These Ensemble Players challenge the possibilities of performance as they embark on some acrobatics of the heart in PAGE-TO-STAGE: One-Woman Performance Series featuring one-woman performances of Filipino literature classics.

These pieces are usually staged with a big cast but will now be machinated by only one performer onstage – using monodrama, puppetry, digital technology, sound art, and other media.

These one-woman performances will push the limits of performance possibilities by maximizing the artists’ skills and stretching their capacity to create and transform while making the work more accessible to more audiences. These One-Woman Performance Series will be available for nationwide school tours and art gallery performances.

Kicking off the series is Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer an experimental one-woman performance of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere that will push beyond the usual retelling of the novel and push on re-imagining heroes, nation, and imagined histories.

Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer (A One-Woman Performance) features one actor’s performance on Rizal’s 1886 novel, Noli Me Tangere. This devise-work features puppetry, digital technology, sound art, and other media machinated by one Sipat Lawin Ensemble Player. The performance kicks off this October with Meila Romero-Payawal.

Romero’s collaborators include multi-disciplinary visual artist-designer and Thirteen Artist Awardee Leeroy New, composer and sound desinger for film, theater, and television Teresa Barrozo, filmmaker Brandon Relucio and resident technical director and lights designer Ninya Bedruz. Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer is directed by Sipat Lawin’s Artistic Director Jk Anicoche with dramaturgy by Ensemble Player Ness Roque.

Going beyond the usual narrative retelling of the novel, Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer pushes a performative reading and re-imagining of the Noli Me Tangere, as well as Jose Rizal himself, and imagined histories as structures and icons continouosly deconstructing and reconstructing nation.

NOLI ME TANGERE Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer is part of Sipat Lawin’s Page-to-Stage mobile performances and is available for local and international touring.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Sipat Lawin Ensemble is an edge-work, site-specific, independent performance company composed of theater artists, engaged in devising relevant new works. Changing the landscape of theater in the Philippines, the group aims to develop a contemporary community theater experience shared among artists and audiences inside and/or outside the four walls of the theater. The Ensemble’s core group of artists also manages the company and its programs alongside producing and developing performances and alternative modes of theater-making.

Stripping theater down to bare essentials of Actor, Action, and Audience, the company started independently producing works in alternative performance spaces in 2009. Since then, Sipat Lawin has produced a series of ensemble-devised anywhere-and-everywhere community collaborations.

As the country’s premiere site-specific theater company, Sipat Lawin Players have conducted performance lectures about their innovative works, alternative mode of production and evolving theater-making process, invited as speakers/performance-lecturers in Ateneo de Manila University’s Company Call 3 (2011), the Philippine Educational Theater Association’s Young Artists Forum (2012), Locus Redux International Art Conference at the Yuchengco Museum (2012), the CCP’s 13 Artists Awards Forum Series on “Collaborations and Crossing Media” (2012), as well as in two of This Is Not Art Festival’s “Critical Animals” panels in Newcastle, Australia (2013). In 2014, the Ensemble also launched Weekends with Sipat, blank-ticketed workshops where experts in different fields shared what they know through talks or workshops.

An active player in the social media platform, Sipat Lawin has been featured in local and international blogs, papers and programs by various networks and news agencies including GMA, Yahoo Philippines, Al-Jazeera and Reuters, among others.

The Ensemble aims to create and develop new forms of inter-action, social functions and modes of communication. Crossing and blurring boundaries among different performance media, SLE collaborates with top artists from different fields.

To the edge of consciousness, edge of theater-making.

Sipat Lawin Ensemble: Contemporary Community Theater, Contemporary Theater Community.

In celebration of this momentous event, government units, the academe, and other culture, history and art-oriented institutions have planned grand events for Sunday. Among these is My Rizal 150′s Maligayang Bati, Jose Rizal, an evening of art, music, poetry and fireworks in Fort Santiago.
The Banda ng Maynila (brass band of the City of Manila) will kick-start the event by playing live music. They will be followed by the Ateneo Chamber Singers, who will be performing classics, as well as one song especially composed for the event, on the Main Stage at the flagpole area of Plaza Moriones.

Berklee alums Tess Salientes and Gerard Salonga have also prepared a specially composed musical theme for the event. There will be a fireworks display after their performance.

Camp Suki will be offering kalesa rides, on-the-spot artists who can sketch/draw your portrait (for a fee), and a turn-of-the-century photo shoot complete with costumes.

Gerardo de Leon’s 1961 classic Noli Me Tangere will be shown on one of the walls of the ruins of the American barracks, courtesy of CCP and SOFIA (Society of Filipino Film Archivists) who were responsible for the restoration of the film.

Sipat Lawin Ensemble will be performing an avant-garde  piece wherein they are going to march backwards from Luneta to Fort Santiago doing a reenactment of Rizal’s execution. They will also be doing pocket performances throughout the evening.

Heroes Square will also do their 30-minute play on Rizal and Josephine Bracken inside the Rizal Shrine, which will remain open all night. The play will start after the firework display and the Buhay na Kasaysayan members, dressed in period military uniform, will draw the crowd into Rizal Shrine.

Traditional food from the era in which Rizal lived will be sold by concessionaires Ilustrado, Barbara’s, and Adarna Food and Culture.

The Manila Diamond Hotel is baking a special birthday cake for Jose Rizal, recreating Rizal’s book stand with his Noli Me Tangere placed on top. Rizal’s book stand is being restored by Escuela Taller of Intramuros.

The Lopez Museum will be showcasing  their extensive Rizal collection, and will be on display at the Plaza Armas.

Registration starts at 5:00 p.m., and the program starts at 6:00 p.m. Ticket prices are P100 per adult and P50 for kids below 12 years of age. Entrance is free for guests who will come in period costumes, or dress as their favorite characters from Jose Rizal’s novels.

For more information, please contact:

Lisa T. Bayot
Tel. nos:
(+632) 817-8062
(+632) 894-0505

Maite P. Gallego
Email add: maitepgallego@yahoo.com.ph

Changing and challenging the landscape of theatre performances in the Philippines, Sipat Lawin engages in ensemble and collaborative work as the group aims to develop a contemporary community theater experience shared among artists and audiences inside and/or outside the four walls of the theater. Engagement. Proximity. Coverage.

Inter-action. Intervention. Invasion.

* Performance History and Portfolio available online at www.sipatlawin.posterous.com

Leeroy New Profile

Leeroy New is a prolific artist with a wide range of work for film, theater, visual arts and fashion. He has received several citations for his work, including the grand prize in the 2005 Metrobank Art Awards and most recently, the Ateneo Art Awards where he received grants in Singapore and Australia as prize.

He has exhibited in the 2008 Singapore Biennale, where he positioned an army of his trademark alien figures on the roof of one of the courtyards of the City Hall, and the 2009 Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, where he installed an eye-shaped vessel on the façade of a museum. He is the man responsible for the Balete installation in the Rizal Library in the Ateneo University as well as the otherworldly façade of the Sputnik Comic Bar in Cubao X.

Leeroy New also works as a production designer and at present has worked on three feature films and a number of music videos and short films. He has also ventured into fashion design collaborating with fellow Fine Arts graduate Kermit Tesoro for the 2008 and 2010 Philippine Fashion Week. Their 2010 collection was ranked number two for that season by Preview magazine.