Cosplay meets Dante in St. Benilde’s ‘Purgatory’

Students from the De La Salle University College of Saint Benilde's (DLSU-CSB) School of Design and Arts will personify anime, manga, comics, and video game characters to interpret “heaven” and “hell” in "a multi-genre series of site specific performances and installations" commemorating Dante Alighieri’s 750th birth anniversary this year.

"Purgatory: Love Gone Wrong/Love Redeemed" will be held on Friday, November 13, from 1:30 p.m. to 6:00 pm.

The students are invited to create their costumes out of recycled or reconstituted materials "as a statement against consumer waste and environmental degradation", with a prize going to the most interesting and inventive costume.

About 150 members of the College of St. Benilde’s various departments and programs will be taking part, with college officials portraying characters in Dante's Divine Comedy, such as Dante, Virgil, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Dante was a medieval Italian poet, philosopher, writer, and political thinker. His trilogy “The Divine Comedy” is considered one of the most important works in world literature and theology.

“Our production is intended to instill an appreciation and deeper-embodied understanding” of Dante's poetic masterpiece, said DLSU-CSB president Brother Dennis Magbanua, FSC.

“As an innovative and inclusive college, the Benilde community benefits from this project by finding relevance in this medieval masterpiece as a way of understanding personal struggles and yearnings for spiritual rebirth amid the urban blight and congestion and the seduction of consumerism,” he added.

Magbanua will play Angelos, the messenger of joy who guides Dante to Heaven.

School of Design and Arts Dean Jose Maria U. Yupangco will play Dante. “Purgatory explores and grapples with the excesses of love and its eventual righteous temperance through movement, music, theater, and co-splay pageantry,” he said.

The production is part of a series of events undertaken in collaboration with the Societa Dante Alighieri Manila.

The journey to purgatory will take the participants to different locations within the Benilde campuses.

The seven deadly sins of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust are interpreted through installations and performance art by the faculty and students from the degree programs of theater, dance, music, design foundation, production design, multimedia and fashion.

Associate Dean Sunita S. Mukhi, who is the production's lead creator, said that among the highlights will be “the student and faculty's cosplay parade along the streets of Leon Guinto and Pablo Ocampo led by Dean Yupangco, a cappella chants and music instrumentations by the Coro San Benildo, and a movement piece by the deaf dancers of the School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies and those of the Romancon Dance Company, the SDA’s dance program.”

“Purgatory: Love Gone Wrong/Love Redeemed” is part of the bigger Dante commemoration participated in by UP Diliman, Ateneo, San Juan de Letran, Lyceum University, the University of Asia and the Pacific, and De La Salle University-Taft.

Members of the Italian diplomatic community are expected to attend the event. — BM, GMA News