Dulaang UP’s 40th Season Launch Album

Dulaang UP’s 40th Season Launch Album

Photography by Frida Tan

DUP Ushers 40th Year With 20/20 VisionAfter 39 years, 180 productions, numerous artists, and countless possibilities, Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas is all set for its 40th theatre season with 20/20 Vision: Clarity. Originality. Perspective.

With Dexter M. Santos as the newly-elected artistic director, this season’s line-up puts premium on strengthening the DUP brand and continuing the DUP legacy. The productions bring to fore the directors’ signature styles that have defined the company through the years.

The season opens with #R</3J, a multimedial hallucination on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet directed by Dexter M. Santos and adapted by Guelan Varela-Luarca. It features the Dulaang UP Ensemble and the collaboration of choreographers, designers, and artists. #R</3J retells the star-crossed lovers’ narrative transforming Verona into a concrete jungle at the heart of Metro Manila. This theatrical piece will run from August 26 to September 13, 2015.

Founding artistic director Tony Mabesa directs Shakespeare’s King Lear / Haring Lear (Filipino translation by Nicolas B. Pichay). The play is set in the waning years of a Southeast Asian kingdom replete with appropriate music, movement, costumes, and properties of the region without losing the themes, images, and poetry of Shakespeare’s supreme achievement. King Lear / Haring Lear runs from October 7 to 25, 2015.

The third offering for this season is a reimagination of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt under the direction of José Estrella and Filipino adaptation by Rody Vera with Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Drawing from Philippine mythology and folklore, Gynt is now set in ‘Pinas, with Gynt travelling through historical and mystical time, crossing landscapes as he wrestles with the eternal elusiveness of truth and deception, meaning and purpose. Peer Gynt runs from February 3 to 21, 2016.

Next is The Dressing Room: That Which Flows Away Ultimately Becomes Nostalgia by Shimuzi Kunio from an original translation of John K. Gillespie. The play will be directed by Alexander Cortez with translation and adaptation by Chiori Miyagawa and Filipino translation by Nicolas B. Pichay. It relives the aspirations, frustrations, memories, and resolutions of four actresses waiting for their cue. By turns tragic and comic, the play becomes a comment on the fleeting nature of theatre and of life itself as a form of performance. The Dressing Room… runs from April 13 to May 1, 2016.

All four productions are staged at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, 2nd floor Palma Hall, University of the Philippines Diliman.Closing the season is UP Playwrights’ Theatre’s 25th offering, Yugto: Dalawang Maikling Dula under the direction of Banaue Miclat-Janssen. It features Ginto sa Makiling by Luna Sicat Cleto and Sparrow by Linda Faigao-Hall. Yugto runs from July 1 to 10, 2016 at the Teatro Hermogenes Ylagan, Faculty Center, UP Diliman.

For its 40th season, DUP is committed to uphold its standards for education, training, artistic innovation, and unfretted vision.And as a special treat for DUP patrons, the company is introducing the DUP Season Pass. It entitles the holder to watch four (4) DUP productions for only P1500 – that’s four DUP masterworks for the price of one commercial theatre production.For tickets, sponsorships, showbuying and DUP Season Pass inquiries, call Samanta Hannah Clarin or Camille Guevara at 9261349, 4337840, 9818500 loc. 2449 or email dulaangupmarketing@gmail.com.