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...

Update, September 14, 2026: The official Puregold Teatro Panalo application form is no longer accepting entries. The original deadline was September 11, 2026, at 11:59 PM. This article preserves the original call for the planned 2027 festival. The original announcement called for 12 one-act works: eight straight plays and four musicals. It offered each selected playwright a ₱100,000 fee and full production support, including cast and crew fees. The festival was planned for February to March 2027, with no venue named in that announcement. Who could submit Amateur and professional playwrights aged 18 and above could submit. The call welcomed comedy, drama, experimental work, musical theater, and other approaches. The call accepted scripts in English or any Filipino language. Regional-language entries required an English translation. Each playwright could submit up to two entries, with only one work per applicant eligible for selection. Selection ...

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. 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, Liberty Stottor as Heather Chandler, Jessica Ibadin as Heather Duke, and Lou Henry as Heather McNamara. Gerardine Sacdalan and Louis Hea...

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...