The FEU Theater Guild is opening its 93rd season with MORYON , a Filipino adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s Mother Sauvage that moves the story to Japanese-occupied Marinduque and places the Moriones tradition at the center of its world. Written and directed by Dudz Teraña, MORYON runs at the FEU Center for the Arts Studio from October 1 to November 28, 2026 , with performances scheduled throughout the two-month run. It is a fascinating choice of setting for a story built around grief, violence and the complicated line between justice and revenge. MORYON takes place on Holy Thursday in Mogpog, Marinduque, during the Japanese occupation, while the Moriones tradition continues around its characters and masked devotees take to the streets in acts of faith and penance even as war changes the lives of the people living behind those traditions. At the center of the play is Caridad, a mother waiting for her son Joaquin. Joaquin is a young guerrilla who wants t...

For Filipino playwrights with a script sitting unfinished on their laptop, Puregold Teatro Panalo is offering a solid reason to open it again. The new theater festival is now accepting original one-act plays and musicals for its inaugural run in 2027, with only 12 works making the final lineup: eight straight plays and four musicals. Each selected playwright will receive a ₱100,000 fee, while the festival will shoulder production costs, including the professional fees of the cast and crew. The bigger opportunity, though, is that the chosen scripts will actually be staged before an audience during the festival, which is currently set for sometime between February and March 2027. The venue has yet to be announced. You do not need to be an established playwright Puregold Teatro Panalo is open to both amateur and professional playwrights aged 18 and above, so this is not limited to writers who already have a long list of productions or credits behind them. The call is a...

Westerberg High is coming to Manila, and a Filipina will be at the center of it. Heathers the Musical will make its Philippine debut at The Theatre at Solaire from January 21 to February 7, 2027 , with Filipina performer Gerardine Sacdalan leading the international cast as Veronica Sawyer. For Manila theater audiences who have been waiting for the darkly funny musical to make its way here, this is not a locally assembled version of the show. Sacdalan arrives with the international company following the production's London season and UK and Ireland tour. Gerardine Sacdalan in Heathers the Musical. Photo by Pamela Raith. A Filipina Veronica Sawyer Sacdalan steps into one of contemporary musical theater's most recognizable young roles after previously leading the UK tour of & Juliet as Juliet, a performance that earned her a WhatsOnStage Award nomination for Best Professional Debut. She is joined by Louis Hearsey as Jason “J.D.” Dean,...

PETA is putting young people in charge of a flooded Philippines and asking the audience to help decide what happens next. That is the setup of Gen G: GG na ’to! , a new interactive production from the Philippine Educational Theater Association and Move to Change Foundation, Inc. Set in an alternate Philippines in 2028, floodwaters overwhelm the country and young people end up in temporary communities called Balangay Gen Zones. The adults promise to return, but they don’t — so the young people have to figure out how to run the Balangay themselves: who gets welcomed, what matters when resources run low, and what kind of community they want to build. The audience gets involved in those decisions too. Gen G uses voting, negotiation, and other forms of participation to influence what happens onstage. Co-playwright Jhudiel Sosa describes one of its starting ideas as a “decision-based game”: you choose, the story responds, and then you deal with what that choi...

I went to Halxyon Club in Poblacion on August 27 for the press conference of Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad , and the obvious thing to talk about would be the bodies. The production makes no effort to hide them. Five attractive men, shirtless key visuals, harnesses, a male revue bar, an 18+ advisory, and partial and full nudity are all part of what is being sold. Even the title tells you exactly where your eyes are supposed to go first. But after listening to the cast together and then speaking with each of them more closely, I came away thinking the bodies may actually be the easiest part of this show to understand. Written and directed by Jojo Urquico, Last Dance follows five performers inside the dressing room of a struggling male revue bar on what may be their final night. There is a storm outside, the possibility of a police raid, and five men carrying their own dreams, relationships, fears and compromises into one room. It also opens the door to som...