Vlad Bunoan

Juan Ekis wins Best Book at the Gawad Buhay! Awards for 'Pingkian.' 

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Juan Ekis

ABS-CBN News

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:682px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1757590381267526477004_17965825496945765_1947261807497947031_n.jpg" style="width:950px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><span class="fr-inner">Juan Ekis wins Best Book at the Gawad Buhay! Awards for &#x27;Pingkian.&#x27; <em>Philstage/Facebook</em></span></span></span><strong><em>(Second of two parts. Read the first part <a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/lifestyle/2025/9/11/christian-vallez-aka-juan-ekis-in-two-acts-balancing-history-and-theater-1000">here</a>.)</em></strong></div><p>Juan Ekis doesn’t look like someone who’s just<a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/lifestyle/2025/7/30/tanghalang-pilipino-sweeps-top-honors-at-15th-gawad-buhay-awards-2200"> won a Gawad Buhay Award</a>.</p><p>Just days after winning the award for Best Book of a Musical for Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Pingkian: Isang Musikal,” Ekis was back at work revising the show for its upcoming rerun, which starts Friday, September 12. The changes, he says, focus less on overhauling the story and more on sharpening it for audiences.</p><p>“I guess a year and a half or so, the distance from the material gave me new aesthetic distance,” he says. “You can really see where it’s a little bit flimsy, where it can be clarified a little more.”</p><p>Ekis is, by his own admission, obsessed with clarity. “I take feedback seriously,” he says. “If the concern is valid, I bring it up to Jenny (Jamora, director) and Ejay (Yatco, composer). The changes I think that we did here are not just aesthetic choices. I think it’s more for clarity.”</p><p>Even before audiences filled the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez for its 2024 opening weekend, “Pingkian” arrived with the full weight of its subject matter. This was, after all, an attempt to bring to life the story and ideals of Emilio Jacinto — known in history textbooks as the “Brains of the Katipunan” — and to reframe them for a contemporary audience.</p><p>Onstage, <a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/lifestyle/2024/3/7/theater-review-pingkian-is-a-shoo-in-for-awards-next-year-1704">the gamble paid off</a> — effortlessly — winning seven Gawad Buhay awards, including one for Ekis.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>Draft after draft</strong></div><p>Behind the scenes, however, the journey to the stage was long and grueling. Early drafts were discarded and rewritten multiple times. “The first draft I wrote, I sent it to [playwright and historian] Paul Dumol and then he told me it&#x27;s really bad. I agree it&#x27;s bad. So I threw it away and rewrote until I got to draft five,” Ekis recalls. “Mostly because I did not know what to do because there is no advantage to the life of Jacinto. It&#x27;s so thin. There are only a few events. Everything else is speculation. But there&#x27;s a complete body of works. So that was the challenge.”</p><p>The playwright continues: “The version that we staged was draft six already, the one that people saw. And then we mounted it in GSIS Theater. That was draft seven, with minor revisions. And then I wrote a draft eight just before our first reading last week. But after the first reading, I saw a lot of things, so I just finished draft nine.”</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:682px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1757590614567547276041_1191101923059200_7609718807997299190_n.jpg" style="width:950px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><span class="fr-inner">Rehearsals for the rerun of &#x27;Pingkian.&#x27; <em>Tanghalang Pilipino/Facebook</em></span></span></span>Input from actors shaped the work further. “On first reading — and the first time I heard it read by actors — I got a lot of feedback from the Actors Company… And then Jenny came in, she also has inputs. We looked at it again and shuffled. Then we worked with Ejay, how does it work musically. When Ejay came, I think that&#x27;s where the magic started happening because I think it was the music that really threaded it through. Ejay read my mind and he knew exactly my emotional intentions for each of the songs.”</div><p>Even the play’s structure, with Jacinto’s delirium serving as a narrative device, was carefully conceived — with a nod to “Dante’s Inferno.” “I made the ghost of Bonifacio as Virgil and Jacinto as Dante, and then they descend into Hell, which is his delirium, his interior hell,” he reveals. “But in three parts, because when it comes to the middle, Bonifacio transfers it to Rizal… then to his mother. So it&#x27;s like the ghosts are different phases of Virgil leading Dante into Hell.”</p><p>The creative team worked closely to maintain both historical fidelity and theatrical impact. “Paw Castillo [who plays Andres Bonifacio] had some hand in the adjustment of the lyrics. I wrote in poetry without knowing how the songs will go. But in the rap parts of the entire ‘Kartilya,’ Paw had to tweak some of the words to fit the rhythm of the raps. I was using traditional Filipino forms of poetry as songs and E.J. barely touched that. He&#x27;ll just switch the lines sometimes, or add a syllable, which is okay because it may not be in the meter of poetry, but it will be in the meter of song.”</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>Evolving as a witer</strong></div><p>For the 2025 rerun, Ekis focused on clarity and emotional depth. He rewrote dialogue to sharpen meaning, refined key scenes between Bonifacio and Jacinto to make motivations clearer, and expanded the mother-son relationship for added weight. A previously cut song also returns — this time reimagined as a rap battle during a chess game with Jose Rizal.</p><p>The changes aren’t drastic, but Ekis insists they matter. “A lot of the people who will be watching are people who saw it the first time. So this time, if you are a repeat old watcher, what I want to happen to you is for motivations of the characters to be clearer,” he says. “The first time, the instinct is to feel the immensity of the revolution, to feel the drama, all the feelings. If you are a second-time, third-time watcher, I want you to grasp the intellectual layer… I wanted to make sure these layers are clearer in this drama. It’s not a major rewrite that you don’t recognize anymore the old ‘Pingkian.’ It’s the same structure but better written dialogue.”</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:682px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1757590740309546557818_1191101789725880_1294720206836085410_n.jpg" style="width:950px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><span class="fr-inner">Rehearsals for the rerun of &#x27;Pingkian.&#x27; <em>Tanghalang Pilipino/Facebook</em></span></span></span>From “Twenty Questions” to “Pingkian,” Ekis’s body of work traces the journey of an artist who has never stopped listening. At<a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/life/05/14/23/theater-review-twenty-questions-has-timeless-appeal"> the 20th anniversary of his breakthrough play</a>, he admitted, “I don’t write like that anymore,” acknowledging how his focus has shifted from dialogue-driven intimacy toward structure, plot, and social themes.</div><p>“I’m becoming, I hope, a mature writer,” he reflects. But even in the sweep of revolution, romance endures. “I&#x27;m still writing love stories. Like Pingkian and Catalina, the first one I wrote was their love song. So there&#x27;s still one left in the rom-com era, so to speak.”</p><p>Two decades after his first classic, Ekis shows that whether in whispered conversations or in the roar of history, his theater will most likely find its way back to love.</p><div><br/></div><div><em>“Pingkian: Isang Musical” runs from September 12 to October 12 at the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, CCP Complex, Pasay City.</em></div>

<p>After two decades in theater, Juan Ekis takes on his most ambitious project yet: a historical musical about Emilio Jacinto that swept awards — and continues to evolve with each new draft.</p>

After two decades in theater, Juan Ekis takes on his most ambitious project yet: a historical musical about Emilio Jacinto that swept awards — and continues to evolve with each new draft.

Act Two: Juan Ekis and the making of ‘Pingkian’

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Act Two: Juan Ekis and the making of ‘Pingkian’

Vlad Bunoan,

ABS-CBN News

Published Sep 12, 2025 10:00 AM PHT

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Updated Sep 12, 2025 01:26 PM PHT

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Pingkian

Juan Ekis

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