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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Friday, March 14, 2025

entry arrow11:00 PM | The Way of the Wakwak

It is understandable why the color red suffuses much of the atmosphere—and the metaphors—of Pulang Langob, the restaging of the two-act musical play in Binisaya written by Hope Tinambacan and directed by Dessa Quesada-Palm for the 62nd cultural season of the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council. A blood red moon—projected on the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium stage—is a steady motif in the play’s unfolding, and crimson is the shade with which the play’s lighting design chooses to bathe many of its scenes. Then there’s the title itself, which is “Red Cave” in translation. Red is everywhere.

I get it. Red is such a rich metaphor, since it is on one hand, the color of foreboding and danger—of betrayals, of incursions, and of one specific sense of “blood,” which is deadly. On the other hand, red is also the color of life, of pulsating love, and, once again, of blood, but in another specific sense, which is familial kinship. It doesn’t matter. All of these somehow come into play in this story about a teenager’s quest for identity and purpose, set in a mystical place called Isla Tawak.

The island is populated by various creatures gleaned from Philippine lower mythology, including the kaskas, the sigbin, the kapre, the tikbalang, the duende, the mambabarang, and the manananggal. [Collectively, they are known as “wakwaks.”] It is the setting with which a young man named Lukas [alternately played by Dasig Nalam and Cristopher Anasario, the latter of whom essayed the role on opening night] must come to face his destiny, with a two-fold purpose that begins his journey: first, to escape the clutches of heinous men who apparently want him for a genetic gift he is largely ignorant of; and second, to find his long-lost mother, a denizen of Isla Tawak named Kasing [played by the luminous Anna del Prado], who might be hiding in the island. That purpose, of course, ultimately changes when Lukas comes to know the island and its people—and the dangers they face involving the encroachment of human beings, settlers who hail from another island called Owat. [Hahaha, this is a clever pun. “Owat” means “trickery” in Binisaya, of course—but reverse the word, and the letters say, “tawo,” the word for “human.” Ikaw jud, Hope.]

Lukas arrives in Tawak in the company of his father Jong [played by Mark Peter Lacson], who acts as his guide, and as his conduit to both the island’s native creatures and encroachers—both camps to which Jong, a human, has strong ties with. Upon his arrival and his subsequent meeting with the wakwaks, Lukas spends all of the first act being privy to a series of flashbacks—how the island itself is abundant with natural resources [all of it somehow connected to the santilmo, a rich and mystical source of power hidden and protected in the titular place]; how human beings—led by researchers Jong, Belma, and Magal—came to the island to find a cure for a plague that’s ravaging humanity; how these researchers later on paved the way for other human beings to settle in the island, ultimately convincing some of the wakwak to embrace their ways and values, forsaking their own [Junsly Kitay’s Mamumulong is especially heinous as a Bible-bearing con man]; how Jong and Kasing fell in love—a pairing that eventually came to bear Lukas; and how the suddenly villainous Belma and Magal seek ways to control the island by looking for the Santilmo, which is protected by Kasing, the only one who holds the secret in opening the red cave.









Truth to tell, the story can be a bit convoluted—but it’s somehow easier to understand Pulang Langob as an amalgam of other stories: there’s definitely Avatar and FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Pocahontas in the mix here, with a little bit of The Lion King thrown in, and also a smidgen of Avatar: The Last Airbender, especially in how it ends—but I will not spoil that crucial development in this space. Stories about pillaging colonizers and the native communities they affect are old as history, and there is really no getting away from the usual arcs of this narrative if this is the story that has to be told. They are like the oral epics of pre-history, whose stories sung by succeeding generations of bards are familiar to every listener—but each one appreciated only by one measure: the richness and uniqueness of the telling.

In that regard then, Pulang Langob is a winner in the telling. Ms. Quesada-Palm, the founder of Dumaguete’s foremost community theatre group Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts [or YATTA], knows why she wants to tell this story: “[The play] explores mythical creatures—often culturally regarded as evil and as troublemakers—and portray them as indigenous guardians of this reservoir of life confronted with difficult choices as they interact with ‘outsiders,’ the humans. They bear local wisdom that has sustained them for generations because of their ethics of care for each other and the natural world. But their values are tested because of contesting ideas, interests, and possibility.” This goes to show the many layers Pulang Langob offers as a story, and it is quite providential that Ms. Quesada-Palm is the one to take the lead in realizing it for the Luce stage. She is very much a sensitive helmer of this story, and she gives it the necessary textures to make the play more meaningful, and impactful in all the necessary places. Judging from the audience reaction on opening night to specific scenes and to specific dialogues, that impact is assured. [She also appears in a brief role at the play’s prologue.]

But singular props—all the flowers in the world!—must be accorded the teller of the tale, both as composer and as librettist. Everyone knows Hope Tinambacan as a musician, him being the lead singer of HOPIA and the founder of the Belltower Project. He is also known for his zany TikToks and social media presence, where he nurtures a persistent—and politically discerning—liberal voice that is, for the most part, unafraid. His work as a literary artist [he writes balak] and as a theatre artist [he is a director and an actor and a playwright and the founder of D’Salag Collective] are not as well known, but this is where I actually find him to be in his most well-rounded artistic mode, where he takes the rhythms of his musicality and the convictions of his social media postings and the expressive forms of his literary leanings, and distills them all in the form of a play. He has done as much for earlier plays he has written, like Wanted: Boarders and Alkansing Alkansiya, but in Pulang Langob he has taken greater artistic risks to tell this story about destiny and purpose and environmentalism and folk mythology and inhumanity and greed.

It took Mr. Tinambacan fifteen years to write this story, which was first drafted under the working title of Isla Tawak. The painstaking writing of it was guided through the years by many mentors, including Neomi Gonzales and Jeff Hernandez in the beginning, and later shaped by extensive workshops at PETA with Vince De Jesus, Upeng Galang Fernandez, the late Jojo Atienza, and Meann Espinosa. It finally made its premiere last year at the Luce, and by popular demand, is now back for a restaging, complete with new songs, all of them arranged by his brother, Juni Jay Tinambacan.

What also makes this production special is the way it connects various theatre artists from across the Visayas and Mindanao, truly making Pulang Langob a veritable Southern Philippine theatrical project. The choreography is by Nikki Cimafranca of Dumaguete; the set design is by Ted Nudgent Tac-an of Ozamiz City, executed by Aziza Daksla; the lighting design is by Anj Enriquez of Iloilo, executed by Keith Marvin Delgado; and the costume design is by Marvin Ablao of Bohol, executed by the cast. The excellence in the various crafts has to be noted, because—the play being the product of community theatre—it is the embodiment of YATTA’s testament: “Community theatre is excellent theatre.”

Still there are things I wish were better in this production: I wish the sound design was better executed—sometimes the mics fail, and the actors’ voices are not loud enough to be served well by the Luce’s otherwise excellent acoustics; I wish the set design—here made very impressive by the central presence of a gigantic balete tree that is also a cave—was movable enough to make way for other visual elements required by specific scenes [like the awkward insertion of a sala scene, when Belma confronts Jong and asks him to take a side]; and I wish there was more economy of characters—Vanessa Santuryo as Cousin Hannah is gone too soon and never returns for the remainder of the play, and I seriously do not get where Mateo comes from, even though he is played by one of my favorite young actors, Sean Montebon. This is nitpicking, however, and does not really distract from the beauty of the play’s unfolding.

One strength that Pulang Langob has is in its ability to evoke emotion. There are moments of laughter, where the audience finds joy in the characters’ playful banter, and moments of palpable tension, where the weight of impending conflict hangs heavy in the air. But perhaps most striking are the moments of collective silence, where the shared experience of the narrative creates a bond between the performers and the audience, a testament to the play’s profound impact.

In the end, I must say that it is the songs that reverberate. The ballads truly break our hearts, from Jong’s plaintive “Liwat Ka sa Imong Mama” from the beginning of the story, to the three duets in the second act: “Ang Kasingkasing Mobalik” with Jong and Kasing, “Nahadlok Ko” with Tang Tasoy and Lukas, and “Sa Damgo Mo” with Kasing and Lukas, which also becomes the play’s musical motif, appearing here and there to underline the emotional gravity of certain scenes.

Then there is the scary undercurrents of Act II’s opening crowd song, “Adlwang Domingo,” which gathers in one space both wakwak and tawo, the latter incisive in their corruption of the former. And finally there is the martial beats of the two villains—Belma and Magal—singing “Bahala Na!,” which is the very embodiment of greed and evil in a song.

In the end, when Lukas realizes what he must do in light of a certain sacrifice, he sings “Lisod Huna-hunaon, Sayon Sabton,” a beautiful song that is both about bewilderment and understanding:

Lisod hunahunaon, apan sayon sabton
Unsa ang buhaton?
Ako bang matuman gibiling katungdanan

Sayon sabton, apan lisod hunahunaon
Unta naa ka sa akong kiliran
Unta naa ka aron ako magiyahan
Lisod hunahaon… apan sayon sabton.
Pulang Langob is the second musical spectacular produced by YATTA, following the success of Scharon Mani, which took Dumaguete by storm in 2016. Both musicals are astounding testaments of YATTA’s growth, with this year being the celebration of the 20th anniversary of its founding. Both are also testaments to Dumaguete’s nascent claim as a City of Stories. The plays say, we are capable of excellent theatre; they say, we have a community of artists whose talents are worldclass; they say, we celebrate this rich tradition of storytelling we have in Dumaguete. Padayon.


The play runs until 16 March 2025. For tickets and more information, go to the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council website.

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