Guests gather beneath falling artificial snow at Harry Potter: A Yule Ball Celebration. Photo courtesy of GMG Productions. Harry Potter: A Yule Ball Celebration is staying in Manila longer than first announced. The interactive Wizarding World event, whose first sessions began on September 3 at The Space at Solaire, will now run through December 13, 2026. Presented by Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences and Fever in collaboration with GMG Productions, the Yule Ball brings guests into a winter ballroom built around the familiar formal-night setting from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire . The immediate news is practical: people who could not make the opening weeks now have additional dates to choose from as the city moves into the final stretch of the year. The Yule Ball now has a December finish The extension gives the event a place in Manila's holiday calendar, which suits an experience already built around formal dress, Christmas trees, music from the films, and a ball...

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...

Photo by Saul de Jesus. I went into the Pinocchio press con at Ayala Malls Feliz on August 22 already knowing the story, or at least the version of it most of us carry around in our heads. There is Geppetto, a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, a nose that refuses to cooperate with lies, and one bad decision after another until Pinocchio finally learns what becoming "real" is supposed to mean. What I did not expect was to leave thinking less about the puppet and more about the young company Ephesus Teatron Group is putting around her. Brie Mosquito plays Pinocchio when the musical runs October 9 to 11 at the Activity Center of Ayala Malls Feliz in Pasig, and what stood out to me was how present she remained throughout the afternoon. She performed, stayed for the conversation and answered for herself when the microphone reached her while the adults around her listened. Later, Brie stood as the discussion continued. Nobody made a grand point out ...

Production images from the Ambon, Ulan, Baha media release. No photographer credit appears in the available materials. Ambon, Ulan, Baha was already talking about deforestation, flooding, and the cost of unchecked development in the 1970s. Almost 50 years later, it is heading back to the Metropolitan Theater. Frank G. Rivera's ethno-pop-rock zarzuela will be staged at the MET in Manila on September 26 and 27, 2026. CJ Navato and Thea Astley play Nonoy and Inday, with Anton Juan, Rendell Sanchez, Nazer Salcedo, Onyl Torres, Shermaine Santiago, and Sweet Buchanan also in the cast. The 2026 staging is presented by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Metropolitan Theater, and produced by Pixel Art Media Production Co. This is not a newly written environmental story borrowing an old setting. The material itself goes back nearly five decades. The problem at its center never really left. The work started as Kaingin in 1976, part of MSU...

Disney’s Frozen The Broadway Musical will make its Philippine premiere in April 2027 at the Proscenium Theater in Rockwell, Makati. Official logos courtesy of 9 Works Theatrical. Manila theater already has one of its biggest 2027 titles, and we do not even have a cast yet. 9 Works Theatrical is bringing Disney’s Frozen The Broadway Musical to Manila for its Philippine premiere in April 2027 at the Proscenium Theater in Rockwell, Makati. Yes, Manila is going to Arendelle. The musical is based on Disney’s 2013 animated film, with music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Filipino-American composer Robert Lopez, and a book by Jennifer Lee. It also arrives with a built-in problem for whoever stages it: almost everyone already knows what Frozen is supposed to look, sound, and feel like. Frozen Manila 2027: what has been announced Production: Disney’s Frozen The Broadway Musical Producer: 9 Works Theatrical Venue: Proscenium Theater, Rockwel...