JESSIE wants to end her life, and she’ll do it tonight using her father’s gun. Jessie (played by Eugene Domingo) has told her mother (Sherry Lara) of her plans. Her mother, of course, tries to discourage her from committing suicide, asking why she needs to claim her own life when “normal ka naman ah (you are normal).”

This scene was an excerpt shown to the press from PETA’s upcoming show ’Night Mother, which will go onstage from Feb. 2 to March 18 at the PETA Theater. Based from the snippet alone, the story seems to feature dark humor and revolves around depression and suicide.

“But there is more to it than that. What we’ve shown is only a thin layer of the rich story of the mother and daughter,” said Ms. Domingo. She mentioned that she once played the role of the mother back in the 1990s in a student production by Dulaang UP.

The mother in this production, Ms. Lara, said the play is about “the missed opportunities staring at you, especially in today’s family where everyone has his or her own life and we’ve stopped talking to one another.”

“Lumabas ka [sa usapin ng] pagpapakamatay (Lets leave the issue of suicide),” said the play’s director Melvin Lee, who most recently played the role of Chelsea in PETA’s musical comedy, Care Divas. “Let us look at this play beyond the obvious and the literal. Let it be about conversations that we’ve had or should have had with our loved ones [because] through conversations come clarity, and we need clarity in our feelings and thoughts to steer us away from darkness.”

’Night Mother invites the audience to sit down for 90 minutes (without a break) and appreciate a play that highlights its two stars and the richness of the text. Unlike many of PETA’s recent shows, ’Night Mother is intimate and complex, without visual spectacles, “eargasmic” music and lyrics, or grand narratives.

’Night Mother is a Filipino adaptation of Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, which had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts in 1982. During those times, PETA’s artistic director Maribel Legarda said, the play was read using a feminist lens in the context of a patriarchal society.

The play today can be seen using different lenses, and Ms. Legarda said the show is not an advocacy play, rather the goal is to get the conversation going.

Still, ’Night Mother can be watched using the lenses of feminism, suicide, and/or mental health, and PETA is conscious about it — that’s why it will hold debriefings after performances, especially for student audiences. PETA has also partnered with various mental health organizations in the country and will provide leaflets and hot lines to hand out just in case debriefings are not available after every show.

Mr. Lee said another possible reading of the text is about the “inevitable evolution” every person has to go through in his or her journey as nobody has a stagnant life. He also noted that ’Night Mother talks about traditional thinking versus modern thinking while questioning the norms of the typical Filipino.

An excerpt is not enough, and the audience needs to experience the full story in a theater, said Ms. Domingo, who joked that she’s willing to appear as Dora, who is one the characters she’s played in film, so the audience will not feel sad and depressed about what they have just seen.

Tickets to ’Night Mother are available at TicketWorld (www.ticketworld.com.ph, 0927-603-5913). — Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman

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