Trolls can’t stop Manila group staging play on EJKs

A scene from the musicale “Bitan” by the community-based Teatro Balagtas—PHOTOS BY AIE BALAGTAS SEE

Threats of violence and heckling from internet trolls are not stopping a community-based theater group in Manila from staging a musicale about the spate of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) attributed to the year-old drug war launched by President Rodrigo Duterte.

The show must go on, according to Jessie Villabrille of Teatro Balagtas, a troupe he cofounded with his friends in Pandacan in 2008.

“We thought it over and decided that we would run the play,” said the 28-year-old Villabrille, the playwright and creative director of the production titled “Bitan,” a Korean word for lamentation.

“With the spate of killings, the play wants us to realize that our worst enemy is not the police or the vigilantes. It’s not even President Duterte. Instead, it’s apathy and cynicism. That state of affairs where people no longer care,” he said in an Inquirer interview last week.

The musicale revolves around the story of a coffin maker and his daughter as they ponder their future amid the EJKs in their village that have given the father’s trade a boost.

Expect to hear arguments “for and against the drug war,” Villabrille said, and how they seem to divide not just families or neighborhoods, but Philippine society itself.

Some parts of the musicale are currently being polished after an early version was shown twice in different venues in Manila.

Teatro Balagtas cofounder and playwright Jessie Villabrille with “Bitan” cast member Ronalyn Mangayon, 14

Online haters

The first preview was held at Plaza Balagtas in Pandacan in April this year. The second was staged inside Pandacan Church on July 2, as the Duterte administration marked its first year. Human rights groups, nongovernment organizations, students and members of the academe were among the invited guests in the audience.

“After our first preview was reported in the media, we received various threats from Duterte supporters online. They threatened our lives and even wished that our actresses would get raped. It’s scary. I’m not afraid myself but I’m worried for my cast,” Villabrille said.

Villabrille said Teatro Balagtas would again be presenting “Bitan” starting next month. “Since we target to run the play in local communities, like in the barangays, we do hope that the organizers would arrange tighter security measures for their safety.”

At one point, Villabrille and the cast had to discuss whether they should continue with the play. For not only were the haters spewing baseless rants on social media, they also peddled outright lies, he said.

One post claimed that the actors in the play were paid “P100,000 each” to give Duterte’s war on drugs a bad name.

“They also said that our cast members, who are mostly youths, were wasting their parents’ money for joining the theater instead of going to school,” he said.

Far from being awash in cash, he said, Teatro Balagtas had been making do with a meager budget in finding and developing stage talents among teenagers from depressed areas, including those who had dropped out of school because of poverty.

Teatro Balagtas relies on private donors for funds which mainly go to production expenses, Villabrille said. The performers themselves don’t receive any fee.

One of the latest discoveries is Ronalyn Mangayon, 14, who was earlier advised by some friends and relatives to just quit the play “because she’s too young to understand the issue.”

Kahilum Dos

But how can Mangayon not understand EJKs? Her family dealt with one eight months ago.

When the Inquirer met her, Mangayon, a Pandacan resident from an area known as Kahilum Dos, recalled how she was roused from sleep by her screaming neighbors one early morning in November.

She thought about going back to sleep—until she recognized her mother’s voice in the predawn wailings.

Ronalyn’s grandfather, Barangay 686 Councilor Enrique Mangayon, had been shot dead inside their house by a masked gunman.

“(Witnesses) said the killer was too big to get into the house so he just looked for an opening on the wall for his gun and pulled the trigger. After that, they heard the gunman say: ‘Sorry, kagawad, napag-utusan lang (just following orders),’” the teenager said.

Ronalyn acknowledged that her grandfather had been perceived as a protector of drug pushers.

“But that’s not true. Residents ran to him for help because he was a kagawad, and as a public servant he always made himself available to everyone,” she said.

Ronalyn’s lament

Kahilum Dos had lost four more residents to EJKs since the start of the Duterte administration. The Mangayons’ house stood just behind the Manila Police District’s Labores precinct, yet Ronalyn said “the police never bothered to investigate.”

What Ronalyn had gone through would prove that the young performers in “Bitan” “truly understood the effects of the drug war,” Villabrille said. “Since many of them live in depressed areas, they know what it’s about and they’ve seen it first-hand.”

Because of this, many of the lines in the musicale were derived from the cast members’ real-life experiences, giving the play more depth.

“Like when the characters recount how someone was just buying cooking oil at the sari-sari store, or dozing off on the sidewalk, when he was shot dead—those things happened for real,” Villabrille.

For Ronalyn, nothing is more painful than delivering lines inspired by the tragedy that befell her family that November morning.

“But I have to do this. My grandfather loved the theater when he was still alive.”