Wazzup Pilipinas!
Tanghalang Ateneo, the longest-running theater company of the Loyola Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University, celebrates its 36th season with the theme “Navigating Identities”. To articulate this, the company will stage plays that explore man’s need to find himself and his place in the world.
After a successful production of Han Ong's "Middle Finger" last August, the company now focuses its attention on Glenn Sevilla Mas's "Rite of Passage: Sa Pagtubu kang Tahud (An adaptation of a Kinaray-a short story by Maria Milagros Geremia Lachica).
The play was first produced by Tanghalang Pilipino for the Virgin Labfest, the Cultural Center of the Philippines' annual festival of new plays in 2005.
Set in Catungan IV, a quiet barrio in the province of Antique, the play opens with a painful ritual that propels reluctant, young protagonist Isoy into manhood. As he is seduced by the promised pleasures of sex, Isoy bravely confronts his past in a bid to take control of his future, and the truth can be as overwhelming as the lurid images of scantily-clothed women in magazines.