CCP National Theatre Live adds more screenings after successful launch

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WITH the successful launch of the first season of CCP National Theatre Live (CCP NTL), the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the Ayala Malls Cinemas have announced that the filmed Olivier Award-winning stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi will have a re-run on Dec. 19, with a back-to-back screening of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, another featured filmed production under the new CCP program.

The CCP NTL screenings have proven to be so popular that additional screens and showtimes have been added to most of the productions.

Done in partnership with National Theatre Live and the Ayala Malls Cinemas, CCP is bringing some of the best of British theater every month until May 28, 2024. These performances are all filmed live from the UK’s most exciting stages.

The season kicked off in September with the screening of Life of Pi at Greenbelt 3 cinema. The story of 16-year-old boy Pi’s journey of endurance and hope while stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors, a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a Royal Bengal tiger is magically told with the state-of-the-art visuals and puppetry. The filmed theater version shown was adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, under the direction of Max Webster.

Up next is Fleabag on Oct. 31. Written and performed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and directed by Vicky Jones, Fleabag is a comedic one-woman show about a woman living her life. With family and friendships under strain and a guinea pig café struggling to keep afloat, Fleabag suddenly finds herself with nothing to lose. The hilarious, award-winning play that inspired the BBC’s hit TV series of the same title was captured live on stage from London’s West End in 2019.

Fleabag has proven to be very popular with Filipino audiences. As two CCP NTL screenings of the one-woman show at Greenbelt 3’s Cinema 1 had already sold-out (a second screening at 8 p.m. had been added when tickets to the original 5:30 p.m. screening ran out very quickly), the CCP and Ayala Malls Cinemas decided to open another cinema, Greenbelt 3’s Cinema 2, with two more screenings at 6 and 8 p.m., on Oct. 31. As of the latest update from Ayala Cinemas, these additional screenings are also sold out, and there is public clamor for even more screenings of Fleabag.

Starting with the third installment of the CCP NTL program, Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, there will now be two screenings for each featured production, at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

“We have intentionally adjusted the screening schedule for audiences who would be coming out from their workplaces at 5 p.m. We take into consideration the rush hour traffic around that time,” said CCP vice-president and artistic director Dennis Marasigan in a statement.

The other National Theatre stage productions in the program are: The Seagull, Much Ado About Nothing, The Crucible, Frankenstein, Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet, all filmed live in high definition. NTL films their plays in front of live theater audiences but optimized for the big screen and made accessible to theater fans across the globe.

The regular ticket price for the screening are ₱250 while the special ticket price for students is ₱150. Tickets are available via sureseats.com.