0143D: Bona Emotional Echoes

Theater remains one of my passions - more the watching of than the starring in (but I have been on both sides of this equation).
The joys of theater, musical or otherwise, is how well they manage to capture various aspects of the human experience in these stories. And while you can argue that movies and TV shows do exactly the same thing, it's still quite the different experience to watch the story unfold with the actors actually in front of you - the distance between you easily crossed in the span of minutes.

Today Tobie and I watched Bona, as staged by PETA. Adapted from the famous Lino Brocka movie, the play adapted the story for a more conventional setting while still retaining the core story. The star of the show was Ms. Eugene Domingo, an amazing talented local actress with a flair for comedy while still being able to switch to a more serious mode as necessary. And she was pretty fantastic in this role with amazing comedic timing and the kind of quick wit needed to adapt to the occasional incidents that could potentially disrupt any stage play.

Case in point - this lovely moment when a stage faucet was opened but no water came out, thus forcing Eugene to quip that they hadn't paid the bill. Genius recovery.

Now I've never seen the original movie that this play was inspired by, but thankfully the playbill included a synopsis to aid us viewers in getting a better feel for the context of things. The original movie was more of a straight drama and this version had a more comedic spin to things while retaining the more dramatic undertones to things. Because of the dual nature of the production, it ended up feeling a lot like the play Carmi Martin that I had watched some time back But of course this play was a heck of a lot better in terms of quality.

The story had a certain...resonance with my past. It had me thinking of a number of things and events. And while it wasn't a precise translation of a lot of recent events, there were certainly aspects to the production that had me nodding and relating to the sequences more than I had expected. It made for quite the mixed experience - laughing with the rest of the audience given the comedic moments and finding myself more silent during other times. Yes, life is certainly funny in that regard how it throws us these coincidental curve balls that seem far too similar to our own lives. And we do our best to grin and bear it and more importantly learn from things.

Fast-forward to right now and I'm in the middle of another tabletop game together with Mahar and Urim as run by Tobie. It's a mixed Adventure / Aberrant / Aeon Trinity game where we seem to be switching through the three eras on and off again. The last few sessions were mostly about Adventure but tonight we find ourselves flung into the future world of Trinity.

Oh dear.