Double Take Brings Reverse Card and AL.TER to Makati in a Twin Bill About Memory, Grief, and Survival
Theater News | Makati Theater 2026
What to know: Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER is a twin bill from Kho-Lab Productions and Artist Playground featuring two one-act plays about identity, grief, memory, power, and the ways people try to survive what has already changed them. It runs from May 29 to June 21, 2026 at Illuminations Studio, 2723 Sabio St, corner Chino Roces Avenue, Makati, with tickets priced at PHP 1,500 through Ticket2Me.
Some theater pieces begin with a question. Others begin with a room, a memory, or a face that refuses to stay harmless.
That is the pull of Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER, the new twin bill from Kho-Lab Productions and Artist Playground. Across two one-act plays, the production follows people who are not just dealing with the past, but standing inside its echo. For audiences, the appeal is not only in the plot turns, but in the emotional question underneath them: what do we do when pain returns wearing a familiar shape?
Running from May 29 to June 21, 2026 at Illuminations Studio in Makati, Double Take pairs Reverse Card and AL.TER, two plays with different emotional temperatures but a shared interest in perception. One moves through confrontation. The other moves through grief. Together, they ask how people remember, defend, distort, and rebuild themselves after something has already broken.
Two one-act plays, one unsettling double image
Double Take is built around two one-act plays that do not simply sit beside each other. They reflect and disturb one another. Reverse Card returns as a re-run, while AL.TER expands the evening into questions of mourning, recognition, and the fragile line between remembering someone and trying to recreate them.
In Reverse Card, Marvin is a writer carrying the weight of cruelty tied to his identity. When he invites John, a former classmate and bully, into his home, the encounter becomes more than a reunion. It becomes a reckoning, especially when professional rejection, old humiliation, and unresolved anger begin to occupy the same room.
AL.TER begins in a quieter but equally painful place. Al, an interior designer grieving the death of his partner, returns to a department store connected to their shared life. There he meets Ter, also known as Terrence, a stranger whose resemblance to the person Al lost unsettles the boundary between memory and reality. What follows is less about replacing someone than about wanting the past to answer back.
Together, the two plays suggest that survival is rarely graceful. Sometimes it arrives as defense. Sometimes it looks like repetition. Sometimes it takes the shape of a familiar face appearing at the wrong time, asking us to decide whether recognition is comfort or cruelty.
Paul Jake Paule directs a twin bill of wounds and afterimages
The twin bill is directed by Paul Jake Paule, whose creative framing positions the evening as a meditation on love, loss, damage, and the versions of ourselves that remain afterward.
For Reverse Card, that means leaning into tension rather than release. The play is treated as a collision of history, silence, and emotional volatility, where conversation can feel like accusation and where old injuries refuse to stay in the background.
AL.TER, by contrast, moves like an afterimage. Where Reverse Card looks at rupture, AL.TER looks at what grief does once rupture has already happened. It follows the instinct to rebuild love from fragments, even when the result is unstable, incomplete, and painfully almost familiar.
For readers choosing a date: Because the plays use alternating casts, check the official cast schedule before booking if you are watching for a specific performer.
The playwrights behind Reverse Card and AL.TER
Reverse Card is written by Chase Kyle Loza, while AL.TER is written by Pablo Joaquin. Their plays approach pain from different angles, but the pairing gives Double Take a clear dramatic spine: what people hide, what people replay, and what people finally face when the familiar becomes unsafe.
Reverse Card is interested in how easily roles can shift once perspective changes. Rather than presenting pain as simple or one-directional, the play appears to examine how people carry injury, power, and resentment into the same space. It is the kind of premise that resists comfort because its dramatic engine depends on reversal.
AL.TER, meanwhile, begins from the sorrow of realizing value too late. Its grief is not only about losing a person, but about searching for the sensation of being loved again. In that sense, the play looks at memory as something seductive and unreliable, capable of soothing us even as it keeps us from moving forward.
The cast of Reverse Card and AL.TER
The twin bill features alternating casts across both plays, allowing different actor pairings to shape the emotional temperature of Marvin, John, Al, and Ter throughout the run.
Reverse Card cast
- Marvin: Gerhard Krysstopher, Inah Evans, Jarold Brimbuela
- John: Gerald Magallanes, Drei Arias, Lance Cabradilla
AL.TER cast
- Al: CJ Tiongson, Johnrey Rivas
- Ter: James Ramada, Drei Arias, John Ven Soco
Why Double Take feels timely
There is a particular kind of theater that understands that the most frightening thing is not always spectacle. Sometimes it is recognition.
Placed together, Reverse Card and AL.TER form a double image of damage and survival. One play looks at what erupts when a wound is forced into the open. The other looks at what remains when love has become memory and memory begins to distort the present.
That makes Double Take feel less like two separate offerings and more like a carefully staged echo. It asks audiences to watch not only what people say to each other, but what they project, protect, and mistake for healing.
Performance schedule
Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER runs from May 29 to June 21, 2026, with performances every Friday to Sunday at Illuminations Studio in Makati.
| Day | Showtime |
|---|---|
| Fridays | 8:00 PM |
| Saturdays | 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM |
| Sundays | 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM |
Tickets are priced at PHP 1,500 and are available through Ticket2Me. Audiences are advised to check the official ticketing page or the producing companies’ channels for cast schedules, ticket availability, and any updates before purchasing.
About Kho-Lab Productions and Artist Playground
Kho-Lab Productions is a creative platform for theater, music, and interdisciplinary work that centers Filipino stories through collaboration. For Double Take, that collaborative energy meets the exploratory spirit of Artist Playground.
Artist Playground, founded by Roeder Camañag, continues to position performance as a space for discovery, play, and experimentation. In this twin bill, that vision finds form in two plays that ask audiences to look again at pain, memory, and the stories people tell in order to survive.
Frequently asked questions
What is Double Take?
Double Take is a twin bill production featuring two one-act plays, Reverse Card and AL.TER, presented by Kho-Lab Productions and Artist Playground.
When does Double Take run?
Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER runs from May 29 to June 21, 2026, with performances every Friday to Sunday.
Where is Double Take staged?
The production is staged at Illuminations Studio, 2723 Sabio St, corner Chino Roces Avenue, Makati.
Where can audiences buy tickets?
Tickets are priced at PHP 1,500 and are available through Ticket2Me. Audiences should check the official ticketing page or the producing companies’ channels for available dates, cast schedules, and updates.
For audiences planning to watch, confirm the final cast schedule and ticket availability through the official ticketing page or the producing companies’ channels before booking.