PETA Stages Martial Law Musical ‘A Game of Trolls’
About the Show
A GAME OF TROLLS, #aGoT the MusicaLe, is the story of Heck, a troll whose indifference makes him the perfect keyboard warrior for Bimbam, the manager of a ‘call center’ that runs an online pro-martial law campaign. His lack of attachment to any belief can be used to make him unleash callous words to anyone who comments against the martial law days. Ghosts of Martial law victims haunt him from the internet cloud, where they fear being erased as people slowly forget their stories. The encounters forced him to reflect on his own beliefs and his relationship with his mother, a former Martial Law activist.
Written by Liza Magtoto and directed by Maribel Legarda (the same writer-director tandem that produced the megahit Rak of Aegis), the key messages of the musical are best illustrated with these hashtags: #NeverForget, #NeverAgain and #BayanMunaBagoSarili.
PETA’s Take
PETA hopes that this play will be a call to action – to make our young people look beyond the memes and the online propaganda that had become so accessible because of social media, to encourage them to do their own research, to think critically and to act with responsibility. Today, it is staged not simply as an effort to revive fading memories of traumatic events that took place over 30 to 40 years ago. As contemporary events show, the fight for freedom and democracy – against the forces of dictatorship and darkness – still rages in our country. Thus, it is more important now to never forget the painful lessons of the martial law and never again allow strongman rule to be set up in the Philippines. Through the theater, we want to reach the youth of today so they will learn to treasure their freedom, which was fought with blood and tears by their elders.
The full-length version of A GAME OF TROLLS, #aGoT the MusicaLe will have a short weekend run on April 1-2, 2017 (3pm and 8pm) and will be available for mobile performances from April to December of 2017.
For inquiries on this production, interested parties may call JAY TIPAYAN at 0917-7167357.
For more details about what’s happening in the Manila theater scene, please view our Theater Calendar.
