Shamaine Centenera in "Madonna Brava": Mother Full of Courage

MANILA, Philippines - For almost a decade the actress Shamaine Centenera stayed away from the stage, an odd thing since she seemed to be one born to theater.

She concentrated on home and hearth, raising four kids with fellow actor Nonie Buencamino. She also became assistant director for commercials, sometimes even acting in them to help meet the material needs of a growing family.

It wasn’t until 2005 or 2006 when she received a call from former Tanghalang Pilipino resident director Herbie Go to act in an Igorot epic did she get a chance to return to her element.

“It is a passion, this acting,” she says, because if it were only possible she would spend all hours on her art and not necessarily sullen craft.

Shamaine comes from the exceptional batch ’81 of Philippine High School for the Arts that included, among others, Grace Nono, Jon Red, Pablo Biglang-awa, Alwin Reamillo, Ian Victoriano and Henry Frejas, who not only excelled but also broke new ground in their respective creative fields.

The actress has in fact taught at PHSA for six years, having resided in Los Baños for some time, taking leave only when her eldest daughter enrolled at the idyllic high school in Mount Makiling.

Centenera herself has been acting since grade school.

“It is easy and very rewarding for me to lose myself in roles. Almost like therapy,” she says in an emailed communiqué about a month before Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Madonna Brava,” where Shamaine plays the lead role in this adaptation of Brecht’s “Mother Courage” in the context of the Mindanao conflict, opens.

As part of preparation for Madonna Brava, which is directed by Nestor Horfilla, cast and crew went to Davao and Maguindanao including “the peaceful” Camp Abubhakar.

The immersion tour did not take them to the war zones, but they were able to talk to mayors in towns part of the autonomous Muslim region, as well visit the old house of chairman Hashim Salamat.

In an interview between spiels for a rehearsal for a gala performance marking CCP’s 40 years, Shamaine describes Salamat’s residence as “labyrinthine” and having a tiled floor. It is a rainy night and she is smoking a Marlboro light, looking out to the parking lot in Harbor Square.

She says the Muslim mayors still felt bad about the failed memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain because their side entered into the talks with good faith. Residents there also remarked on the exaggerated media reports depicting Mindanao as a troubled land, the spin they put just to sell newspapers these days.

She, however, admits that the immersion tour prepared her more for her role in another upcoming play where she has the role of a Muslim woman selling DVDs, Chris Martinez’s “Our Lady of Arlegui.”

“The reason is that I play a Visayan woman from Samar in Madonna Brava,” she says, explaining that the woman has children with different husbands, which is not allowed in Islam.

Centenera did the role of the daughter in Mother Courage when still a student taking theater arts in UP, where among her teachers were Tony Mabesa, Anton Juan, Leticia Tison, even the National Artist Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero.

“I am familiar with the play but I decided not to go back to the English text because we are not attempting to do Brecht. The production aims to explain the Mindanao war. Madonna Brava is restructured to pursue that intent. And that is the reason why I said yes to Nanding Josef when he offered me the role last year. I would read horror stories about Mindanao in the papers and it awakened this desire in me to help in the best way I can. And that would be through my art,” she says in her email.

She also had to adopt a Visayan accent for Brava, which is not entirely unfamiliar to her because the Centeneras are from Bicol, and the two dialects have similar words and intonations.

Asked to quote a line from Madonna Brava that she can recite at the drop of a hat, here it is:

“Ang pagkatalo at pagwawagi ng nasa itaas ay hindi laging pagkatalo at pagwawagi ng nasa ibaba. Hindi. May mga kaso na ang pagkatalo ng nasa itaas ay tagumpay ng taga-ibaba. Halimbawa, ang mga heneral ng diktadurya, kung bumagsak, ay ikatuwa ng marami sa ibaba. Ang pinakamaganda ay kung maitapon sa putik ang pulitika.”

Sounds like we’re all waiting for a revolution. Shamaine says that Madonna Brava still found war as a necessary evil even after she had lost all her children to it. Or just Brecht being Brecht, planting the seeds of epic theater.

If her face looks somewhat familiar, the reason is that apart from the intermittent commercials, Shamaine has also acted in independent films, notably by the tandem of Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary.

“Sandalang Bahay,” a CinemaOne original, was described by the actress as “a family affair” because both she and Nonie and a couple of their kids were in it, taking a virtual field trip to the wilds of Mindoro for the black comedy about three daughters who transport the stiff body of their dead mom back to the ancestral home.

The more recent “Hubad” is about two dysfunctional couples starring Shamaine and Nonie and Irma (Adlawan) and what could have been Dennis (Marasigan) coping with midlife crisis among others, and she admits that “it’s art imitating life imitating art in ways that hurt.”

The film, whose script was shortlisted in Cinemalaya, is currently touring some parts of the US.

She also appears as Iza Calzado’s mom in the transsexual comedy on GMA-7, “Rowena Joy.”

How does she balance her life as mother, wife and actress? “My acting is my passion. But my family and my husband are my blessings and they are more important for me than my art. That is why I was able to give up acting for almost a decade to help find financial stability for my family. But as my eldest daughter says (who happens to be another performer in the family – we all are by the way), she’d rather have a pair of socks for Christmas than for me to sacrifice acting. See what I mean about my blessings?”

She says during the extended furlough when she directed TV ads she deliberately stayed away from watching plays.

“I didn’t like the feeling of being consumed by envy. I would accept tapings but since the TV ads were being offered first, I was seldom seen acting even on TV,” she says.

One thing led to another after the call up from Go, and soon she was doing at least one play a year, making her realize that she could still do theater without sacrificing the capacity to earn for family.

Shamaine was Andromache in “Troyanas” and Lady Torrence in Tennessee William’s “Orpheus Descending.”

She, however, admits her family sacrifices when she’s doing theater.

“I’m not around most of the time because of rehearsals and I have to rely on my husband to not only earn more but also to run the house as well. Yes, he loves me very much and I am truly blessed to have him as my partner. He is my most ardent acting coach. We are each other’s worst critic. We are each other’s greatest fan.”

She mentions Nonie’s role as a blind man in Marilou Abaya’s “Milagros” several years ago, “ang husay.”

This year the actress finds herself “totally immersed in theater.”

She did repeats of Floy Quintos’ “Atang” in UP and of “Ang Kalungkutan ng Reyna” in CCP; which latter play won for her two acting awards last year – Aliw and Gawad Buhay.

Kalungkutan is now part of a touring show called Tanyag where she also does Our Lady of Arlegui.

Yet even as she is in the thick of rehearsals for Madonna Brava, Shamaine says she has also committed to do another play, this time in English, for her mentor Mabesa in UP, “Mary Stuart” where she plays Queen Elizabeth.

At times she is already like a dervish, this brave woman who is surely one of the finest actresses of her generation.

“I do tapings in the mornings before shows. I sometimes ask to be absent in rehearsals. And after 16 hours of adwork for TV shoots, I go to tapings at 12 midnight to work until 6 am. It is a passion. This acting that I do. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to do anything else. My fervent dream is to be able to help support my family by being an actress all the time!”

Madonna Brava is on stage at the CCP’s Tanghalang Batute Fridays to Sundays until Oct. 11, with evening and matinee shows. Call Tanghalang Pilipino at tel 832-3661 for details.