BRUSH UP YOUR TAGALOG

Mula Sa Buwan and the many new musicals of Manila

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Jerom Canlas and Myke Salomon in Mula Sa Buwan. Photo: Myra Ho

If you follow the theater headlines out of the Philippines, you might notice something that surprises you.

Given the city’s rising prominence as a global theater market, you’d probably expect all the local news coverage you’ll see of the international tours that originate or stop there (like Hamilton and Miss Saigon, to name a few recent examples). You’d probably also anticipate the many notices of local productions of Broadway titles (like this month’s staging of The Prom). And if you know anything about the region’s keen interest in Broadway and the West End, you might even anticipate the numerous stories detailing the success of Filipino stage talent abroad (like this feature about actor Joaquin Pedro Valdes’ recent London gigs).

But what you might not expect—and what surprised me when I started to dig in—is just how many homegrown musicals Manila is making. It seems like every other week I’m reading about a new show with a title in Tagalog and an original, local story paired with the tunes of a popular Filipino band like Eraserheads or Aegis.

Because jukebox musicals are the biggest box office draws, they’re the most common on the scene—but there are new shows with original scores, too. One of them, Mula Sa Buwan, was the big local hit of the moment that everyone name-dropped as I was conducting the interviews for this story. This homegrown musical and its popularity in the region made me even more eager to learn about the new work coming out of the city.

Herewith, then, is Part 2 of my Manila coverage, following last month’s look at the market’s growth as an international tour stop and its deepening connections with the Broadway industry. In this week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight

• the local companies to know,

• the hit shows everyone’s talking about,

• the people who make them,

• the pride in their local language, and

• why it might be time for the rest of the world to check out the original titles coming out the territory.

Before we get started: Here’s last month’s story about Manila, spotlighting the latest data, the new theaters coming online that will make the region even more appealing, the initiatives in the works to further develop local audiences, and more.

As they say in Tagalog: Tara na!

THE HITS KEEP COMING

These days musicals are so popular in Manila that it’s starting to become a problem.