Bibot Amador: My boss, my friend

She was God’s weird answer to my prayer to find something to do with my life at age 40. First I auditioned and was hired as an actress. Talent fee: P50.

Then, a year later, she threw a book at me and said, "Read it. Do it." It was Danny Newman’s Subscribe Now and the next thing I knew, what had originally been a housewife’s respite from boredom became a life’s work.

This was one of Zeneida "Bibot" Amador’s many talents – how to get the most out of people – how to get them to develop their talents to their fullest and use them. Sometimes the road was very rocky but in the end, if one can judge by the hundreds of theater workers (off-stage and on) who shed tears at her wake and funeral, not to mention the strong company she left behind, evidently she used this talent well.

When she first learned of the cancer that was rapidly eating away at her body, she said to me, "All my life I have played games. This is the first time it isn’t a game." I knew what she meant. Her public face, the way she handled actors, the way she knew just what persons to pick to do particular jobs or to perform particular functions, and even her tantrums and her legendary temper were all part of the grand game she was playing with life. She was having fun and trying to win what she wanted out of life – a strong theater company for actors that she and her co-founder and lifetime partner Baby Barredo were building – an audience for the actors, a theater industry, and a country where the level of art appreciation would reflect its level of civilization.

The game she played with me was to make me use my education and training to help her build an audience for theater in return for making me what I wanted to be – a good actress. She had her work cut out for her. She said to me "I need your f––– logical, vertical thinking IN THE OFFICE BUT I DON’T WANT THEM ON STAGE! STOP F––––THINKING! (Capitals signifying level of vocal power). At first she thought she could get away with giving me token parts (she was never one to make her life more difficult then necessary) and treated me gently.

But one day I said to her, "Why don’t you criticize my acting the way you do the others? She replied, "Do you really want to be an actress?" I replied, "Yes, I do." That was when she began my training in earnest, and, like she did with so many others, began testing the depth of my passion. It was only a few years ago, by the way, that she finally gave me her nod of approval.

Her trials and tribulations in trying to turn me into an actress would take too long to enumerate here. Trying to release me from the walls that the "outside" world had built around me took all her skill and patience. (Although at the time she didn’t seem very patient with me.) There is one thing she said to me which I will never forget and which perhaps sums up what she did. I was doing the role of an aging, sexy dancer in A Chorus Line, a role which I had wanted desperately and which she had fought others to give me, and I balked at having to dye my hair blonde which was integral to the role.

She barked at me: "Do you want to be the wife of the Finance Minister or do you want to be a slut?" I dyed my hair.

I was a difficult subject. In the office I argued too much. I was one of the few brave enough to do so. But I knew it was useless to try and hide what I was thinking. She knew me too well. She knew when I was trying to manipulate her, to sugarcoat something to get what I wanted and when I was being snide. She, on the other hand, had strong and firm ideas about what she wanted or didn’t want.

Our personalities and temperaments were as far apart as they could possibly be. But we were always on the same wavelength and a decision eventually would be reached that was best for Rep. She knew I was reasonable and loyal and I, on the other hand, had great respect and admiration for her superior intellect and her practical, down-to-earth instincts. With all that has been said about her temper, she still had a way of dealing with people that made them admire, respect and even love her. This, along with her tremendous talent as an actress and director, I admired and envied – along with her wit and ability to swear very colorfully and creatively which illustrated her fluency in both English and Tagalog.

Traveling with Bibot was another unforgettable experience. We used to travel to New York or London with members of the company until it began to get very expensive. Sometimes we would take side trips to see famous spots in Europe. She loved to travel but was desperately afraid of flying. So, getting her on the plane was a chore in itself. If one had the misfortune of sitting next to her on the flight, that person would be lucky if she got off the plane with all her fingers intact. Bibot would have her hand and arm in an iron grip the whole flight. As she lay on her sick bed she said to me: "I have been afraid of a lot of things but now I no longer am afraid. I just hope I can go quickly. As quickly as..." Then she hesitated and I teased, "As a plane crash?" And she smiled.

Another thing one had to be prepared to do while when traveling with Bibot was to spend half the morning eating a sumptuous breakfast at the best breakfast place in town, the other half looking for the best restaurant in which to have lunch, and much of the afternoon looking for the best place to have dinner. Bibot was not interested in shopping. Restaurants, museums and theaters were her haunts. Oh, yes. And casinos.

Once we had booked tickets a year in advance for a very famous spectacular musical dramatization of the Easter Story at Oberammergau in Germany – an event that happens only once every 10 years. True, the lodgings were not very comfortable and it was raining and freezing cold (the theater was only half-roofed) and so we watched the first act in discomfort. (At least, I watched the first act. She went outside very often to smoke.) However, I was caught entirely by surprise (and for a long time wouldn’t forgive her) because when I exited for the intermission she was waiting for me, grabbed the tickets out of my hand and handed them to a man standing nearby. She was jubilant. She said: "I sold our tickets for the second half to that man for the price of the whole show. Now let’s go back and pack. We are moving to the next town. There is a decent hotel there." I knew there was also a casino there. I was livid. "But we’ve only seen the first act. I want to see the whole thing," I said. She replied: "What for? You know the ending."

Yes, life with my boss was anything but dull. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if she hadn’t been part of it. And as I thought about her wake and the hundreds of people representing three generations of her life streaming in and out of the room where her ashes were; as I felt the warmth of the actors sitting around me on the stage giving their talents in a final tribute to their creator, and as I looked down at the friends and family in the audience that filled the vast theater that is Rep’s present home, I knew I was just one of hundreds, and, if you count audiences, millions, whose lives she made better by the way she lived hers.