In its 46th year, Teatro Tomasino, the premiere theater performance group of the University of Santo Tomas celebrates its return to the stage with Juan Ekis’s Kapeng Barako Club: Samahan ng mga Bitter.
The show will be held from May 7 to 9, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. in the Thomas Aquinas Research Center and Graduate School Auditorium.
The Palanca award-winning play is a flavorful story that covers the lives of a group of friends and their delightful misadventures at Beans Coffee Shop. The play focuses on human connections, making it the ideal material to showcase Teatro Tomasino’s new generation of artists.
“I want the staging to focus on each actor’s personality and the unique way they relate to each other on-stage,” Lendro Enore, director of the production, said.
Enore, an honorary member of the guild has also directed past successful Teatro Tomasino productions from Jose Victor Torres’s Sandaling Tagpo (2018), Liza Magtoto’s Agnoia (2019) and Pagpili, a Teatro Tomasino’s Original Music Video Performance, 2022.
After a series of online performances, this will be Teatro Tomasino’s first live on-stage performance since 2019.
“We wanted to do something fun and contemporary. A performance that’s simple but supple that will help rebuild every member’s foundation of theater fundamentals,” Teatro Tomasino’s Artistic Director Jed Porlaje said.
“Hopefully, this becomes a springboard for next year as the guild tackles more complicated but equally interesting materials,” he added.
This is not the first time Teatro Tomasino has staged a Juan Ekis drama, as it successfully performed Ekis’s wildly popular Twenty Questions in 2014.
As Teatro Tomasino brings the bittersweet story of Kapeng Barako Club, the guild hopes to stir the perfect blend with a new generation of Thomasian audience. F
