Theaterati

Battalia Royale was friggin’ awesome!

I remember getting teary-eyed when the show saw its first casualty - a girl who looked a lot like Sheenly (our assistant stage manager for Sweet Charity), standing up to the tyrannical teacher in the person of Kuya Bodjie Pascua (of Batibot fame) and got the bloody boot as a result. The scene was so intense and beautifully done. She kept yapping and so, Kaboom. The gauntlet was thrown. Blood splatter. Girl was dead in a heartbeat, students scatter in a panic, audiences cheer, audiences are herded accordingly, (UPO, TAYO, TAKBO) and it was bloody awesome, pun intended.

I seriously hadn’t seen a show like that, being staged or performed here in Manila, ever. It’s Sleep No More meets Kill Bill. Live Action Theater.

Walking up the stairs leading to the CCP Promenade, I didn’t really know what to expect other than the fact that I had seen the film version before - even of the sequel where the premise evolved into a tag team somehow. If your partner died, you’d die as well. How they were going to recreate the first movie into a live action theater piece, I had no clue.

My friend Mela and I arrived in a nick of time, just before several groups, including ours, were herded into the initial staging area. We walked past Radio Active Sago Project playing their signature brass tunes (they would provide the musical underscore for the show that laced the story with irony and a vibe of the Japanese Yakuza) until we reached an area where all forty students were lifeless and sprawled on the ground. This was Battalia Royale’s opening scene - reminiscent of the film where the kids awoke in a military concentration camp with collars on their necks.

The rules of the game are simple: kill or be killed. They have eight hours to kill each other until only one survives, or else, the collars on their necks explode and they all die. They are each given a satchel which contains a random weapon. These could be as stupid as a metal cover of a garbage bin, or as deadly as a shotgun. That was my first question - how were they going to execute killing each other in this version?

Well, the weapons were all there and present. There was a bow and arrow, there was a shotgun, there was a taser. Were these used effectively? To some extent, yes. Of course, you could only do so much with simulated weapons and the safety of the actors had to be taken into consideration - like how was one actor supposed to pound a nail into the forehead of another without harming that person and with audience members watching up close given the show’s theater-in-the-round format. A lot of times, it was like watching Pacquiao and Marquez collapse into each other when the going gets tough, effectively concealing the supposed “action” from the audience members.

Of course, these were all aesthetic. The true stars of the show were the students. It’s the awesome performances that carried BATTALIA ROYALE through, especially that of the creepy girl (Cacai I believe) who had some MOMOL action with another girl before she ended up killing the latter. Oh Pinoys, there always has to be a “KEEEEEES” in the equation. Commitment levels were way up on the actor’s richter scale for most of the players though of course, there were the occasional greenhorns who didn’t seem as emotionally invested in the show as the others. I’m talking about some of the female and male groupies.

There were three set-ups for locations that we as audience members could permeate ourselves upon. Mostly trusses with shrapnels of plastic weaving through the spaces and connecting all three locations. There had also been a staging area in the middle where Radio Active Sago Project was nested for the duration of the show on which several fight scenes would erupt - a sword fight being one of them.

And true to form of a live interactive theater piece, the show had its gimmicks. The audience participation bit which was rather scary. You could decide as audience members if one of the students should live or not. OMG, umm, what? Surprisingly, I found myself saying “Kill Him!” - like most other people - to which I told Mela and Sam, “I feel like I’m committing a sin.” Hello, I was, in essence, condemning a high school to his death. I felt like Judas - but it was of course in the context of the show.

Towards the end, there was also a choose-your-own-adventure segment where all three scenes would happen simultaneously on which you’d have to decide which scene or location you’d hawk. We chose the one in the middle where we ended up in the very front (for a change) on which a group of high school girls and several guys would end up killing each other. This was the scene where blood got splattered on me. YES!!!! Subsequently, a lone drop of blood would nest itself on my forehead. Oh yes, Bloody Thursday is the new Ash Wednesday! Haha.

The show lasted for two and a half hours and well, despite the show’s flaws, it was every bit the experience that every THEATERATI should get his hands on. I can just imagine, if Sipat Lawin Ensemble, a site-specific theater group known for their out-of-the-box performances, had more budget for the production, and the actors all had lapels so they would all be heard, and a meatier lighting and sound design had been accommodated by the production ala Sleep No more in Off-Broadway, then Battalia Royale could have easily been a runaway success.

Well, it still was. Yesterday’s 950-person strong attendance proved it. Because of its huge success, the show will have a repeat, slated from March 9-11 at an abandoned high school in Cubao which can accommodate a maximum of 150 audience members per show. So in theory, only 450 people will be accommodated in BATTALIA ROYALE’s Cubao leg. Panic Mode. Need to reserve tickets - immediately.

Battalia Royale is definitely this theater season’s must-see show!

Congrats to Sipat Lawin Ensemble. Looking forward to your next endeavors!