The lights open to a crowd. The theater is transformed into the province of Antique. One man is sharpening a knife. The rest yell and jest and goad in Kinaray-a. A boy kneels in front of a tree stump. He is put through a ritual not uncommon—his reluctance is forced out of his system. Both men and knife compel him into manhood.

Rite of Passage marks Tanghalang Ateneo’s (TA) second installment in its 36th season. Written by celebrated playwright and member of the Fine Arts Program faculty, Glenn Sevilla Mas, Rite of Passage was first recognized as a Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature winner for the Full Length Play category in the year 2004 and was first produced on-stage by Tanghalang Pilipino during the 2005 Virgin Labfest. The play is an adaptation of Sa Pagtubu Kung Tahud: a short story by Maria Milagros Geremia Lachica in the Kinaray-a language. Rite of Passage is currently being directed by Ron Capinding.

The boy Isoy (Cholo Ledesma) struggles with no longer being a child, but not quite yet a man. He is also dealing with the pressure to fit in as a member of the barrio. Isoy is troubled by both his future and his past–having lived with neither a father nor a mother but instead with his severe spinster Tiyay Susing (Frances Makil-Ignacio) and under the eye of his neighborly Tiyoy Berning (Teroy Guzman). There is the familiar scramble for balance—where lust clashes with maturity.

Rite of Passage progresses along the lines of TA’s current theme, “Navigating Identities.” Fifteen-year-old Isoy explores and searches a barren countryside for his life’s purpose, and instead is forced to stumble across an understanding of adulthood and sex on the horizon.

We are welcomed into a small house and hear from outside the bamboo walls a town almost too unlike the Manila urban jungle. Gwyn Guanzon’s set design was a remarkable highlight of rural simplicity and the complexity of barriers. Lights and sounds—by D. Cortezano and Jethro Joaquin, respectively—arrange the play in transit.

The warm yellow of a mimicked 5 AM sun and the routine cacophony of clucking chickens and tricycles driving by are transportive. We find ourselves barefoot in hardened soil, terrified and trying to pinpoint where we last found innocence.

Frances Makil-Ignacio’s performance as Tiyay Susing is a relentless force, coupled with the emotional delicacy and precision that Teroy Guzman brings out in the character of Tiyoy Berning. While the dialogue shifts between Kinaray-a and an accented English, there is no difficulty following the story’s progression. In rituals, words are merely tools and actions the solemn focus.

There is the brightness of a rural lifestyle—pregnant with nostalgia for something not yet experienced but yearned for. There is the terrifying white stagnant noise and then a crescendo. We too culminate in this initiation—the cloying of this burning sensation we don’t know rests within us. There is a necessary step to be taken to cross over from where things are dormant. And when the play wraps itself in an almost benevolent christening, we wonder where the line between purity and concupiscence is drawn.

The production will be showing on the following dates: November 27-29, December 3-6 & 10-13 at 7 PM. Matinee shows start at 2 PM only on Saturdays. The plays will all be performed at the Rizal Mini Theater.

Photo by Rynel Mejia, Tanghalang Ateneo