Foreign ‘invasion’: Shakespearean Festival / Spanish Fiesta 2005

Macbeth, set for Sept. 14 and 15 at the CCP Little Theater, will open the Shakespeare Festival which will celebrate the 25th year of the British Council currently headed by director Jill Westaway.

Macbeth is described as "unforgettably intense, brilliantly realised, and filled with extraordinary insights into the darkest places of the human soul. It is a masterpiece of violence, guilt and the quest for power at any cost. A play unmatched in its exploration of the corrosive effects of power, it shows with searing clarity how little separates military heroism from violent brutality."

To be staged by the Theatre Babel, it will bring together some of Scotland’s most celebrated and admired actors and designers who will create a large-scale production with a specially commissioned sound score. Macbeth premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004.

To prove how widely-known and appreciated Macbeth is in this country, my late mother, a doctor of medicine, portrayed Lady Macbeth in the sleep-walking scene for a high school production in Batangas in the early 1900s.

Other plays for the Shakespeare Festival will be Romeo and Juliet (Tanghalang Pilipino), Hamlet (Philippine Playhouse), Richard III (Actor’s Actors), Taming of the Shrew (Repertory Philippines), Why the Fuss About Shakespeare? (Dancers Inc.).

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Details are still scanty in Ambassador Lise Favre’s announcement, made during the celebration of the Swiss National Day, of the first production in Pilipino of Romulus the Great, the famous "unhistorical comedy" by Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, one of the leading German language dramatists of the 20th century.

The play will be mounted by PETA (the Philippine Educational Theater Association) in its new theater venue in QC from Nov. 27 to Dec. 3.

Years ago, I watched in Intramuros Durenmatt’s powerful play The Visit, likewise staged by PETA. It starred the beauty queen and brilliant lawyer Pacita de los Reyes Philipps in the leading role.

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This early, Instituto Director Javier Galvan announces the forthcoming Spanish Fiesta 2005. On Oct. 11, at the CCP main theater, Suenos (Dreams) will star Sara Baras, known as Spain’s best female flamenco dancer. She will head a company of eight dancers and seven musicians. The dancers will return to flamenco puro, the finest and most essential form of the art.

Baras is "famous for her ability to work her audience into a frenzy with her powerful passionate dances". Twice honored with Spain’s most prestigious dance award, the Premio Nacional de Danza, she has been hailed worldwide for her intensity, brilliant footwork and elegant spirit.

Born in Spain in 1971, Baras was named the "Face of Andalusia" in 2002 and honored as the female representative of dance in Spain with her face appearing on a postal stamp.

Her company has toured extensively around the world. Winner of several awards, it made flamenco box office history with a record-breaking five-month show in Madrid with sold-out ticket sales each night.

Earlier, on Oct. 1 at the RCBC Plaza, Sol Pico, a contemporary dance group from Barcelona will present Besame el cactus (Kiss My Cactus). Combining theater, drama and music in dance, the group garnered the Max award for best dance performance in 2003.

On Oct. 21, at the RCBC auditorium, Repertory Philippines and Instituto Cervantes will give the premiere of the musical drama Man of La Mancha adapted from Cervantes novel Don Quijote.

On Oct. 25 at Onstage, Greenbelt 1, Dulaang UP will stage Antonio Munoz Molina’s Sepharad, a 20th century story that draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges. (Sephardi is a Jew of Spanish or Portuguese descent).

On Oct. 8 at the RCBC auditorium, Armando Orbon, a celebrated classical guitarist from Spain, and jazz pianist Isaac Turienzo will be playing a program by Latin-American composers, among them Granados, Tarrega, Ariel Ramirez, A. Lauro, Albeniz De Falla and Rodrigo. Acclaimed guitarist Jorge Orozco, makes a comeback earlier.

In the visual arts, there will be a travelling exhibit of 150 years of photography in Spain. This exhibit will mark the culmination of the ambitious work of Publio Lopez Mondejar, Spain’s best-known and most highly respected photo-historian. His photographs give Spain a leading position in international photography. The exhibit shows the development of Spanish photography – from its birth, to the photography of the democratic transition and up to the latest and most regenerating photographic trends in Spain today. It includes a meticulous selection of the handsomest and most outstanding images created by Spanish photographers over the past 150 years.

The exhibit runs from Sept. 26 to Oct. 31.

Another photo exhibit "Manila, Fin de Siglo (turn of the century) will show, for the first time, 90 unedited photographs taken in Manila from 1893 to 1897. The scenes, shot by an anonymous photographer with an evident mastery of the craft, make for a set of valuable graphic documents of the past. It has successfully captured Manila at the turn of the century, just before Spain gave up the colony.

The theme of the Letras y Figuras contest will be Don Quijote de la Mancha whose first edition is marking its 4th centenary. The winning entries will be displayed in an exhibit in October of 2006.

The Spanish and Latin-American Film Festival will be held from Sept. 28 to October 16. The series includes Oscar winners for Best Foreign Film: Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside) directed by Alejandro Amenabar and Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) directed by Pedro Almodovar.