Where the Wild Things Are: An Oral History of ‘Mula Sa Buwan’

One of the largest setbacks to the theatrical scene—ultimately, life, as we know it—has been the threat of the pandemic. It has led many aspirations to a halt, affecting both spectators and even more so, the artists. When we adjusted to the virtual world, the stark shift—and the instability that came with it in our everyday lives—became vividly felt, especially in and by the theater community. Thus, these limits continued to impede the advocacies of every artist in the Philippines, despite our best efforts to keep the flame alive.

Immediately after lockdown closures, it became clear that the face of the theater will most likely change—calling the need to come together and develop new strategies to work with. This then served as a spurring force for increased creativity and ingenuity of our passionate and advocacy-driven artists. At the time, in the face of the nearly-ceasing the wonders of the theater, the prolific way it fought back to life left it stronger than ever. Ultimately, we bring the theater scene with us as we gradually go back to how everything used to be after years of disconnection and distance.

“Mula sa Buwan”, one of the first full productions to ever brave staging in the midst of a still uncertain time, has seen success in two of its (almost) sold-out and widely-talked-about runs in 2022. Celebrated by critics and fans, returning and new (most impressive of which are first-time theatergoers), the modernized sarsuwela backdropped by the newly-minted home of the live stage, Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Circuit Makati, amplified one simple fact: the theater is alive and the need to build shared human experiences is stronger and more vibrant, now more than ever.

In the Beginning

By the time its cast and crew took the story of love and resilience to the stage for its second run in December, the brains and actors of the production shared their sentiments on returning to their love—reaching out to the audience and telling a significant narrative through their art.

Creator and director, Pat Valera, talked about the storied journey of how a germ of an idea that came about twelve years ago transformed into a theatrical marvel with a grand history behind it. A thesis project then, Valera adapted the narrative of what would become the musical that we know today from the French classic Cyrano de Bergerac. The story remains, “There’s this play called ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’, I’ve seen it, I’ve read it when I was in high school. Sabi ko kay Will [William Elvin Manzano], ‘What if we make this play into a pop-rock sarsuwela?'”

“Mula sa Buwan”, the grand production that it is today, however, did not happen immediately following the completion of this thesis. Valera had to halt for a while and leave theater to work outside the industry. Six years had passed on and they re-staged the play with its original title “Cyrano: Isang Sarsuwela” at the Henry Lee Irwin Theater watched by 600 to 700 people to great reviews. It was later on re-staged at the Areté in Ateneo in 2017-2018.

But after that, the pandemic closed whatever doors that were being prepared to bring the production back to life. Two long years after community quarantines, in 2022, with the newly-christened Barefoot Theatre Collaborative at the helm, “Mula Sa Buwan” revved its engines once more to a sold out crowd in a 1500-seater auditorium—a feat reserved only to the fools, the misfits, and the dreamers. Aptly—poetically, even—a resounding “Mula Sa Buwan” battle cry.

If there’s one thing previous stagings of “Mula sa Buwan” didn’t have the luxury of, it’s the collaboration of different brilliant minds banking on the idea of expanding to a greater reach. Valera cites their efforts as “borderline insane,” recalling sending thousands of emails in pursuit of the right investors, supporters, and sponsors to make the 2022 re-staging a reality, “Wale eh, it’s the right thing to do. And when you’re guided by that, it’ll still be hard but it’s something worth doing,” he declares.

Aural Adventures

“I respect it a lot as an art form and as a theater student, as a theater practitioner, I’ve come to enjoy a lot of [it] but I did not grow up as a musical theater person.”

From his days as a band musician to writing music and lyrics for a full-fledged musical, William Elvin Manzano, admits joining onboard the production without any expectations or visions of how big it would turn out to be. If anything, in agreeing to help shape Valera’s vision, Manzano jumped in and approached it like any pop rock composer would.

“It started in about 2009. I remember Pat (Valera) calling me up. He approached me and asked if I wanted to work on a musical that he wanted me to do and stage sa UA&P. Of course, I said, ‘Yes’. You know, it is something that I really wanted to try doing. I’ve been a pop-rock songwriter for a very long time. [But] I didn’t think that I could pull off writing a whole musical or something.”

He continues, “It was never in my dreams as an artist, but you know, I took it as like, ‘Hey, I’m going to write a set of songs and I’m gonna treat it like an album.’ Like I would do an album and it has this story. And I enjoyed working with Pat in my theater days at the University of the Philippines. So, it was an easy decision.”

Looking back, he shares, “In 2009, 2010, when we first did it, if I was to go back and remember how it felt writing these songs, you know, it didn’t have any notion of how big it’s going to be, the way it appears to be now.” He shares talking about the songs turning out to be earworms fans continuously demand to be sold as CDs in merch booths or cast recordings published in streaming platforms. “Kumbaga, hindi siya primary goal na parang, ‘Oh, kailangan catchy ito, ganito, ganiyan’.”

With this buoying his musical creative process, Manzano went on to treat the process of writing the lyrics the way he approaches every track he’s come to write and produce, with just his passion for music in his arsenal,“I wrote these songs with Pat without even having a graph like, ‘Nasaan na tayo sa storya na ito? Ito na ba? Ganiyan’. I just wrote it like a pop-rock songwriter would. [That way], it just [came] out organically, it just [came] out naturally and it’s not, ‘It has to be this, it has to be a show-stopper.’ Never had that kind of thinking.”

“Mula sa Buwan” grew to be a timeless piece; the arrangement went through several iterations, but how it sounded from 2009 to 2011, remained. For the musical’s faithfuls and to new viewers experiencing it the first time, the wealth of heartwarming songs became one of the most enticing aspects of the production to get viewers to buy tickets to the show.

“This kind of musical was fortunate enough to adapt to that relatable sound. I never put it into sheet music and stuff. I guess I could, but I [didn’t]. All because I know that people’s taste in music is going to change and you just hope that it comes with that flow. You know, we can change it after, but the feeling of it; the way the words come out, the way the words are delivered, the way the melodies are sung, it survived–more than twelve years now,” Manzano emphasizes.

On the journey and the evolution that the material has undergone through the years, Manzano acknowledges this as much of a journey and evolution of his artistry and his own person as it is of the material’s. “Tweaking with each incarnation or each staging of ‘Mula Sa Buwan’, there’s always, ‘Hey what if we do this?’ Even noong nasa Hong Kong na ako. Once in a while, I’ll get a call from Pat, then, ‘Hey we’re doing this, and I always say, ‘You know I’ll be happy to come home to see the show every time.’ Now, it’s the happiest thing for me as an artist. [It is] so rewarding to see that it has grown into something that is way beyond what we have imagined.”

For Manzano, the musical’s 1940 milieu compounded the element of nostalgia and the emotions that come with it. He says, “When I see the show, when I hear the music that we wrote, it feels like that, you know? [It] reminds you of something but you can’t place where it was because we didn’t grow up in the ’40s–we didn’t grow up in the era that we are trying to present, but it just reminds you of some sort of lost feeling. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to have experienced it, but you feel it.”

For its rich history from creation, birth and continuous growth, “Mula sa Buwan” is like a little seed that has been planted and has relentlessly developed through the labor of those who helped it flourish.

Manzano adds, “Everything [about it] makes ‘Mula Sa Buwan’, ‘Mula Sa Buwan’. The love, the people that we worked with since day one–collaborators come and go, people change, the cast changes, but what the production represents and makes people feel is the same and is growing. It’s like a big box now, we just put the box here and there and people will just keep on adding new stuff, designing it into something that grows in every stage. If you see some clips on how we did it in 2009 and 2011, maybe you’d find that it just keeps on getting more and more. It’s like how we planted the seed into 2009 and grew into something almost majestic in a lot of people’s hearts and minds. So, a lot of them [the audience] come to see it again and again. They talk about it on social media, and they spread the word and stuff, and so it became a community of people who are drawn into this romantic, tragic, nostalgic, feeling of falling in love.”

A New Order

Among those who cultivated what Manzano and Valera started is Myke Salomon who has since stepped on to become the musical director and lead actor playing the source material’s titular role of Cyrano. His is a journey to the “Mula Sa Buwan” universe that is brought by chance and perfect timing. Then a theater actor at the Repertory Philippines and Spotlight Artists Centre, it was a casual invite to watch its earlier version as “Cyrano: Isang Sarsuwela” that would introduce him to the world built by the production.

“At that time, it looks like a starting musical. It was full of ideas and yet parang kailangan niya pa ng support–meaning, audience, production value noon pero nandoon na.”

From sitting in the audience, Salomon would then have a pivotal conversation with Valera that would then land him the role of Christian in 2018’s run of the show. He admits, it’s much harder than he expected particularly breathing life to what for him remains as one of his most memorable roles to date, “You just have to find the right path going to the objective of that role–na hindi porke’t simple at ‘bobo’ yung character, doon na lang natatapos ‘yun. Ang interesting lang gawin ‘yung role kasi it requires a lot of thinking for it to work and for everything; yung buong comic timing na iyon para magka-sense, kailangan precise to maximize it.”

He discusses, “I was fortunate enough to have Nicco Manalo as my Cyrano because he’s really the best. As in, he’s so generous. He will work with you. He will change everything just for the scene to work.” Being part of the original cast of the run was a memorable one, “That was a quick run, parang dumaan lang siya na, core memory. [But] it will never be forgotten.”

Fast forward to 2022, joining the creatives’ desk as musical director, is a whole new level for him, specifically because of the pandemic’s aftermath and how it impacted peers and colleagues in the industry. With the restrictions that the health crisis brought, plans had to be stalled and ideas and strategies had to be realigned. “Pagdating ng mga end of 2021, there was hope, ‘di ba? Na parang everyone’s out by December 2021, then Omicron happened. ‘Yung morale ng lahat ng live artists bumaba ulit, so what do we do? Kami na nagplano na kami na, ‘Okay let’s do a pro shot.’ Maybe that’s a way to just mount it so that, [at the] bare minimum, may pro shot tayo at if ever magbukas ang [theater], maybe 50% audience? Yun ‘yung dream; ang magkaroon ng [kahit] 50% audience,” Salomon opens up.

It goes without saying that fighting through it all was fueled by his love with “Mula sa Buwan’s” lore, Manzano’s and Valera’s songs, and the ensemble that inspired him to be part of the play and bring the story to today’s generation of theater fans and first-time goers. “It’s undeniably a hit sa generation and I want to take that responsibility and that opportunity to inspire people.”

But it’s not without its checks and balances. “Just like any musical or material [for that matter], [kahit] ilang beses pa siyang ni-remake, it will somehow disturb the original fans. So, we ended up deciding what we get to show to a new generation of audience. [Nandoon] ‘yung hesitation namin na, ‘Baguhin ba natin to or what?’ ‘Pero ang naging base ground naman namin nila Pat at nila JM is, we have to tell a relevant and current story–we have to speak to today–ano ba yung magiging language ngayon’ to tell history? So, ayon, naging magandang narrative compass,” he furthers.

As if donning the hat of a musical director has not become every bit of a challenge for Salomon, it is taking on the role of Cyrano that did test his mettle as an actor, with all the complexities that made the character the axis by which the production revolves into. “It took me days to think about it, then I sent a message and said, ‘Yes. If not now, kelan pa? Sige.’ ‘Cause I wanted to feel alive again, actually. And that’s the only way for me to fill that space, that presence, that moment, I get to tell a story again. So, I took the challenge.”

He recalls, “Nung nag-shoot pa nga kami ng ‘Matatapos Din’–okay, so we prepared the song for the whole cast, doon pa lang nag sink in sa akin na, I am doing this show. ‘There is no Cyrano.’ ‘Oh, that’s me.’ And that guy’s singing my solo before.”

His career transition within the production as an actor who plays Christian to Cyrano and now even standing his ground as musical director is much more challenging in reality; even though he aced multiple characters in Philippine plays before it from “Rak of Aegis” and breathed new life to Eraserheads’ canon of alternative rock songs as musical director to the long-running musical “Ang Huling El Bimbo”, he still considers everything a humbling experience, and a relentless game of exploration.

In working his magic in the musical direction of the production, he worked closely with Valera to provide each character the appropriate arrangement but it is his perspective as an actor that has proven to be essential in developing the narrative through the already-existing aural journey of “Mula Sa Buwan‘s” music. “I work on it asking myself, how would I see it. ‘Bilang ganitong character, paano ko ba siya iku-kwento through a song?’ Ganoon ‘yung lens ko. At siguro ‘yun ang advantage ko–mas actor’s point-of-view. And ‘yung mga instrumento na nilalagay ko, it’s always there to help and propel the actor into singing his heart out.”

And because of this, and the ecosystem of creatives that pumps blood to the heart of the production, for him, the play acts like a hand reaching out to the audience. It’s a welcoming musical that everyone can relate to and resonate with on a deeper level, as every production and piece of art should, “’Mula Sa Buwan’ is a stand-alone gem and whenever people come together to mount it, they become the gem. So, iyon ‘yung gift siguro nung title na ‘yon, yung word na yon–na whenever creative people, artists, come together and tell the story of the buwan, they all go to that moon. As simple as that. And it makes every storyteller on that stage go beyond being an actor, a storyteller,” he concludes.

Just like Salomon’s thrust to the world built by the musical, from being a fan of the production to starring in it, Gab Pangilinan, long before becoming the Philippine musical icon that she is now, secured the lead role of Roxane a year after she first watched the show in 2017 at Henry Lee Theater. She declares completely falling in love with the production that pushed her to audition for its re-run in 2018. “Kahit anong role, ibigay niyo sakin. Basta kelangan maging part ako ng show.”

She shares, “When they were auditioning for the re-run, I auditioned for it, and I got the part. At that time, si Myke ang Christian ko at si Nicco ang Cyrano, and then ayun na. Nung nangyari siya nung 2018, parang hindi ko na siya mapakawalan. I mean the role, Roxane and even ‘Mula sa Buwan’ as a whole since ang dami nang nagbago since 2017.”

As one would expect, close to a decade since it first saw light on the stage, “Mula sa Buwan” has undergone several iterations, as they drift through the gradual changes of time. And with each staging and the tweaks that came with it, the show not only hooks people to come back but calls more to join in on the trip to the moon and back.

“I gravitate towards this Roxane or this particular story as a whole. I mean, classic ang ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ ni Edmund Rostand, na timeless piece siya of unrequited love. But the message of, I guess, this iteration of ‘Mula sa Buwan’ as a whole, is so much more than that. Mas maraming kumakapit sa kwento, dahil dun.”

One of the show’s potent elements talks about how self-love and self-empowerment motivate Roxane’s character, especially being a woman of the 1940s where extreme deprivation to dream and hope persist. This is where Pangilinan expresses her strong resonation with the character’s desire to be the voice of the voiceless and to be a woman with power that holds up a glimmer of hope.

She shares, “She just has a lot to say na kung papakinggan mo parang maiintindihan mo na ‘[Buong] babae siya at walang makakapigil sa kanya.’” The play helped highlight important issues and conversations, which, to them, were made more pronounced in this iteration than ever, making it important for the whole team to create scenes shadowing the current narrative that people can relate to.

Pangilinan also highlights how the music production contributes to the audience’s palpable connection with the show and the eagerness to come back to watch it and make others watch it with them. For her, Manzano splendidly threads his words together with the melody and music arrangement where the high-powered message of the story is manifested in every tune and lyric the characters perform, especially with Roxane and Cyrano’s fan-favorite duet of “Tinig Sa Dilim” that’s performed with great fondness but with an emphasis on the wholeness of the individuality of each character.

“In this [particular] version, in this arrangement of ‘Tinig Sa Dilim’, obviously Cyrano is writing it on the spot and then Roxane responds from the top of her head. This shows how, on her own, she also has the wit and way with words, the same way Cyrano has, na parang feeling ko hindi siya ganun ka-halata dati.” Pangilinan enthuses.

With people slowly getting back to the way things are, it is both a gift and a curse to find a new home in an enormous theater. The bigger and grander the theater, the more seats to fill. More than worrying about the commerce of the production making returns, the challenge did lie in igniting the interest of people to join in on the celebration of theater’s return. It has to be noted, though, that the Philippines is not a “theater-going” country. We come from a culture where the idea of “escape” is a 200 to 350-peso popcorn flick–and this comes on a good payday. Theater is that intimidating, smart cousin that is welcome to the party, but you rarely talk to in fear of being judged.

“It could get intimidating for people to buy a ticket and be like ‘Oh my gosh, I feel so out of place.’” But regardless of the worries, the whole “Mula sa Buwan” team saw Samsung Performing Arts Theater get filled with excited faces not just to see the story of Cyrano and Roxane unfold, but share an experience with other people once more–a sight that is more heartwarming than it is daunting, in actuality.

As one of the characters who hold a significant part in the play, and now one-fifth of the partners that make up Barefoot Theatre Collaborativebehind “Mula sa Buwan‘s“ return, Pangilinan emphasizes how the people orbiting “Mula sa Buwan” make the play what it is. From the people who contributed to the story, the cast members, the crew, down to the ones in-charge of the merchandise–they all play a big part in creating this mark and identity of the show, especially in this time of renewed interest in the Philippine theater community. “Parang tototo talaga yung it takes a village ‘eh, when it comes to putting up a theater production. But the return is more than just filling up the theater and earning from each show. It is seeing that more and more people share this experience. They react. They laugh. They cry. It’s more than enough. That’s why ‘Mula Sa Buwan’ is ‘Mula Sa Buwan,’” she expresses.

It Takes A Village

From serving as the Assistant Director for its first run in 2022, Mikko Angeles, proceeded to take on the Associate Director hat for its re-run by the tail-end of the same year. Following the absence from the theater, or live events as a whole, Angeles describes this return as “unfamiliar territory,” not only for him, the cast, and the team behind the show, but for all theatergoers given the COVID-19 threat and the world of uncertainty this very threat brought. Even so, this does not prevent them from bringing people closer together through the narratives and stories they create through the performing arts.

“Even during production, napag-usapan na namin ng crew, along with the actors, na sugal ‘yung ginagawa [namin], because nasa gitna pa rin tayo ng pandemic and every time we step outside of our homes, we are risking our lives. I’m sure everybody will agree naman na walang katapat na halaga ng salapi ang buhay ng isang artista or ng buhay ng isang tao. Pero naniniwala kami na, theater brings people closer together and, I don’t know, mahirap siyang gawin pero kinakaya at kakayanin, because we need stories, we need narratives and that [fuel] us to be human. That fuel us to do better every day or to live. That fuel us to live,” he shares.

With the pandemic putting a stop on everything “live” and the inevitable migration to the virtual world on every aspect of human life moving faster than ever predicted, it came as a surprise for Angeles, and others, that even with the perception of theater, and the arts as a whole, practically seen as “non-essential”, theatergoers, mostly first-timers, spent their time, money, and will to see and experience this run of “Mula Sa Buwan”. The clamor was palpable. And the number of supporters of this particular art of storytelling more pronounced than ever seen before.