“Love Confessions”

CEBU, Philippines - Is love – when shorn of its trivial contexts and nuances – a seminally blind rhetoric that’s riddled with misguided clichés? Is it a “many splendored thing,” or is it really just a discordant game that dissects material effects from purposeful meaning?

These were among the many musings raised in “Love Confessions” – a theatrical presentation of various poems, monologues and soliloquies, held last February 14 at Qube Gallery at The Crossroads in Banilad. The Valentine show had six actors play out different literary pieces, each revolving around the subject of love – confessions that unveil the many masks that hide behind love’s many façades.

Minimalist in performance yet profound in content, the show revealed the style that the OurHouse theatrical troupe aims to introduce to the local theater scene – a contemporary direction that is mainly concerned with the telling of stories, without employing overly elaborate theatrics.

From a tear-jerker performance of Juan Miguel Severo’s “Ito Na Ang Huling Tula na Isusulat ko Para Sayo” to a free-verse piece on the hitches that emerge when “love” turns into a “relationship,” the show cinched the novel staging styles that identify contemporary theater from its classic forbearers.

“Love Confessions” illustrated how less can mean more in creative presentations – underscoring that the audience’s experience of the lines by Shakespeare, Goethe or Albee is not as much in fancy backdrops, props or complicated stage dioramas as in the quality of performance.

The show was co-presented by Qube Gallery. (FREEMAN)