Chasing Carlitos

MANILA, Philippines - Like many contemporary Filipino film directors, Carlitos Siguion Reyna is an enigma. On the day of the interview he is nowhere to be found in his residence on Cambridge Street, North Forbes, having been just called to an impromptu script breakdown across Edsa in nearby Urdaneta Village at his lead star, Cris Villonco’s, place on Farola Street, where the entire cast is brainstorming for “Walang Sugat,” the zarzuela that opens Tanghalang Pilipino’s calendar year in August.

“He’s like that sometimes, when he’s working on something he tends to forget all other things except for the work at hand,” Carlitos’ wife the writer Bibeth Orteza says apologetically, as she proceeds to draw a map leading to the Villonco house.

And since nothing happens without a purpose, she also hands over a clutch of biographies she shepherded, including the famous one of Dolphy, whose doctors had told her the night before that it would be a miracle if he lasted the week.

Carlitos Siguion Reyna gets hands on as he directs Jonathan Tadionan and Jean Javier in Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Walang Sugat”.

In the dining room of the sprawling house on Farola, the Walang Sugat cast is gathered around the table with scripts in hand, Carlitos himself presiding over the line by line analysis and occasional read through.

None are instantly recognizable save for Cris Villonco, who plays Julia, and presently they are discussing her character’s motivations and inflections. Some of the cast look vaguely familiar, likely regulars in theater or bit players in sitcoms or soaps.

After the customary introductions and greetings, Carlitos resumes the workshop-like session, while Cris a few seats away looks young and pretty as ever under what appears to be a Japanese overhead paper lamp.

The fellow to Villonco’s left mentions the emotions that attend the realization of a loved one’s impending mortality: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Her character arc might have to go through these. At some point during the script breakdown, a loud cicada or cricket buzz overwhelms the living room, as if wanting to be given some dialogue too.

“I’ve always wanted to do opera,” Carlitos later says in the patio during a break in rehearsals, “and now I’m really enjoying doing this.”

It was TP artistic director Nanding Josef who approached Carlitos in January if he wanted to do Walang Sugat, which the director readily agreed to despite not being familiar with the material.

The casts includes Cris Villonco as Julia, Noel Rayos as Tenyong, and Jenny Villegas and Javier who alternate as Monica.

But from 2005 to 2008 he had directed the monthly stage production of “Aawitan Kita” at the University of Makati, a project of the Binays, which though not opera is more of a musical. Bibeth took over for the most part since then after Carlitos accepted a teaching post at Tisch School of the Arts, the New York University branch in Singapore. In summer vacation the director would return to do Aawitan Kita, his mom Armida’s original baby, but this time it’s still Bibeth handling it because of Walang Sugat.

“There are similarities in that you have to bring your own take to the material in both cases,” Carlitos says, differentiating between theater and film, the last of which he made over a decade ago, “Azucena.”

He says in both theater and film, you have to impart what you see in the world in the material, the same process of looking for character arcs, laying bare the structural skeleton of the work. There’s also what he calls a certain “objectification” in both cases.

A main difference is rehearsal and preparation time, he says, because in theater you get at least four weeks, while in film you’re lucky if you get to rehearse at all, as usually it is just a brief spiel and instruction just before take. Not so with theater, which tends to be more meticulous and linear, the nature of the medium. In film, you can shoot the concluding scenes first, approach the work from the opposite end, which perhaps makes it more challenging in the postmodern sense.

In Walang Sugat, Carlitos says he does minimal editing along the way. Case in point is one scene where a phrase about someone dying is repeated by several characters, which he finds necessary to jumble up a bit and splice the dialogue for the sake of brevity.

The ensemble: April Joy Iñigo, Doray Dayao, Ralph Mateo, Jelson Bay, Lou Veloso, Jovanni Cadag, Noe Morgado, and Remus Villanueva.

At Tisch School of the Arts where he has taught for four years, Carlitos is proud of several of his students who have made their mark in major festivals like Cannes, Venice, Sundance, including one JP Su. Student population is majority American, the rest Asian and other races. Class size of specific genres runs up to 12, general can reach over 30.

And unlike in the mother branch in New York, in Singapore if you take a similarly sized sample radius there would already be different and diverse cultures, not just American.

Of the new Filipino directors, not to mention new wave, Carlitos mentions Adolph Alix, a product of a scriptwriting workshop he helped run. Alix’s “Isda” he was able to catch in Singapore.

Lav Diaz’s “Ebolusyon ng Pamilyang Pilipino” he had translated when it was, at the time, only eight hours long before it expanded to its current eleven. He has also watched Diaz’s “Hesus Rebolusyonario,” relatively short at two hours.

Carlitos says that quite a few directors are well grounded in both theater and film, because aside from the recently departed Mario O’Hara, there’s Peque Gallaga, Soxy Topacio, Joel Lamangan, the National Artists Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal.

He shrugs off any suggestion of a Brocka-Bernal rivalry when asked if he too sees the need to compete, saying it’s just a media spin. As for contemporaries, Chito Roño directed as few years before he himself did.

Villonco with Noemi Manikan-Gomez as Juana.

Apart from Azucena, which is about a lecherous stepfather years removed from Leo Echegaray, Carlitos also lights up when the Rosanna Roces movies are brought up, “Mga Lalaki sa Buhay ni Selya” and “Ang Babae sa Bintana,” as well as the Wuthering Heights adaptation shot in Batanes, “Hihintayin Kita sa Langit,” which starred Dawn Zulueta and Richard Gomez.

“Inagaw Mo ang Lahat sa Akin,” the director feels, is also good work.

The barely dozen comprising his filmography thus far mostly span the ’90s, such that it is impossible to talk about that decade in Philippine cinema without mentioning Carlitos.

But whether he is the ’90s’ best is arguable, posits the critic Noel Vera, who swears by O’Hara.

“I still have some films in me, movies I want to do,” he says, hinting that there could be a second wave of Carlitos films, and that Walang Sugat is a good means of getting back in circulation.

Reyna Films, which produced his films, is not really dormant as the equipment, the office are still there, just waiting for the right time to make a comeback.

Soon enough the Walang Sugat cast is again assembled around the dining table under the paper lantern, waiting for direk to resume breaking down the script with them.

Noemi Manikan-Gomez as Juana and Lou Veloso (above) and Bodjie Pascua (left) as Tadeo.

Walking to the gate of Farola, Cris wonders if everyone had taken a little merienda. She has at the moment no plans of releasing another CD, like the one with her on a tire swing on the cover years ago. Carlitos apologizes again, rather sheepishly. No problem, no wounds. To everything there is a season – the second wave of director Siguion Reyna lying in ambush like the moviegoer on either side of Edsa, another woman at the window or more men for Selya, perhaps even a sequel of diamond dogs.

Walang Sugat goes onstage at the CCP Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino from Aug. 9 to 19. Call Tanghalang Pilipino at 832-1125 loc 1621 or 0917-7500107 or visit tanghalangpilipino.gov.ph