Alison Oddey’s useful book with the title “Devising theatre” (1994) narrates how a devised theater functions in today’s strong post-modernistic theater of images and auditory.
Using traditional written play texts, source of inspirations from photography, music, news article and magazines, these collaborative artists would artistically and scientifically investigate on how to distort and deconstruct conventional insights about plot, character, idea, language, music and spectacle. This is the present twenty-first century drama and theater. Leading western artists Anna Deavere Smith, Anne Bogart, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Andy Warhol, Martha Clarke, Julie Taymor, Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook are considered to be visionary artists who paved way in promoting installations of new and exciting art devises using dance, music, theater, film, print and theater.
In the Philippines, we have selected individual theater artists and theater companies that would take interest in promoting fragments of ideas and subjects practically transposing into a full-blown theater experience.
Theater director and educator Josefina Estrella, an MFA graduate of Columbia University under a fulbright scholarship led the Philippine stage in promoting devised theater performances from her numerous recent body of work with influences of her graduate mentor Anne Bogart, an award-winning New York based director and founder of the SITI (Saratoga International Theatre Institute) company and sensei master-director-acting theorist Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki method from Japan.
The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) enthuses Philippine theater in collaborating with three of the most recognized Asian theater companies: Black Tent Theater of Japan, The Practice Theater of Singapore and Theater Company of Nottle of Korea.
Tosca, a popular Giacomo Puccini opera based on Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca, is a collaborative project shared since 2006. This 2008 project, 'Asian Tosca' was possibly made in collaboration with PETA, Black Tent Theater and Theater Company of Nottle held at the PhinMa Theater of PETA last August 30, 2008 through the generous support of The Japan Foundation with The Agency of Cultural Affairs.
From the process to its product, Asian Tosca becomes one of the best theatrical performances of the year. Weaving three versions in one devised performance is a living proof that Asian theater is and will be an exciting threat to the Westerns with new conventional theater forms uniquely told in various Asian multi-cultural ways.
To recognize its colossal effort, fantastic improvisational artists include PETA’s Nor Domingo (Mario), Bernah Bernardo (Tosca), Raffy Tejada (Scarpia) and Wil Casero (Angelotti) with BTT’s Kiritani Natsuko (Tosca), Hiraiwa Sawako (Tosca), Motoki Sachiyo (Tosca), Hattori Yoshitsugi (Mario), Kota Kadoaki (Soldier) and Nottle’s Lee, Ji-Hyun (Tosca).
Fusing improvisational movement with accurate jagged sound effects design (Shima Takeshi) was one of the theatrical highlights. PETA actors Domingo, Bernardo and Tejada, BTT’s Yoshitsugi and Natsuko and Nottle’s Lee became the powerful factors that hyped the practical but effectively functional staging. Collaborative theater directors Soxy Topacio (PETA), Kiritani Natsuko (BTT) with directing adviser Won, Young-Oh (Nottle) contributed immensely in making Asian Tosca the most powerful devised performance medium staged here in the Philippines.
Pinoy theatergoers must make themselves available in this kind of a performance. Because of the influences of the Western’s Broadway and West End, we tend not to appreciate and categorically emphasized Asian’s theatricality and magic. But when you get to evaluate those that we see in popular Broadway-type musicals and plays, most of their ideas and subjects originally rooted from the exciting and theatrical Asian traditional references.
Using traditional written play texts, source of inspirations from photography, music, news article and magazines, these collaborative artists would artistically and scientifically investigate on how to distort and deconstruct conventional insights about plot, character, idea, language, music and spectacle. This is the present twenty-first century drama and theater. Leading western artists Anna Deavere Smith, Anne Bogart, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Andy Warhol, Martha Clarke, Julie Taymor, Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook are considered to be visionary artists who paved way in promoting installations of new and exciting art devises using dance, music, theater, film, print and theater.
In the Philippines, we have selected individual theater artists and theater companies that would take interest in promoting fragments of ideas and subjects practically transposing into a full-blown theater experience.
Theater director and educator Josefina Estrella, an MFA graduate of Columbia University under a fulbright scholarship led the Philippine stage in promoting devised theater performances from her numerous recent body of work with influences of her graduate mentor Anne Bogart, an award-winning New York based director and founder of the SITI (Saratoga International Theatre Institute) company and sensei master-director-acting theorist Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki method from Japan.
The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) enthuses Philippine theater in collaborating with three of the most recognized Asian theater companies: Black Tent Theater of Japan, The Practice Theater of Singapore and Theater Company of Nottle of Korea.
Tosca, a popular Giacomo Puccini opera based on Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca, is a collaborative project shared since 2006. This 2008 project, 'Asian Tosca' was possibly made in collaboration with PETA, Black Tent Theater and Theater Company of Nottle held at the PhinMa Theater of PETA last August 30, 2008 through the generous support of The Japan Foundation with The Agency of Cultural Affairs.
From the process to its product, Asian Tosca becomes one of the best theatrical performances of the year. Weaving three versions in one devised performance is a living proof that Asian theater is and will be an exciting threat to the Westerns with new conventional theater forms uniquely told in various Asian multi-cultural ways.
To recognize its colossal effort, fantastic improvisational artists include PETA’s Nor Domingo (Mario), Bernah Bernardo (Tosca), Raffy Tejada (Scarpia) and Wil Casero (Angelotti) with BTT’s Kiritani Natsuko (Tosca), Hiraiwa Sawako (Tosca), Motoki Sachiyo (Tosca), Hattori Yoshitsugi (Mario), Kota Kadoaki (Soldier) and Nottle’s Lee, Ji-Hyun (Tosca).
Fusing improvisational movement with accurate jagged sound effects design (Shima Takeshi) was one of the theatrical highlights. PETA actors Domingo, Bernardo and Tejada, BTT’s Yoshitsugi and Natsuko and Nottle’s Lee became the powerful factors that hyped the practical but effectively functional staging. Collaborative theater directors Soxy Topacio (PETA), Kiritani Natsuko (BTT) with directing adviser Won, Young-Oh (Nottle) contributed immensely in making Asian Tosca the most powerful devised performance medium staged here in the Philippines.
Pinoy theatergoers must make themselves available in this kind of a performance. Because of the influences of the Western’s Broadway and West End, we tend not to appreciate and categorically emphasized Asian’s theatricality and magic. But when you get to evaluate those that we see in popular Broadway-type musicals and plays, most of their ideas and subjects originally rooted from the exciting and theatrical Asian traditional references.
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