Photo: Tanghalang Filipino / FB" width="100%" />
Remember the 1937 John Steinbeck novel about vagabond ranch workers in California looking for work during the United States’ Great Depression? Solid piece of storytelling, yes — but the whole displaced-ranch-workers-during-the-Great-Depression premise doesn’t exactly give us island dwellers on this side of the hemisphere much to relate to.
Local theater company Tanghalang Pilipino, however, is bringing Steinbeck’s story a little closer to home by staging a performance of Katsuri, which gives the original novel a localized flavor and twist.
Katsuri (Visayan for “mouse”) features the struggle of sugar plantation workers in Negros, a province where farmers are killed over land conflicts. Similar to the original novel, the play will cover issues of inequality, and how human relationships on the micro level can end up affecting a larger group of individuals’ lives, and society itself.
The stage adaptation will be helmed by esteemed entertainment industry OGs, the husband-and-wife duo of writer Bibeth Orteza and director Carlos Siguion-Reyna. It will be staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) Little Theater from Oct. 4 to 27.
This adaptation’s original cast include theater darlings Jonathan Tadioan and Marco Viaña, as well as Antonette Go, Lhorvie Nuevo, and Manok Nellas, along with performers from the Tanghalang Pilipino Actors Company.
Ticket prices start at PHP800 (US$15) each, and are available on Ticketworld’s website. For more information, visit Tanghalang Filipino’s Facebook page.
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