of Tudor, England,” Padilla said.
After writing, acting, directing plays, managing, and partially owning a theater troupe, Shakespeare disappeared from history, Padilla said. “No one knows much about his person except for scanty information extracted from official records and documents of his birth, property listings, business enterprises, local lawsuits, wills, and testaments.”
A king driven mad
“'King Lear' is one of the more accessible mature, or late plays of Shakespeare,” he said. “It is a family drama, part soap, and part epic — a moving, tearful tale of a foolish king, who anticipates his loss of ability to rule. He divides his kingdom and gives equal portions to his three daughters, in the hope of retirement, and allowing his children the management of his properties.”
Padilla said that one by one, his daughters fail him. They do not meet his expectations, but instead drive him to anger and deep disappointment, prompting his loss of will and drive, and eventually slipping into insanity, he added.
“The story is simple enough, but the dramatic organization of characters and events is rich in layers of meaning and insight. Shakespeare had the supreme ability to show the paradoxes of the human condition, the difficulties in personal dilemmas, from plain physical problems to metaphysical introspections and convolutions that prompt and lead his characters to acts of heroism or human folly,” Padilla said.
The Shakespeare text is always difficult to decipher, partly due to archaic use of words, syntax and poetic juggling of sound and sense, prompting Lumbera to call his version a textual adaptation rather that a straightforward translation, he said.
King Lear originally was to have been designed by National Artist Salvador Bernal, Padilla’s “constant collaborator in things theatrical,” but Bernal died on October 2011 due to severe emphysema.
Padilla then requested Gino Gonzales, one of Bernal’s favorite students, to take over the 2012 production, giving him the “carte blanche to design anew without prejudice to the original intentions of Badong (Bernal).”
“Gino was Badong’s favored disciple and before he died, berated his niño bonito for neglecting theater for more lucrative commercial projects,” Padilla said. “'King Lear' is Gino’s libation and atonement to a mentor and friend.”
Gonzales gives vivid life to director Padilla’s theatrical vision, reimagining the play as set in a post-nuclear landscape to highlight the dramatic descent of the king into madness, said Bernardo, who is also president and artistic director of Studio Connections.
On the importance of Lumbera’s adaptation of “King Lear,” Robert Encila, Studio Connections vice president for talent development, said in a separate interview that “Studio Connections commits itself primarily to the development of a larger audience for Filipino theater by utilizing the Filipino language as its primary medium and by actively reaching out to the community through non-traditional performance venues and spaces—not only locally but overseas, where the overseas Filipino workers are in great numbers.”
Studio Connections’ “King Lear” premieres on Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m., at the DLS-CSB-SDA auditorium. The abridged production runs for two hours and 15 minutes. — VC, GMA News
For inquiries, contact Cherry Bong Edralin at 0917-750-0107; 0918-959-3949, or at cherry_edralin888@yahoo.com. Tickets are also available at TicketWorld, 891-9999.
