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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, October 03, 2025

entry arrow11:45 PM | An Appreciation



I cannot write a review of course because the play was something that I wrote. So I’ll write a brief appreciation instead. We’re allowed to do that, right? Here's an appreciation because I know The Midsummer of Manuel Anguilla is a difficult piece to stage, with its bonkers requirements for shadow play, archival news soundtrack, filmed elements, and dialogues in English that’s not exactly simple, reflecting the ornate inflections of an Arguilla prose — all set in a Japanese prison cell during the war.

Set in the last hours before the real-life writer was executed by the Japanese near the tail-end of World War II, it is also a meditation on war, on torture, on death, on love, and most of all on writing — basically an exploration on why writers write. [According to Renz Torres: “Mao ni ang mga hinanakit ni Ian sa pagsulat.” Hahaha.]

This play underwent so many revisions over the years, but I felt it was finally "finished" when I brought back the character of Lydia Arguilla, who was only in the beginning of the story in earlier versions, to round off the end, set in the post-war, Manuel now dead, with Lydia talking to Leon [obviously Leon of “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife”] and explaining the overlooked meaning of the short story, “Midsummer,” with Ading beside her underlining everything.

I have always always loved “Midsummer” by Manuel Arguilla, which strikes most people as a short story about “nothing”: just a girl and a boy and a carabao meeting in the countryside of Nagrebcan. But to me, it is perhaps the most erotic story ever written by a Filipino writer in English, and Ading the most complex heroine who knows what she wants and gets what she wants. I’ve taught this short story forever when I used to teach Philippine Literature in college. With K-12 now in place, I was no longer teaching the course. So I said, “Sayang naman,” and decided to transform my entire lesson plan into a play! So, yes, it’s very academic in places, and is quite difficult to stage. Which is why I want to thank Rodolfo Vera so much because he believed in it, and pushed for it to win the Palanca in 2023.

When Teatro Sillimaniana Dos came around, Dessa Quesada-Palm and I included it among ten potential plays our senior theater students could direct for the season, but I also told them it was fine if they didn’t choose it. Again I told them it was a difficult play!

But Merliel Natad Putong didn’t listen, probably felt she could rise to the challenge to direct it. She chose it, much to my surprise.

Tonight, we premiered her production, and I was honestly riveted by how Merliel interpreted it. She took the difficult technical parts and made them seamless and simple, while still staying true to the story.

Also, I had no hand in the casting process, so how did she know these were some of my favorite local actors she had cast? Last time I saw him act, Iniaki Montenegro played a drunken Southern woman with a thick Texas accent. As Manuel, he hopped on a roller coaster ride between essaying a man in excruciating pain and a man telling a story. The range! Chandra Pepino-Joshua as Lydia had so much gravitas, and her breakdown in the end made me cry. That voice! That conviction! She was awesome. Aaron Lee as Leon was the perfect glue to the narrative, the angry sounding board to Manuel’s fantastical tirades. He has acting nuances you have to see to believe. The looks he gives Manuel sometimes offer tangents I am quite willing to follow, given the chance. Then there's Lady Lorraine Elmido as Ading, who was my perfect spider woman weaving her web of desire. This was my fist time to see Simon Lim in a play, but I like that he embodied fully how I saw Manong: a handsome “maamo” country lad who absolutely knows nothing about what exactly is going on.

Every time I finish a story or a play, I usually forget how I plotted it. So watching this play become embodied and made real by such capable people, it was like watching and knowing the story for the first time, eager for what comes next; hence I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But you know what? I think I’m going to write a comedy next time.

It’s the first play I’ve written that I’ve seen staged, and I am grateful this did not become a “drawer play,” like so many other plays, even those that have won the Palanca before. So thank you to Merliel and the cast and crew for making this occasional playwright happy. Break a leg for your last show tomorrow, October 4!

For friends in Dumaguete reading this, please do watch the second staging of the double bill of this play and Rolin Migyuel Cadallo Obina’s The Late Mister Real tomorrow night. Tickets are only P200 for both plays. [“Cheaper than a movie!” matud pa ni Frances Hope Yap, who took this picture, by the way.] The show starts at 7 PM at Woodward Little Theater. Again, this is not a review but an appreciation. Support local theatre and literature!

[This piece is dedicated to that local writer who thinks I am full of myself, hahaha.]

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