By Camille Anne M. Arcilla
Theater
Tribes
Presented by Red Turnip
Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from Aug. 19 until Sept. 4
Power Mac Center Spotlight, Circuit Makati, A.P. Reyes Ave.,
Brgy. Carmona, Makati City
IT STARTS out with loud chattering which everyone in the theater can hear — except for one.
“What happened?” Billy, the youngest child asks his older brother, after the other members of the family walk out of the dining room. What happened he asks, after trying his best to read their lips. And his brother says, “Nothing. Dad was being annoying. Again.”
Although set in Britain, Nina Raine’s Tribes presents family situations that would be familiar to a Filipino audience.
“[It’s] a very clingy family. In a sense, it’s a family who loves each other and is in each other’s business maybe a little too much, and they take the values they pass on from generation to generation. Filipino families are like that,” said Topper Fabregas, Tribes director and one-fifth of Red Turnip Theater, after a press preview on Aug. 4 at the Power Mac Center Spotlight in Circuit Makati.
While the family dynamics may be familiar, the situation the play portrays is very particular.
A documentary about a deaf couple who were having a baby was what sparked English playwright Ms. Raine to write Tribes.
“They wanted their baby to be deaf,” she wrote in an article on the Royal Court Theatre Web site. “I was struck by the thought that this was actually what many people feel, deaf or otherwise. Parents take great pleasure in witnessing the qualities they have managed to pass on to their children. Not only a set of genes. A set of values, beliefs. Even a particular language. The family is a tribe: an infighting tribe but intensely loyal.”
The “tribe” in her play includes the father, Christopher (played by Teroy Guzman), a retired educator in his 60s; mother Beth (Dolly de Leon); the oldest child Daniel (Cris Pasturan); the middle child Ruth (Thea Yrastorza); and Billy (Kalil Almonte), the youngest child who is deaf.
The play is a humorous funny portrayal of how the unconventional family navigates around the fact that Billy is deaf, trying to raise him as part of the hearing world. And, ironically, for a family who deals with different types of language — and even with the “language” of music — they chose to neglect adopting sign language in their home.
The conflict comes in when Billy returns home from university and meets Sylvia (Angela A. Padilla), a hearing woman who was raised by a deaf family and who is going deaf as well. This is when our protagonist discovers what it is like to be heard in a whole new community he meets through a different language — sign.
“Tribes follows Billy’s attempt to be a part of many worlds at once: his family’s, Sylvia’s, and the deaf community, all while striving to find his own identity. As he grapples with his own identity, we, too, are forced to ask questions about the meaning of belonging, community, and family,” Mr. Fabregas said.
The play’s actors have had to learn sign language for their roles, with Mr. Almonte saying “I am still learning it,” and calling it method-acting on his part.
Ms. Padilla’s challenge was the fact that her character is already fluent in sign. “There were a lot of things that are more fluent or slang. It took me two months to master it, and we had a deaf choreographer [for that],” she said.
Part of Tribes’ production team is Myra Medrana, their sign language assistant, who helped out greatly in pulling off the dialogues in sign language — 40% of the show is subtitled.
Most people who are deaf from birth have a lack of intonation in their speech, but Billy will still have that depth in the tone of delivery noted Mr. Fabregas. “We are also telling the story and we have to push the story forward so we can’t fully immerse in the deaf’s voice… Kalil actually had a hard time finding a middle ground,” he said. Mr. Almonte did point out though that “It is possible for [a deaf person] to have intonation, depending on who will teach the deaf person.”
The theater company will have special matinee and evening shows for the deaf community on Aug. 20 and 27. “If you know anyone who is part of the community who wants to watch Tribes, contact us so we could accommodate you,” Red Turnip cofounder Rem Zamora announced during the press launch.
Playing mother to a deaf son is something that Ms. De Leon is familiar with — her own son happens to be deaf as well. “He knows how to do sign. But every child is a challenge, whether they are deaf or not, it’s all the same.”
“This is the first time you’ve listened to me and I’m not talking. It’s when I stopped talking that you started listening,” Billy tells his family through sign.
As the one-and-a-half hour show ends, the audience is left asking, “What happened?” as the lights dim and the theater is left in complete silence.
For tickets to Tribes, contact TicketWorld (891-999) or e-mail redturniptheater@gmail.com.
