Scene Change’s staged reading cycle ‘Bantayog: Alaala at Gunita’ to be held at PMCS Blackbox Theater this September
Scene Change’s staged reading cycle ‘Bantayog: Alaala at Gunita’ to be held at PMCS Blackbox Theater this September
SINEGANG.ph published this press release shared by Scene Change. No staff writer participated in writing this article.
This coming September, Scene Change is set to stage BANTAYOG: Alaala at Gunita, a limited staged reading cycle to be held at the Power Mac Center Spotlight Blackbox Theater in Circuit Makati.
This two-title staged reading cycle revolves around Martial Law, disappearance, public memory, and the difficult discipline of remembering. The staged readings will run for two shows only over two weekends.
Happening on September 19 and 20 at 7:30PM is Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón’s VILLA, translated and directed by Giancarlo Abrahan, fresh off his Cinemalaya win for Best Director and Best Film for the Full Length Feature Category. The reading will feature actresses Martha Comia, Meann Espinosa, and Ness Roque.
In VILLA, three women in Chile, all named Alejandra, sit around a table, debating how to memorialize Villa Grimaldi—a real-life site where political prisoners were tortured and murdered during Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship.
On September 26 and 27 at 7:30PM is DESAPARESIDOS, adapted from Lualhati Bautista’s 2007 novel of the same name by Guelan Varela-Luarca. The cast includes Sheenly Gener, Marco Viaña, Jojit Lorenzo, Jam Binay, Ge Villamil, Gio Gahol, Yshma Aquino, Toni Go-Yadao, and Maliana Beran. Varela-Luarca will direct the reading alongside co-director Kat Batara.
DESAPARESIDOS follows activists Anna and Roy through the turbulent years of Martial Law and the quieter, more complicated decades that follow. The play enacts not only the violence of political disappearance but the longer, less visible work of living in its wake — how memory lingers, how silence settles, and how the past is passed on to those who never experienced it firsthand. Named one of the best productions of the decade by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it has been called "unflinching" and "deeply moving"—theatre that holds a mirror to history without losing sight of the people who lived it.
Together, these two works aim to create a conversation across countries and dictatorships: Chile and the Philippines, Pinochet and Marcos, disappearance and denial, public memory and public forgetting.
The show schedule of the reading cycle is as follows:
September 19, 7:30PM - Villa
September 20, 7:30PM - Villa
September 26, 7:30PM - Desaparesidos
September 27, 7:30PM - Desaparesidos
Tickets to BANTAYOG: Alaala at Gunita are now available for PHP 850 at tinyurl.com/scbantayog2026.
This staged reading cycle is produced by Scene Change (Sc.), a contemporary Filipino theatre company known for intimate, rigorous, and text-forward theatre-making. Through works such as 3 Upuan, Dagitab, and Ang Linangan, they continue to build a practice around small rooms, precise encounters, and theatrical risks that do not always need to shout in order to land with force.
For more updates, follow Sc. Scene Change on Instagram (@sc.scenechange) and Facebook.
