#haring lear

[yellowcreativedesign-blog]

Haring Lear (King Lear) @ Peta Theater Center in (2012)  Directed by Nonon Padilla Set Design by Gino Gonzales

[seyferts-blog-blog]

Pagod day

Kakagaling lang kanila mark na overnight. sobrang saya lang kasi kung ano ano ginawang music video hahaha! pati pagod at puyat ang lumitaw kinaumagahan.

Kaninang 3:00PM ay nasa PETA Theater kami sa may QC, batch namin ng ABMA ang mga pumunta, at habang papunt palang din sa venue eh magkakasama na ang aming batch, nakakatuwa lang kasi isang mahabang at walang tao na jeep ay napuno saaming studyante, may mga upong tres pa nga eh. kaya nga lang naiwan magisa sa isang jeep si mikee, dapat pala sinamahan ko siya, di ko namalayan na di siya nakasakay. kasi siya yung una ko kasama papunta ng magallanes kanina umaga. Nag kita lang kami sa ATC by chance at nag decide na sabay nalang. :P

Astig nga pala yung play, sulit din yung 300 pesos na ginastos namin :D lively yung crowd kahit maraming part kaming di maintindihan dahil sa bilis ng pag sasalita at lalim ng bawat salita. nakakatuwa talaga.

Lahat ng nag act ay Lalaki kahit ang role niya ay babae, at take note, Kalbo sila lahat. sobrang to the max galing nila umarte, lively na lively yung mga audience dahil nagsisingit sila ng mga jokes sa gitna. props din ay napapalakpak nalang ako sa sobrang galing ng production. Masasabi mo talaga na professional sila sa ginagawa nilang acting, saludo ako sa kanila.

At nang pauwi na kami, sumama ako sa classmates ko, adonnie, sherwin, elaine at mikee, tapos nag ka agreehan kami na mag walktrip nalang kasi sabi ni adonnie na 15-30 mins walk lang daw. sabi naman namin go lang tipid tipid din sa pera, sandali lang naman ung 15-30 minutes.

ABA! hahaha! naging lagpas 1 hour ang nilakad namin at pagod na kami nun, parang tinour lang kami ni adonnie sa mga tambayan sapot nilang mag kakatropa at sa Big brothers house, ABS-CBN at TV5. biruin mo from PETA, naglakad kami at nadaanan pa ang ABS hanggang makapunta kami ng EDSA malapit lang sa GMA-Kamuning MRT station. hahaha! haggard!

basta daming nanyari sobrang pagod lang talaga! hahaha! pero happy day naman! :D

[creativedistraction]

Thoughts after watching PETA's Haring Lear

You'll do yourself a bigger favor by watching the play instead of reading this. 

1. Costumes!!! I want a pair of Samurai pants! Since New York Fashion Week just took place, the costumes could've formed a complete menswear collection by a Japanese designer like Yohji Yamamoto or Juunj - minimal color, beautiful plays on silhouette and structure, and functional construction. The make-up meanwhile reminds me of Japanese masks. And Japanese lanterns lit up during the intermission. That this play draws inspiration from Japanese culture bodes well: the most memorable cinematic adaptation for me of a play by Shakespeare has been Akira Kurosawa's Ran.

  2. The set, sound, and light design!!! How does one describe the set? Dystopian industrial? It was definitely less Elizabethan England and more Children-of-Men era England. It meshed well with all the other elements of the play. The use of showers, electric fans and white curtains all created appealing plays in light and sound that made Haring Lear a treat for the senses. 

  3. The language!!! Let it be written that in the event that I write a play in English that could be best desribed by critics as a masterpiece, I want Bienvenido Lumbera to translate it to Filipino.[1] I surmise that if ever Shakespeare is rolling in his grave, he is doing so out of an itch to watch this play.[2]

3.a.  Lies and sarcasm are expressed in English in this otherwise Filipino play. This led me to wonder if Filipino is a language that is not well-suited for expressing sarcasm. I then remembered a conversation with German and Japanese friend and said that their respective languages don't handle sarcasm well. Maybe what they really mean is that English sarcasm doesn't translate well in their languages. Have there been any studies on this?

3.b. Pinoys are familiar of how beautiful a language Filipino is to express love, joy, and beauty. But it's a language that also crackles with wit and verve when you wish to inflict misery and misfortune upon your enemies. This play, in large part because of the translation and excellent delivery of actors, proves that. I previously thought English could best handle the demands of virtuouso profanity and creative verbal insult but this play made me rethink that.

  4. The actors!!! You know what's better than reading a Shakespeare play? Watching it! Haring Lear is a wonderful argument for why plays should continue to be staged and why people should continue (or start to) watch plays. There is something about the experience of listening live to the lilt and boom of the actors’ voices, of feeling the cold of the showers pouring down the aggrieved Haring Lear and of seeing the misty halo of light formed as he delivers his soliloquy that no 3D-movie or IMAX blockbuster could replicate. For all our attempts to make watching movies a more “real,” three-dimensional experience, sometimes the simplest solution is to watch real actors perform live.

  Etcetera:

a.       Can be tried at home: As a child, I could spend hours singing and declaiming in front of the electric fan. But you know what's more fun? Talking and singing in front of the electric fan - with a microphone. Turn up the echo of said microphone to maximum for even more fun.

b.      Can NOT be tried at home: The best eye-gouging scene I've seen live this year belongs to this play. A 1920's French ragtime[3] track makes the whole scene less Tarantino-bloody, and more Lynchian-surreal.

c.       Teroy Guzman. That man owns every Shakespare role given to him. Granted, I've only watched him perform in Anton San Juan's Macbeth and as Haring Lear in this version by Nonon Padilla, but he is good at playing flawed Shakespearean royalty beyond reasonable doubt. Definitely a sui generis performance. Having said that, Haring Lear is definitely better entertainment than your standard Filipino impeachment trial.

[1] No matter how remote the probability of this ever happening or how the universe in which this event becomes a reality has yet to come to existence, this is something that I strongly feel should be recorded.

[2] Here I ponder whether I prefer a zombie Shakespeare, a vampire Shakespeare, or a phantom Shakepeare in his aughties pop culture reincarnation. They're doing 'Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter' and ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’ A similar take on Shakespeare shouldn’t be far behind.

[3] Is that even a genre? It sounded like that to me.

[liberatingjepoy]

There's more than just Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare.  King Lear, probably one of the most intriguing works which George Bernard Shaw even commented, "No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear."

The story started with retiring King Lear who intends on dividing his kingdom among her daughters; however, he signified his bigger favor to whoever could profess her most adoration to him. Unfortunately for Cordelia, the youngest among the siblings, who's  sincere and simple-hearted, was misunderstood from her good intentions and thus was disinherited and banished.