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Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (Dulaang UP) opens their 47th season with ‘Nanay Bangis,’ an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage and Her Children.’ The production is directed by J William Herbert Sigmund Go and written by Rody Vera. The play utilizes Brechtian epic theater aesthetics, where the play creates a distance between the audience and the characters. The audience is meant to focus on the issues and not on the drama of the character’s misfortunes and suffering. To do this, there is heavy use of breaking the fourth wall, where actors often speak to the audience and even break character to reveal that they know they are actors in a play. By emphasizing the fictional nature of the narrative, the play allows us to view the atrocities committed on stage for what they are: representations of our reality.

‘Nanay Bangis’ is set in Mindanao in 1971 during the armed conflict between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Marcos’ Philippine Army. Caught in the crossfire is the eponymous Nanay Bangis and her three children: Elvis, Christine, and Kesong Puti. Nanay Bangis is wily and crafty, peddling goods, and profiting off the war and justifying it as survival; though as the play unfolds, this justification is put into question. The family push their cart of goods (that also serves as their home) from area to area where they can make the most money. Nanay Bangis doesn’t care if it’s a muslim village or an army camp. Nanay Bangis calls it survival and seems like the only person in the whole play who doesn’t want the war to end. In the process, she will lose all three of her children. This is not a spoiler. This is the play. How it happens is the meat of the story.

J William Herbert Sigmund Go’s staging and direction really amplifies the piece and ensures that the unfolding of events are as impactful as they are funny and riveting. The stage are to arching platforms that intersect and create a giant X at the center of the IBG-KAL Theater in UP-Diliman. The audience are seated on three sides while the fourth is taken by a chamber orchestra and a foley. At the foley, there’s a table with various items and a mic, and members of the ensemble take turns creating sound effects for the play, much like a radio drama. For a scene with a blazing fire, they take an empty bag of chips and crumple it in front of the microphone creating the crackling sound of flames. For the bombs, a giant drum. The orchestra plays the score and also plays music for the musical numbers. Accompanied by precise lighting directions, the play’s production feels whole and complete. It creates a landscape that builds this world made of violence and strife.

As you enter the stage to find your seats, the fourth wall is immediately broken. The actors are on stage. They are stretching and joking with each other. Some even talk to the audience, impressing upon everyone that this is all a play. But when the play starts, they are focused and driven to tell this story, though they do sometimes break character to remind us in-between the multitude of deaths that are happening within its almost two hour running time.

The cast are in fine form. Geraldine Villamil is powerful as Nanay Bangis. The play revolves around her and her resolve to push against the odds to make money as the world burns around her. She is a terrifying force on stage that commands our attention and brings all the other players to revolve around her. Though the real standouts in this show are the three children: Ethan King as Elvis, Khay Eva as Christine, and Raymond Aguilar as Kesong Puti. King and Aguilar are charismatic and have a magnetic stage presence, humanizing their characters in a way that their loss is truly felt. Eva has the unenviable task to play the mute Christine and has to convey her whole character with grunts and garbled speech. Being the only girl amongst the siblings, she has the most complex relationship with Nanay Bangis and she literally doesn’t have the words to express the full range of her character’s struggle. It’s quite a feat. Jigger Semantilla, who plays the army chaplain, Brother Mike, is also a standout. He has a lot of the comedic moments, and he executes this with perfect timing and then quickly shifting to the play’s more serious themes at a moment’s notice.

The rest of the ensemble are also quite strong, filling in the spaces, shifting from soldiers to Muslim villagers and helping create this palpable world.

Rody Vera’s script is incredible as it adapts Brecht’s play and suits it perfectly into the Philippine setting, managing to relate a bloody episode of our country’s history and showing aspects of the horrors of the Marcos dictatorship yet still manages to paint a clear picture of why Mindanao is still an unstable part of the country. The treatment of the government to the natives of the southern-most region of our country is still questionable. The play is about profiteers in times of calamity and much like the goal of epic theater, it shows us what wrongs are being committed and that our protagonist is not someone we should emulate. 

‘Nanay Bangis’ is very clear with its message but manages to be equally parts funny and tragic at the same time. The musical numbers make perfect sense and some of Go’s direction is just pure theater magic. In one moving song, someone at the rafters start throwing plastic tied up like parachutes. They fall to the floor on to the stage and create a visual image of the military occupation that underlines the atrocities committed and a justification for the Muslim anger. 

I was always a bit cautious and wary of Brecht but after seeing ‘Nanay Bangis,’ I definitely want to see more.

My Rating:

Nanay Bangis will run until December 1, 2024 at the IBG-KAL Theater, University of the Philippines Diliman. Get your tickets here.

PG-10 (Children age 10 and above must be accompanied by an adult)