The joy of love and the pain of loving in ‘Mapanakit’
BJ Borja is a storyteller. An engaging one. As a theater director, he is a compelling tailor of tales.
He’s also ambitious. As artistic director of the Biñan Youth Performance Council (YPC), he’s always motivated to bring to the national stage the community theater he put-up in the lone district of Biñan.
The day came when homegrown talents of the 21-year-old YPC shared the limelight, from up-stage-right to down-stage-left, with established thespians from Manila’s theater scene via Mapanakit, a production of three one-act plays helmed grippingly by BJ at the IBG-KAL Theater in UP Diliman. All three short plays—Ang Liknayan ng Ating mga Katawan, Ilihan at Kalingaw, and Ganito ang Pinangarap Kong Kasal—were written by award-winning playwright Eljay Castro Deldoc.
Mapanakit is about the tender nature of love. And how this tenderness of love makes lovers susceptible to hurt. Love hurts. And those who have not experienced pain caused by love have not truly loved at all.
It celebrates the joy of love, the pain of loving, and the bittersweet realities of a life that is in love.
YPC actor Jury Sanchez, opposite film, TV and theater actor Ros Pesigan, opened the stage as Hershey Mae in Ang Liknayan ng Ating mga Katawan. Aside from the crisp lines the script provided, this production worked well because of the outstanding blocking.
Jury and Ross kept circling on a long experiment table in a science lab many times as if their movements on stage mirrored the dizzying movements of the heart when in love—or when the heart doesn’t want to commit.
Liknayan, the Filipino term for “physics,” is about the science of falling in love and how to go easy about it; or better yet, how to thwart a looming affair long before it starts. According to the absorbing script of Eljay, the law of physics can measure love and the havoc it might create.
BJ, who directed Ningas in the 2024 Virgin Lab Fest at the CCP, told the tale without any reservation as he allowed Jury, whose character Hershey Mae fell in love with her teacher, Sir Banakon, to meander between hurt and hope seamlessly. Jury brought to the stage pure energy—and hunger. Hers was an undeniable, unadulterated performance; sincere from start to finish.
As for Ross, he was his usual pure theater indulgence. His fire was at times subdued, the element that made him all the more incandescent on stage.
In Ilihan at Kalingaw, a story about forbidden mythical lovers, YPC emerging actor Euden Moje must have butterflies in his stomach as he performed with Gab Pangilinan, who recently essayed the role of Mary Magdalene in the Manila staging of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Euden’s luster couldn’t be contained. He proved that he was born for the stage because his rendition of Kalingaw was both poignant and poetic.
Watching the one-act play feels like being in a poetry reading session. Each verse was absorbed by the heart. The lines were already piercingly painful; what more when Gab delivered them?
BJ made Ilihan and Kalingaw very quiet, perhaps because the script of Eljay was already evocative. In the silence of the play could be heard the director’s plea for all kinds of love to be free.
On the other hand, Ganito ang Pinangarap Kong Kasal was a vehicle for Loudette Barrias to bring to the fore her community theater mettle. As Kris, the closest friend and third wheel of gay couple France (veteran stage actor Phi Palmos) and Noel (Kokoy de Santos of Fuccbois and Gameboys fame), Loudette was a convincing picture of support and ruin. A dynamo on stage, she seemed to need very little to give a lot on the acting table. She was natural and hilarious. Watch her harbor silent pain when a fissure in their troika became apparent. A love that was real and free could not even remedy the crack.
Phi was his usual best. Someone like him, who starred in Rak of Aegis, Ang Huling El Bimbo, Zsazsa Zaturnah the Musical, and The Reconcilliation Dinner, would always be a dependable gem on stage.
Kokoy, on the other hand, was an engaging revelation. His moving versatility was apparent in Ganito ang Pinangarap Kong Kasal. Mapanakit din siya.
In Mapanakit, BJ Borja, an eloquent stage storyteller, proved why he’s a living treasure of Biñan City. His heart beats for the art. That he was able to bring grassroots theater to Imperial Manila, so to speak, is an accomplishment worthy of a reprise.
(Mapanakit is still playing at IBG-KAL Theater in UP Diliman, Quezon City on Aug. 7, 8 and 9.)
