Wazzup Pilipinas!
The winners of the Short+Sweet Theater Manila 2015 festival of 10-minute plays were announced last night, September 27, 2015, at the Samsung Hall of SM Aura in Taguig city during the awarding ceremonies following the final presentations of the 12 finalists.
Congratulations to the sensually humorous "Voicing Up the Marriage" (above photo) for bagging the Best Play award for the Short+Sweet Theater Manila 2015. The Best Actor was also last year's winner of the same recognition, namely the truly astounding Eshai Mesina for "Captain Everything" which also won as an audience favorite for the Wildcard category. The Best Actress of the festival was the highly protective and caring "Nanay" of the play "Si Nelson, Ang Nanay, Ang Pancit Canton" which also won for the writer as the Best Playwright. There were two highly deserving winners for the Best Director category namely the directors of "Thank You, Mr. Pongpat" and "Decision, Decisions."
Also announced were additional winners for the Audience Poll from the weeks and wildcards of the festival. We still need to get the official list of winners so we can give you the accurate names and categories but from what I remembered the recognized were "Speaking Freely", "A Good Deed for Mr. Stinky", "Afterwards", "Lunes", and an award for best poster which a friend, Martin Vicencio, were among the guys who came up on stage to receive the award. We will update this post as soon as the organizers of Short+Sweet Theater Manila send us the official list of winners.
Actually, the winners were already determined the previous night after a few select unannounced and secret judges who were among the audience evaluated all the performances of the 12 finalists at their 2nd to the last performance on September 26, 2015.
We were there on both days (Saturday and Sunday) and we're able to do some backstage crash video interviews with the different groups, and were among the audience to witness both runs of the shows for the final 12. We even saw two of the judges, which we will never reveal, but both personalities are very prominent in Philippine theater.
According to the finalists, it is not about the award but more of the fun and friendship that they got from the competition. For most of them, Short+Sweet is not really a competition but an opportunity for them to showcase their talent not just to the audience but also among their peers who are like-minded individuals who appreciate the art of theater acting. The 10-minute restriction was a huge challenge for all as it's quite hard to compress engaging stories within those limits.
We will tell you more about our experience soon. For now enjoy the photos and sorry if there was an inconsistency in the quality since I ran out of juice in my camera to power up until the very last end of the awarding ceremonies. I actually took videos of the plays and I also mentioned that I did crash interviews before the start of the shows - all of which are now continuously being uploaded on our YouTube channel (many are already out there for you to enjoy). The rest of the photos were taken using my smartphone. (I also was not able to take a photo of the Best Director(s) as that was the time when my battery drained out, but was too slow to grab my smartphone).
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| A Good Deed for Mr. Stinky |
The Award Winners of Short + Sweet Theatre Festival Manila 2015
Best Overall Production - Voicing Up the Marriage
Written by: Bruno Starrs
Directed by: Dean Chua
Cast: Ariel Diccion, Katski Flores
Best Directors -
Alphonzo Alegrado for Thank You Mr. Pongpat
Katreen Dela Cruz for Decisions, Decisions
Best Actor - Eshei Mesina for Captain Everything
Best Actress - Dolly De Leon for Si Nelson, Ang Nanay, Ang Pancit Canton
Best Playwright - Vladimeir Gonzales for Si Nelson, Ang Nanay, Ang Pancit Canton
Best Poster Design - Earth Hour Heist
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| Afterwards |
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| Best Actor for "Captain Everything" |
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| Best Actress for "Si Nelson, Ang Nanay, Ang Pancit Canton" |
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| Best Playwright for "Si Nelson, Ang Nanay, Ang Pancit Canton" |
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| Best Poster |
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| Audience favorite for "Lunes" |
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| Audience favorite for "Speaking Freely" |
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
