How Angelica learned the truth about her adoption

Angelica Panganiban learned the truth about her adoption January of this year. “I asked my cousin, feeling ko ampon ako. She didn’t reply. She just cried. I went inside the comfort room and looked at myself. When I came back, I asked her, so we’re not relatives? Hindi siya sumagot basta umiyak lang siya. Sabi ko, so wala akong pamilya? ’Yon ang unang pumasok sa isip ko. There was no anger in me. I just felt envious because I realized I was not really part of the family I grew up with, and I thought everything was perfect. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t face my family. Nahihiya ako, kasi I might have hurt them. Baka may nasasabi akong hindi maganda.”

Finally, when she went home, she spoke to her mother about the adoption. “I was surprised. Everything that I wanted to know were all there — pictures, names, everything that I needed was intact. They didn’t plan to hide it from me for a long time.”

Earlier, a friend, Ketchup Eusebio, asked her if she wanted to know her real parents. Angelica answered in the negative. “What for? I already have a family and I’m happy,” she told Ketchup. After Valentine’s Day this year, another friend of Angelica’s had a slip of the tongue. “She said that my real mom was gone, she died in Singapore two years ago. I felt I needed to pay my respects to her. I wanted to thank her for giving me life. She gave another family the chance to be happy. She didn’t think of aborting me.”

During the Holy Week, Angelica visited her late biological mother’s tomb in Singapore. “Hindi ko po siya kilala pero mahal ko po siya.”

Angelica already had an inkling that she was adopted as a teener in high school. “May nagsasabi kasi sa akin, “Oy kilala ko ang nanay mo.” But she kept it all to herself. “Nahihiya po kasi ako sa pamilya ko. They never treated me differently.”

According to Angelica, she was left for adoption because her biological mother could not provide for her. “She felt it best to give me to a family which had the means at that time.”

Even when she was already a big star, her late mother never called her. “Mama said my real mom never called or asked for anything even when she saw me on TV and knew I was already earning money. She never blackmailed or messed up our life. She was just happy for me.”

Next to Normal coming soon

Atlantis Productions, which celebrated its 2010 Season with hit productions of Avenue Q, Legally Blonde, Xanadu and the Manila and Singapore runs of A Little Night Music, opens its 2011 season with the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning rock musical Next to Normal.

Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (book/lyrics) penned the emotional work that explores how one suburban household copes with crisis. With provocative lyrics, and an electrifying score of more than 30 original songs, Next to Normal shows how far two parents will go to keep themselves sane and their family’s world intact. The two earned the 2009 Tony Award for Best Score and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Fresh from his critically-acclaimed staging of A Little Night Music in Manila and Singapore, Bobby Garcia directs the Manila production of Next to Normal, the first licensed English Language production outside the US.

Bobby says, “I am thrilled that Atlantis is opening 2011 with a show as groundbreaking and as powerful as Next to Normal. It is one of the most unlikely hit musicals to have ever opened on a Broadway stage, and I am thrilled that we will get to create our own unique family for this production. When I saw Next to Normal off-Broadway two years ago and on Broadway last year, I was once again excited for the future of musical theater.”

Starring in Next to Normal are Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo as Diana and rock star/ theater actor Jett Pangan as Dan. They take on two of the most demanding roles written for musical theater originated on the Broadway stage by Tony Award-winning actress Alice Ripley and J. Robert Spencer. 

Next to Normal is presented through a special licensing agreement with Music Theatre International. Shows are now available for show buying and fund raising opportunities with excellent returns of investment.  

Next to Normal runs from March 11 to 27, 2011 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati. For details, call Atlantis Productions at 892-7078 or 840-1187.