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Rep to leave Onstage Greenbelt home after 'Snow White'

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Leah C. Salterio

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt="Snow White and the Prince" will="" be="" the="" last="" production="" to="" presented="" at="" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2023/life/09/22/20230922-snow-white.jpg"/><figcaption>Snow White and the Prince&#x27; will be the last production to be presented at Onstage. Handout</figcaption></figure></div>MANILA -- On December 17, Repertory Philippines will close down its curtains at Onstage Theater in Greenbelt, Makati City where it staged hundreds of musicals, drama productions, comedies and classics through the years.Ayala Land will tear down the building and pave the way for the construction of a bigger mall. “This stage has also produced a lot of great actors who started their careers with Rep,” Repertory Philippines Foundation president and CEO Mindy Perez-Rubio told ABS-CBN News. “Onstage holds a lot of meaning for them.”“However, Rep is marching on in 2024 with a spectacular season and we will return to a full season with four productions,” Rubio assured. “We will start with a straight play that is critically-acclaimed, written by a Nobel prize-winner.“The second play is the second longest-running musical off-Broadway. The third is a an original musical based on a Filipino legend. The last will be using the music of a very well-known singer-composer. It will be a series of four vignettes written by four Reppers. We are all so proud and excited to bring 2024 to all of you.”Repertory Philippines productions, meanwhile, will be transferred to the Carlos P. Romulo Theater at RCBC Building also in Makati starting next year. Joy Virata, creative director of Repertory Theater for Young Audiences (RTYA), cannot be any happier now that RTYA is back onstage with Rep’s “Snow White and the Prince,” the last play to be presented at Onstage. The last play RTYA presented live was “The Quest for the Adarna,” an original musical based on the Filipino folklore, back in January 2020.“Productions of RTYA are meant for all ages and nor just simply for children,” Virata said. “Even adults are enjoying it quite a lot.“We have a very nice program, ‘Bring the Child To the Theater.’ Theater is a workshop for children. They are taught to listen and pay attention. We believe that children’s theater plays a great role in developing the nation.“They stimulate imagination for the kids and that’s what theater does. That’s why I’d like to expose children to the arts.”Virata is at the helm of RTYA’s current production, “Snow White and the Prince,” with Cara Barredo as assistant director and musical director, Stephen Viñas as choreographer, Kaya Teodoro as set designer, Raven Ong as costume designer and John Batalla as lighting designer.“Snow White and the Prince” is a “very happy” experience for Virata. “I had a very excellent artistic group. It’s the whole group, the whole cast, the whole team. I’m very conceited. I’d like to call them Team Joy.“They took all the stress away from me. They are very, very careful that I will not be stressed. Their favorite line was, ‘We got your back, Tita.’”“Snow White and the Prince” started production planning last January, while actual rehearsals began second week of July.“After four hours a day, my actors are very, very hard working, they came through and that was about the production for this performance,” Virata said.Costume designer Ong veered away from the traditional look of the dwarfs and made them sport colorful and playful costumes.“They read the script and all the imagination goes. That was what he came up with,” Virata said.The cast of characters have three alternates for the lead roles and two alternates for the supporting roles, the ensemble and the dwarfs.“We have so many shows,” Virata said. “We have two or three shows in a day and if you saw the energy of the actors, that’s not sustainable for three shows in a day.“Also, the actors get busy. If they need to be in another show, there is a replacement for them. They are not just actors, they also sing. We have a motto in RTYA, ‘Happiness and energy’.”Snow White is the first lead role of young theater actress Kiara Dario, who also does pop with her all-female group Daydream. She is also the head of the retro music collective, Bracket A.Dario has been doing theater for Repertory Philippines since she was 14, but has been into professional theater for more than a decade now, starting from Marie Eugenie Theater in Assumption College for which she won the Metta Gold Award and later, the UP Diliman Theater Arts Department.“I grew up in theater and I think theater really prepared me for any type of performance,” Dario said. “I think a lot of us here have a lot of other avenues of performance. Theater is the culmination of all these different forms of art.“I think that my theater background really helps me, even in my pop career [with Daydream]. I really take what I’ve learned from theater and apply it to my performances. It’s just so inspiring because everyone that I work with is just multi-hyphenates.“I think that’s what really helps me into theater because it requires so much of you. It’s just an amazing training ground for any kind of art.”Dario grew up in theater seats watching Rep actors performed before her. “It’s just amazing for me to be able to work with them now,” she said.“As I’m on the other side now, facing the audience. I’m just getting all of these pieces from the actors with me. They were my inspirations and my idols. Now, I get to work with them and I’m just learning so much every single day that I work with these people.”Neo Rivera, who steps into the role of the Prince, treats the show as his playground. “I’m doing a lot of stuff outside like hosting, content creation, series,” said Rivera. “Stepping into RTYA is a place for me to move around.”Carla Guevarra-Laforteza, who plays the wicked Queen, proudly started her acting career in Rep under Virata way back in 1993. “I always give way to do Rep’s children’s theater when Tita Joy needs me and I’m available,” Laforteza admitted.“In a notch, I will make myself available. This is where I grew up. This is where I learned most the things that I’m doing now. Not just in my theater career, but in my life. Every role I did is different. I just love to do character roles.“Rep is my home. This is where I grew up. This is where I learned most of the things that I’m doing now. This is where I learned how to make friends, how to take care of people and how to take care of myself. That’s why I keep going back to Rep.“Just like others, we all need to earn and do other stuff. That’s why I do TV, I do films, but I will always say yes to Repertory. I will even offer myself to Rep.”

On December 17, Repertory Philippines will close down its curtains at Onstage Theater in Greenbelt, Makati City where it staged hundreds of musicals, drama productions, comedies and classics through the years.