'Into the Woods' creators on the Easter eggs that make the musical a Filipino production through and through

The much awaited Theater Group Asia (TGA) production of "Into the Woods" opened last week with an all-star Filipino cast led by Lea Salonga.

And as soon as curtains went up, it became evident there are more Filipino elements in the musical than simply having an all-Filipino cast. Large capiz windows dominate the stage, with the floor covered by what looks like Spanish tiles. A huge chandelier hangs amid scattered tree trunks and immediately the audience will know this is an unabashedly Filipino production of the famous American musical about various fairytale characters.

According to TGA's artistic and creative director Clint Ramos, they really wanted to be overt about it. "We still wanted to honor the intentions of the original creators but we wanted to find a way to make it ours, in a way that feels organic."

In making "Into the Woods," TGA decided to lean in and include the many layers of Philippine history. The pre-colonial in the weaves featured in the costumes — Also, check out the pintados tattoos on The Wolf — the colonial in the silhouette of the boot, and perhaps the modern post-colonial in the Filipino diaspora represented by many of the actors.

Clint and director Chari Arespacochaga tell GMA News Online more about their creative decisions and their inspiration that led to a distinctly Filipino rendition of "Into the Woods." 

Below is our interview edited for length and clarity.

TGA's Overall Artistic and Creative Director Clint Ramos and Director Chari Arespacochaga Courtesy: TGA

Could you tell us more about the decision to use capiz windows and the floor tiles on the stage? Were those nods to our culture? If yes, was it difficult to do with "Into the Woods"?

Clint: We never really sought to translate or adapt it. We never changed a single word in the musical, nor did we change the orchestrations. 

But to give you a little bit of background, when the late Bobby Garcia and I were talking about starting TGA here in the Philippines, we really wanted to consider the Filipino condition. We didn't want to be heavy handed about it.

For "Into the Woods," we wanted to honor the intentions of the original creators but we wanted to find a way to make it ours in a way that feels organic.

So the mandate was: Without any rules, how can we consider who we are, our history as a people? This musical is about fairy tales, and we want to lean into this idea of us as a people being storytellers. That's how it all kind of began. 

Those capiz windows are an interesting choice.

Clearly you can see the colonial influence already. And that was a big thing for us. 

The scale of the capiz windows is purposely big because we wanted to dwarf the actors — like it's bigger than them. But more than anything, we didn't want it to be naturalistic. We didn't want it to be like, 'here's the forest, and now here's the castle.' We didn't want it to be that way. 

We wanted to create a box, an envelope for the storytelling. It wasn't about convincing audiences that we're going to transport you into the forest. 

We wanted to consider the layers of Filipino-ness and that's also what we inspired our designers to do. To break the rules. There are no rules. You're already Filipino. 

So what we wanted to do was create our unique Filipino facade, an envelope for the storytelling. So you have this box and then you put trees in it, and you have the orchestra up there and you're conscious of the thing being made, you know? The storytelling being made. The way Chari [Arespacochaga] staged the whole thing is also very presentational. 

The musical is very presentational. You have characters entering, telling you who they are, telling you about like what's about to happen. There's a narrator. It's about storytelling. 

"Into the Woods" does feel very self-aware. We thought there were inside jokes in there.

It is very self-conscious. It's like, the work of Brecht you have to create a distance between who the audience is and these characters, and that kind of technique maximizes the audiences' identification with those characters. 

And because we're able to distance ourselves at first, it is able to honor the fairytale roots of the stories. That is a princess, or that is a prince, that is a wolf.

But once [they start] spouting those lyrics, it's like, 'she literally is like my mother.' Or 'that is me.' 

And then the story flips on itself. You're also made to think more about yourself. Like, 'Would I have done what the Steward did?' 

And this is the funny thing. It's like going back to this idea of Filipino-ness. We really encouraged the actors, because they had the same question: How do we present this in a Filipino context? And Chari and I were really encouraging them to just not even think about it. 

Was that difficult to do?  

Chari: It wasn’t. A lot of the work was freeing them to say, 'Why do you think this mom is doing that?' To call from personal things.

What is your experience of the first moment you had desires that a Catholic school told you was bad or what whatever, right? And so a lot of the process was freeing that thought and encouraging them to really be empowered to put those into their choices. 

Oh so that's why on opening night, Clint quoted Sodeheim in his opening message! About how being you makes it being true. 

That's literally what we were saying. There is no right or wrong way to do Filipino. And as Sondheim had beautifully stated in one of his musicals,‘everything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new.' 

But how about with the costumes and the textiles. Even the puppetry?

Our costume designer [Raven Ong] really wanted to look at the sort of materiality of Filipino culture, right? And not create our own rules in this fairy tale.

 

 

 

 

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There's are some creatures from the Visayan myths that resemble dogs so could that be the wolf? So this is from Visayas, so maybe we also infuse a little bit of the pintados in the design.

When our costume designer said 'I wanna use habi,' I said, 'go for it.' It's very exciting, in the princes’ costumes, there's all of that Inaul gold trim. And its ingenious and almost scholarly way to approach it. 

And the puppetry, we wanted to use puppets but wanted it Filipino, so Teatro Mulat of National Artist Amelia Bonifacio was a no brainer.

The technique and the symbols that they used are drawn from Filipino culture. The birds are inspired by local birds. They created shadow puppets so the Filipino vines that go up Balete trees, the beanstalk. The boot of the female giant!

And the puppeteer is Amihan, the daughter of Amelia, our national artist. She was animating the cow, and was a big part of the production. 

Were there things that left you struggling, or left you both thinking, what would Bobby do? 

Clint: In my conversations with Bobby, one of the the first questions we asked each other was like, okay, so who are the giants in the sky, who seem to be omnipotent but also trampling on our land? all of this stuff. So we had really wanted to be intentional about that. We ran across this popular American caricature from the turn of the century — Uncle Sam's boot. 

So what did we do to make a nod to that, a little wink — not even a wink or a nod, but like can we be overt about that? 

If we are saying the box alludes to the Spanish, and we have all of this like pre-colonial motifs, you know. Maybe then we do this big thing, the physical representation of which alludes to a colonizing force or a big force that flexes its strength on a people and creates kind of like havoc, right? 

And the people actually turning on themselves to blame each other for the things that go wrong. 

Like people say, sure the giant is the greed, what's happening to these characters is because of Jack, right? Like he went up there to get, you know, to steal all of these riches from the Giants. But where did the Giants' riches come from? 

It's very overt, but we also wanted to be cheeky and funny.

There are folks who think being Filipino needs to be indigenous. They think something may not be Filipino enough because it's not indigenous enough. But there are layers to us. So we wanted to pose that question of layers to the audience, and whether they like it or not, is really up to them.

Is that something that you wish the audiences would you know it is it is it like a takeaway that you wish audiences would would have leaving the theater  
   
Chari: When we first started talking about this, I have not been home in, what, 12 years since I left to pursue directing in the United States, and I was really just looking back to that period. I had never felt more Filipino than when I had finally left and had to navigate up building a career in another country. 

So if what is taken away is a discourse about what it means for you to be Filipino today, great. If what you take away is a restored belief in our innate need for community, also, great. 

But also like come come and have fun at the show, coming and enjoy the show and allow for it to make you think about new ways of living today. It’s a fairy tale after all. 

Clint: For me if they come if people come out of this show having a discourse, not only about and the brilliance of this musical, but what it means to consider the Filipino condition, then we've already done our job.

Chari: But ultimately, what was really important to us was the question of what happens if a community is broken apart by big oppressive forces?  

The way through is for the community to come back together. Yes, exactly. It may not resemble the old community that was torn apart but it's almost like the only way out of hell is through it.

So we acknowledge the damage and the rebuilding. Like if there's anything more Filipino with that resiliency, I mean, there's a reason why our, you know our original “pre-colonial” architecture was really meant to be temporary.

Clint: Ricky Lee was there on opening night, and he had seen the original Broadway production which was very ornate. We had a conversation after the show and he said, 'it seemed like you all pared it down and made this both presentational, with a real focus on the relationships. The way these characters reacted to each other and to the things that were happening around them. 

And he said how that was so incredibly Filipino. And it was really amazing to hear that from Ricky because in many ways, it was a reflection of what we were trying to do. 

— GMA Integrated News