By CORHEINNE JOYCE B. COLENDRES
PATIENCE IS a word that easily slips out of people’s lips. It is a virtue to those who wait, and a mantra to those who grasp at their final straw. It is beyond enduring every tick and tock of the clock. Teatro Tomasino’s second set for Ekis, which was staged at the Thomas Aquinas Research Center Auditorium from September 5 to 9, circulates around the depths of patience, and it compels its audience to realize what else they can and should wait for.
Habulan sa Pagitan ng Maliliit na Kamay ni Kamatayan
A man and a woman are plagued with the ultimate test of time; as they live and die, and born to a new life, the couple struggles to be together. From rocks to animals, to people who are always separated by the intervention of fate, the couple brawls against their own obstacles, to find the life where they are meant to finally be together.
Despite being a staged reading, Habulan sa Pagitan ng Maliliit na Kamay ni Kamatayan is commendable for executing a complicated plot. The actors’ performances are animated—executing every character—every new life of the couple once they are reborn, with absolute grace and flawlessness. Habulan sa Pagitan ng Maliliit na Kamay ni Kamatayan establishes the thought that good things do come to those who wait, yet at great expense.
Baka Sakali
Baka Sakali explores the story of an unwavering and unrelenting love between a sister who remembers bits of her past and has completely strayed from her path, and a brother who struggles in leading his sister back. After an accident that twisted their lives, Gia becomes lost in her own head, revisiting only specific parts of her life while her brother, Felix, constantly helps in nursing her sister so that one day, he could get her back.
The devised play unravels a plethora of emotions while keeping the actors’ performances, and the overall story—short, simple, subtle, yet significant. The emotions that the play evokes become an addicting aftertaste that leaves the audience wanting for more. With its soft lighting, and with the play’s delicate setting and meaningful storyline, Baka Sakali makes the audience understand that love transcends various boundaries and through it, patience becomes less like a chore, and more of a responsibility.
The Set B of Teatro Tomasino’s Ekis is a manifestation of the attachment between love and patience. It clarifies that patience is not simply a virtue or a mantra that is evoked when the need arises. It is not merely the endurance and resilience in the test of time. Instead, patience is a form of sacrifice to avidly wait for something, even if it may never come. F
