With a decades-long commitment to telling Filipino stories, the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) is once again redefining the power of People’s Theater. This April, PETA’s Control + Shift: Changing Narratives returns to the PETA Studio Theater from April 10 to 19, 2026. Featuring a “StudioLab” of fresh stories and restaging classics, the showcase invites audiences to reclaim the Filipino narrative.
Since its successful 2024 debut, followed by a month-long festival in 2025, Control + Shift: Changing Narrativeshas been pushing the boundaries of what theater can be. Through a unique collaboration between PETA artists, students, and community partners, this year’s StudioLab continues to tackle the tough questions of our time. It’s a creative space designed for crafting stories that confront the present, hold space for healing, and envision more humane and democratic futures.
This year, Control + Shift: Changing Narratives StudioLab presents two new works, a product of the PETA Artist-Teacher Training, alongside two returning pieces from last year’s festival, including one developed with a theater group from a community partner. The lineup includes:
Set A: When Power Falls into our Hands
In a classroom and a workplace, people discover how easily violence, corruption, and silence can become normalized. But when power falls into our hands, we also face a choice: to comply with the system or to interrupt it.
CLEANERS Playwright: Jhudiel Clare Sosa Director: Julio Garcia
A group of senior high students discovers that their graduation depends not just on cleaning classrooms but on how far they’re willing to go when violence, power, and truth land in their hands.
A forum theatre piece that follows Jaylord, a rookie waiter hoping to win his boss’s favor through a Christmas monito-monita gift, only to uncover how seemingly harmless acts can feed into the larger, corrupt palakasan system—until one brave decision challenges the cycle.
Set B: When Care Becomes Survival
In war-torn landscapes and communities living at the edge of disaster, care becomes something embodied… shared through faith, ritual, play, and collective endurance.
Tanghalang Bagong Sibol’s AT NAGKATAWANG-TAO ANG VERBO (Restaging)
Playwright: Mikaela Regis Director: Anthony Cruz
In a small urban fishing community along Ilog Tullahan, religious icons and biblical imagery come alive—not as distant saints, but as reflections of the people themselves—revealing how faith becomes flesh in the daily struggle for dignity, livelihood, and hope.
BAGA NG GUMUGUHONG LANGIT Playwright: Anj Heruela Director: Ian Segarra
Amid the chaos of war, orphaned children fight to survive in a world that has forgotten them, begging for care from communities pushed to the fragile edges of survival.
BE PART OF THE SHIFT!
Tickets are now available via Ticket2Me or bit.ly/CS2026Tickets. Rates are at Php 700 per set.
For more updates, follow @petatheater on social media.
Kickstarting 2025 with a bang, PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association) is back with a fresh line-up of innovative works! Control + Shift: Changing Narratives Festival promises a vibrant exploration of Filipino stories retold for the theater stage.
J-mee Katanyag, the festival director and PETA’s newly appointed artistic director, has curated a compelling selection of original works. Get ready to be challenged and surprised by diverse performance forms including puppetry, movement, interactive elements, and even digital theater. These creative forces combine to breathe new life into traditional Filipino folklore, values, and contemporary issues. The result? Powerful narratives that weave together the past, present, and future.
The festival’s centerpiece is a highly-anticipated remounting of Melvin Lee’s critically-acclaimed trilogy, Kumprontasyon. But that’s not all! Control + Shift also features a dynamic mix of new and experimental works, improv performances, live music jams, and more. Mark your calendars because the festival runs from February 6 to 23, 2025, happening live at the PETA Theater Center in New Manila, Quezon City. Here’s a glimpse of what awaits theatergoers:
Main Theater Performances
Kumprontasyon (February 6-9, PETA-Phinma Theater) Hailed by critics as a ‘theatrical masterpiece,’ Kumprontasyon delves into unresolved historical and political events through three powerful one-act plays. The stellar cast includes Teroy Guzman, Sherry Lara, Romnick Sarmenta, Ron Capinding, Missy Maramara, Adrienne Vergara, Gillian Vicencio, and Uzziel Delamide. Prepare to be transported as these talented actors bring to life Allan Palileo’s Lakambini, Guelan Luarca’s The Impossible Dream, and Joshua Lim So’s A Color for Tomorrow.
Twin Bill (February 14-15, PETA-Phinma Theater) Travel back in time and explore the future with Twin Bill! This exciting program features two revisited plays from Control + Shift 2024. Dominique La Victoria’s Kislap at Fuego will whisk you away to a revolutionary love story, while Mixkaela Villalon’s Children of the Algo tackles the digital age and the struggles of a generation obsessed with technology.
Control + Shift + SPIT: An Improvised Show (February 16, PETA-Phinma Theater) Calling all fans of spontaneous hilarity! Don’t miss this one-night-only show featuring The Silly People’s Improv Theater (SPIT), Manila’s top improv group. Get ready for an evening of laughter and unscripted fun as SPIT takes the stage at the Control + Shift 2025 Festival.
Studio Theater Performances
PETA’s Studio Theater transforms into a platform for eight brand-new works, running February 7 to 16, 2025. Here’s a quick look at the featured productions:
Studio Theater Set A: Unboxing – Felinda V. Bagas’ The Little Girl in a Box invites audiences on a heartwarming journey of self-discovery and empowerment. This captivating story follows a young girl’s search for her true home.
Studio Theater Set B: Time and Tide – Sig Pecho’s Failed Puppeteer and Felinda V. Bagas’ Noche Buena offer a thought-provoking look at how Filipino family values evolve through generations and navigate times of crisis.
Studio Theater Set C: Codes of Corruption – Herlyn Alegre’s Monit-oh! Monit-ah! and John Custer’s hUst1Sy@.exe pose a challenging question: can Filipino values withstand the temptations of corruption? These productions explore both classic and modern ethical dilemmas.
Studio Theater Set D: Breaking Free – Teatro Balagtas’ Ang Kuwento ni Babae, PETA ARTSZone Youth ARTvocates’ Taya! Sabay Yakap, and Tanghalang Bagong Sibol and Mikaela Regis’ At Nagkatawang-Tao Ang Verbo all tackle the theme of breaking free from societal constraints, exploring gender roles, childcare, and faith.
Exclusive Offer for Metrobank Cardholders
Planning to catch a show? Metrobank cardholders can enjoy exclusive discounts! From January 15 to 19, 2025, avail of a 10% discount on tickets to any Control + Shift Arts Festival event when you purchase through TicketWorld. Metrobank is proud to be PETA’s official 2025 theater season bank partner and a platinum partner of Control + Shift: Changing Narratives Festival.
CONTROL + SHIFT is a series of 8 new works (both short plays and short contemporary dance performances) that hopes to “spotlight the theme of narrative change” as it is mentioned at the start of the show. Running for two weekends (January 12-14 and January 19-21), the performances are set to reframe the ways with which we speak about each other as, according to the preface at the start of the show, that we are drowning in a world full of misinformation and disinformation.
It feels like a statement to start the new year for PETA to usher in a new era of exploring socially relevant plays that has been the theater company’s bailiwick. I was able to catch Set A, which had three short plays and one contemporary dance performance, which was an exciting way to start a new year of theater for me.
SET A
Momsilogues Written by Zoe Damag, Julia Enriquez, Pia Viola, Gold Villar-Lim Directed by Gold Villar-LimPerformed by Kitsi Pagaspas, Julia Enriquez, Pia Viola
This play is about three mothers who come together to cook for a school activity and in the ensuing bonding activity end up revealing striking issues involving women. They range from the difficulties of being a mother of a child on the autism spectrum, to giving up your dreams because of an unplanned pregnancy, and even juggling a family and career on your own.
‘Momsilogues’ takes its time to get into the meat of the story – the three monologues of each mother and the issues they represent – and it builds the world and the characters carefully. It gives you time to get to know them. What’s interesting is the way the writers allow the women to push each other’s buttons, to test their boundaries, before they break down into a real moment of vulnerability and gives these women a chance to support each other. There is an attempt to take a symbolic approach here: each mother is an ingredient to tapsilog, and it’s incorporated into the narration how each one is like a fried egg, the tapa, or the fried rice. At first, it doesn’t work, but by the time the play is done, it sort of hits home. It helps that the actresses are really cooking tapa on stage (they offer it to the audience at the end of the show).
Pagaspas, Enriquez, and Viola do a strong job at bringing these characters to life. There are times when the “woke and progressive” mom gets a little cloying – her lines feel a little forced and scripted – but the overall effect of the entire play, especially the monologue about the mom taking care of the child on the spectrum really hits its mark.
Ang Mga Halimaw sa Compound Z Written by Sabrina Basilio Directed by Norbs Portales Performed by Felicity Kyle Napuli, Sabrina Basilio, Kiki Baento, Nicole Manlulo, Donn Boco, Jason Barcial, Ada Tayao
Of the four performances, ‘Ang Mga Halimaw sa Compound Z’ is the one that doesn’t quite work. The short play is set in a science fiction world where monsters live amongst men. People turn into monsters and, in a place called Compound Z, the monsters are being rehabilitated so they can become human again and reintegrate into society. A reporter visits the compound to interview some of the monsters there for an article about the cure, but she has an agenda of her own.
The reason the play doesn’t quite succeed is that the play’s running time isn’t enough to build the world properly. The concept needs more time (maybe a full-length play?) to fully flesh out its world. There are many symbolic elements here – the monsters can be metaphors for activists or insurgents, the religious order that runs compound Z can be analogous to a tyrannical government – but the world needs to develop more. The work is also not character-driven, but plot driven, and so the story might also be stronger if explored as a film.
Due to the constraints of time, trying to fit within the duration of a one-act play, a lot of the story feels rushed and a lot of is discussed rather than acted out. The play never really gives us any example of how these monsters are monstrous and, for this concept to work, we really need to see it in action. ‘Ang Mga Halimaw sa Compound Z’ is an interesting experiment, but I think the true take away here is that the story is meant for a different medium.
Albularyo Direction, concept, and choreography by Carlon Matobato Dramaturgy by Ian SegarraPerformed by Carlon Matobato, Noelle Polack, Ekis Gimenes, Mico Esquivel, Carlos Deriaga, Raflesia Bravo
A contemporary dance piece, ‘Albularyo’ shows us a faith healer as he battles spirits to in the contemporary world. The ballet configures video to amplify the performance and creates a series of segments, the faith healer takes on several dancers who are trying to cause harm – from smoke demons to spirits that chatter and talk and even one that consumes – and it creates a dazzling spell. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a contemporary dance performance and seeing Raflesia Bravo dance again is always a welcome treat.
‘Albularyo’ is a moody piece that teeters towards the repetitive but manages a strong ending and powerful performances.
Children of the Algo Written by Mixkaela Villalon Directed by John Moran Performed by Ado Villanueva, Jan Magcaling, James Pe Lim, Mika Nitro
This was a fantastic piece. The four actors mimic the experience of skimming through social media – Tiktok or Instagram or Facebook reels – and it’s just a dazzling display of content acted out live. Each actor goes through different ways by which these social media influencers engage with their audience. From unboxing videos to pseudo-intimate confessionals, to showing us their home, or talking about their daily expenses. The play, at first, seems like it has no rhyme or reason. Just a never ending display of content and the more the play unfolds, the more the play seems to say how social media is so vapid, noisy, and insubstantial (at least that’s what I got from it).
But as one of the content creators start to realize that life is not fair for everyone, and a strong typhoon connects all four content creators together, reality is fractured and one creator manages to break into other people’s content, the play manages to create a strong criticism against the way social media has affected the way we see the world.
This is a brilliant play that feels new and is coming in strong with something important to say about the way we see the world and how it is filtered by our interactions in social media.
My Rating:
CONTROL + SHIFT is running at the PETA Theater Center until January 21. For tickets, please contact Trish at +639-15-311-8199.
As we step into 2024, the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) embraces its mission with renewed vigor, presenting a bold and compelling collection of new theater performances. Under the banner of “CONTROL + SHIFT: Changing Narratives,” PETA sets out to redefine stories, challenge assumptions, and transform toxic narratives, ultimately reclaiming and reshaping the stories of the Filipino people.
The Visionaries Behind the Revolution
PETA artists, in collaboration with creative partners and collaborators, have passionately crafted eight new works, blending devised performances with the re-staging of the acclaimed “KUMPRONTASYON.” This groundbreaking collection will grace the stage at the PETA Theater Center from January 12-14 and 19-21, 2024.
CONTROL + SHIFT : Changing Narratives features eight new works, devised performances, and the re-staging of KUMPRONTASYON at the PETA Theater Center from January 12-14, 19-21, 2024.
Unveiling the Narrative Alchemy
Momsilogues: A Savory Journey of Life and Love
Zoe Damag, Julia Enriquez, Pia Viola, and Gold Villar-Lim’s “Momsilogues,” directed by Gold Villar-Lim.
Directed by Gold Villar-Lim, “Momsilogues” takes center stage, unraveling the intricate tales of single mom foodie vloggers. In this interactive vlog about tapsilog, the audience is invited on a savory journey delving into the realms of career, love, and motherhood.
Ang Mga Halimaw sa Compound Z: Rethinking Monster Myths
Directed by Norbs Portales, Sabrina Basillo’s “Ang Mga Halimaw sa Compound Z” weaves a gripping narrative. A journalist interviews recovering “halimaw” as they reintegrate into society, uncovering shocking revelations that could reshape humanity’s destiny. This play explores the construction of monster myths and their impact on young Filipinos.
Albularyo: A Movement Journey into Folk Healing
Direction, concept, and choreography by Carlon Matobato, dramaturgy by Ian Segarra
Carlon Matobato’s creation, “Albularyo,” is a mesmerizing movement performance delving into the world of Filipino folk healing. It aims to heal not only the ills of the body but also the nation, offering a unique exploration of our cultural roots.
Children of the Algo: Navigating Gen Z Realities
Directed by John Moran, Mixkaela Villalon’s “Children of the Algo” explores the hidden realities of Gen Z content creators in the digital age. With wit and vulnerability, the play challenges viewers to see beyond the algorithm, unveiling deeper truths.
Kislap at Fuego: A Fairytale Amidst Revolution
Directed by Maribel Legarda and J-mee Katanyag, Filipino translation by Gentle Mapagu
Dominique La Victoria’s “Kislap at Fuego” transports audiences to an unexpected fairytale set amidst the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The play seeks to reshape conversations about love, rebirth, and revolution.
/ (Slash): Navigating Influencer Culture
Directed by Meann Espinosa
Liza Magtoto’s “/ (Slash),” directed by Meann Espinosa, delves into the complex world of influencer culture. As an influencer’s best friend faces cancellation, the play explores loyalty, righteousness, and branding in the industry.
Ang Parangal: A Humorous Take on Inept Governance
Direction & concept by Eric dela Cruz, adaptation & co-conceptualized with Michelle Ngu-Nario
Directed by Eric dela Cruz, “Ang Parangal” adapts Miloš Forman’s 1967 comedy film, The Fireman’s Ball. The play unfolds as a group of barangay tanod organizes a community celebration, showcasing the dire ineptitude in governance, proving that spectacles and good intentions aren’t enough.
Nakatala Sa Tubig: Women’s Roles in Times of War
Direction & concept by Eric dela Cruz, adaptation & co-conceptualized with Michelle Ngu-Nario
Glecy Atienza’s “Nakatala Sa Tubig” (Staged Reading) collaborates with Anthony Cruz & Bobet Mendoza to present a performance discourse on water and the lives and roles of women in times of war. In this adaptation of Miloš Forman’s 1967 comedy film, The Fireman’s Ball, a group of barangay tanod organizes a community celebration in tribute for their retired barangay captain but crumbles in the face of their dire ineptitude. Spectacles and good intentions are not enough to make up for incompetence in governance.
Pilipinas, Geym Ka Na Ba?: Dark Twists in Childhood Games
Directed by Kovi Billones with directing guidance from Ian Segarra
In this devised performance by Umalohokan, Inc., directed by Kovi Billones with guiding insight from Ian Segarra, Kyle Saldonido’s “Pilipinas, Geym Ka Na Ba?” explores the dark twists in childhood games that the residents of Barangay Pinapili must conquer to leave an obscure playground.
KUMPRONTASYON: Theater as a Platform for Difficult Conversations
Melvin Lee’s “KUMPRONTASYON” presents three plays – Allan Palileo’s “Lakambini,” Guelan Luarca’s “The Impossible Dream,” and Joshua Lim So’s “A Color for Tomorrow.” This production serves as a powerful platform for difficult but necessary conversations on unresolved historical and political events.
The Power of Theater
These thought-provoking performances aim to use the power of theater as a platform for collective meaning-making and social transformation. PETA invites everyone to join this theatrical revolution and witness the empowering stories come to life! For more information and ticket reservations, visit tinyurl.com/PETAControlShift. Don’t miss the chance to be part of a narrative transformation that might just change the world.
