Stay a Little Longer in Cebu Aug. 29-30
Memory does not always disappear in one clean break.
Sometimes the room is familiar but the year is wrong. A face may be recognized, then placed in another part of a life. Families often respond by correcting the details.
Stay a Little Longer asks what happens when correction stops helping.
2TinCans Philippines stages the full-length drama at The Kabilin Center in Cebu City on August 29 and 30, 2026. Sarah Mae Enclona-Henderson wrote the play and leads the cast as HER, with Shifrah Bouchikhi-Enclona directing.
HER moves between several stages of her life without experiencing them as distant memories. She is a child mourning her brother, a young woman who wants to be chosen, a wife, a mother, a physician, and an older woman trying to understand why she is in a hospice room.
To the people around her, these moments belong to different years. HER experiences them as something happening now.
When being right gets in the way
The play questions the instinct to keep correcting her.
That instinct often comes from care. A family member wants to anchor someone in the room, the date, or the relationship everyone else accepts as real. But correction can also become another demand placed on the person who is already struggling.
Enclona-Henderson describes dementia as something that unsettles both the person experiencing it and everyone who loves them. She asks whether being right is more important than being present.
The play is not arguing that facts do not matter. It is asking what care looks like after facts stop settling the situation.
Stay a Little Longer also refuses the easy shorthand that memory loss means the person is already gone. HER’s sense of time may be unstable, but she still has fear, affection, dignity, and a need to be treated as someone who remains fully human.
The play does not romanticize dementia. It pushes back against the habit of mourning a person while they are still in the room.
One hospice room, several versions of time
The production remains inside a single hospice room. According to Bouchikhi-Enclona, lighting, sound, performance, and small changes in the space will allow different periods of HER’s life to occupy the same place.
She does not want to explain every shift or make the experience easier to organize from the audience’s seat. Her aim is to let viewers feel the confusion, frustration, tenderness, and brief moments of recognition alongside HER.
The intention is clear: do not tidy HER’s experience for the comfort of everyone watching.
Cast and creative team
Enclona-Henderson leads the cast as HER. Jonathan Tad Tadioan plays HUSBAND, Charlene Virlouvet plays DAUGHTER, Shiella Pestaño-Gemperoa plays DOCTOR, and Rio Delizo plays NURSE.
Benjun Yu handles stage management, while Louie Carlo Basalo is responsible for production design.
Cebuano theater does not need Manila’s permission
Stay a Little Longer is part of KULUKABILDO II: Stories in Direct Light, a program developing original work through the voices of emerging Cebuano directors.
Regional theater is still too often treated as something Manila discovers, validates, or summarizes later. Meanwhile, Cebuano artists are already writing, directing, producing, and performing the work.
Coverage should meet them where they are.
Stay a Little Longer belongs in the wider Philippine theater conversation now, not after someone from Manila decides it has arrived.
Stay a Little Longer show details
Dates: August 29 and 30, 2026
Venue: The Kabilin Center, Cebu City
Presented by: 2TinCans Philippines
Playwright: Sarah Mae Enclona-Henderson
Director: Shifrah Bouchikhi-Enclona
Check tickets and available schedules
Photos and production materials courtesy of 2TinCans Philippines.