Two years after his passing, Quintos’ award-winning plays return in a twin bill that revisits power, politics, and female agency with striking relevance today.
Two years ago, Philippine theater lost one of its sharpest pens when multi-awarded playwright Floy Quintos succumbed to a heart attack toward the end of April. He had just celebrated his 63rd birthday 10 days before.
It was a tremendous loss. With the country’s socio-political landscape becoming more fraught by the day in the last two years, Quintos would have, without a doubt, come up with a new work—or two—that tackled hot-button issues and themes the way only he could: mixing drama and comedy, gravity and levity, light and darkness with insight, innovation, and inspiration.
Fortunately, not everything is lost. Like all great artists who came and went before him, Quintos has left behind an indelible body of work that Chicago-based theatre artist Charlette San Juan describes as “not merely plays; they were profound reflections of the world around us, shedding light on issues ranging from social injustice to the fragility of the human condition.”
This was in full display in his last project, the historical drama Grace. A fictionalized narrative based on real events surrounding the alleged apparitions of Mary, Mediatrix of All Grace in Batangas in 1948 and the Church investigation into the case, the nearly three-hour play is Quintos’ take on the emotional, psychological, and socio-political journey of two women—young Carmelite novice Teresita Castillo, who alleged the Marian visions and encounters, and Mother Mary Cecilia of Jesus, the monastery’s Mother Superior—as they fought for their truths and place in what Quintos describes as “a Church of God run by men.”
Although Grace is an outlier in his oeuvre, being the only one based on actual people, it is quintessential Quintos—a compellingly complex and dynamic but clear-eyed interrogation of female agency and women’s roles in society, anchored on strong, layered, complicated characters that sound and feel flesh-and-blood and never caricatured.
It is very much of a piece with earlier works Ang Kalungkutan ng mga Reyna and Evening at the Opera, Grand Prize winners at the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in the One-Act Play category. Both premiered at the Virgin Labfest of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2008 and 2011, respectively. They return to the stage this April as a twin bill titled Miranda & Yolanda, in time for the second anniversary of Quintos’ passing.
Miranda is a corrupt governor’s elegant but strong-willed wife who wants to treat their constituents to an evening at the opera. The official synopsis goes: “While a provincial capitol prepares for a night of art and culture, the governor’s wife, molded by her mother to be the ideal trophy wife, exchanges sharp and intense discussions with her mother and her husband, Bingo, a public official who hides his personal agenda behind a populist facade. Behind closed doors, refined manners give way to power games and moral decay.”
Journalist Katrina Stuart Santiago, in a review of the play’s Virgin Labfest debut, described it as “the story of dynasties left unquestioned, of marriages of convenience, of political machismo, of class versus crass, of the wealthy and rich among us.” Of what the piece does to audiences, she noted that “the political narrative forces us into silence because we are its victim, we are complicit in it, we are doomed to it.”
Noted theater critic Gibbs Cadiz, in his 2011 review, called the play “riveting and very nearly devastating… as a character study of an otherwise capable woman who has contorted herself into a grotesque life of complicitness and compromise.”
The other title role, Yolanda, is the reyna in Ang Kalungkutan ng mga Reyna. She’s not a queen, though. She’s the country’s president who only thinks of herself as royalty. There’s a current popular term for it: delulu. But don’t expect any stereotypes in the play. Quintos doesn’t do that.
In his review of a 2018 staging of the play, theater critic Ryan Borja said, “Quintos wrote a realistic character that you will feel that her majesty’s emotions were plucked straight out of the realities each one of us feel on a daily basis. Such a character is so dense with emotions, ready to inspire before the audience deep feelings of pathos, pity, rage, and even frustration.”
Cadiz also raved, saying it’s “a play of stylish wit and dramatic provocation (what if the country’s woman president decided to become—curtsy now—a queen?), with a grand central performance by Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino (as Yolanda).”
In the story, the wannabe queen president devises a plan in the midst of a public upheaval to transform the republic into her personal monarchy. She summons Marcel, a world-renowned hairstylist, to craft the ultimate royal image, one that will make her look every bit the queen she believes she was born to be.
But don’t let this make you think Miranda & Yolanda will be a double dose of pure political sermons. “The play is genuinely funny, but it’s also hard to laugh at some parts when you know that the joke is on us, Filipinos,” Borja noted in his review. This is echoed by Centenera-Buencamino, who guarantees audiences, “we will all be laughing, we will all be entertained, but we will think about our country.”
For her part, Anna Abad Santos, who is also reprising the role of Miranda from the play’s Virgin Labfest debut, raves about Quintos’ mastery in writing female characters. “Floy wrote the most beautiful, heartbreaking, empowered, richly layered female roles. I identified so much with these roles he wrote that I believe he was so instrumental in my growth as an actor but also as a woman.”
Santos and Centenera-Buencamino are among a small group of Filipino theater thespians who are called Quintosian Actors—frequent collaborators of the celebrated playwright, some of whom even became muses for some of his pieces. Two others, Frances Makil Ignacio and Stella Cañete, are also involved in Miranda & Yolanda.
Ignacio reprises her role as Miranda’s domineering mother in Evening at the Opera. She reiterates a common praise about how Quintos’ works are timeless. “We did these plays 16 years ago, but the country is still facing the same issues.” Mendoza, who is producing the new show for her own production company, Encore Theater, agrees. She says, “They are still resonant. Still relevant. Our main social concerns have remained the same, probably even worse.”
Mendoza, who played Teresing in Grace, muses that Quintos, if he were still alive, would have already come up with a new piece to address the Filipino sentiment over the most recent and current national events. She says she chose to restage Opera and Reyna because “both are exposes of the dynamics of people in power.” She notes that both plays are tragicomedies—“a genre that features the bittersweet, happy kind of sad, light and dark duality of human relations”—and guarantees that the show will entertain.
As both actor and producer, Mendoza hopes that Encore Theater, beyond providing entertainment, also gives audiences “an avenue for discourse and reflection about ourselves, as individuals, and as part of society.” For Miranda & Yolanda, in particular, the aim is for the show to serve as a reminder that “we have a choice on who we entrust and give power to.”
Miranda & Yolanda runs in April at the Power Mac Center Spotlight Theater in Circuit Makati, with shows every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. For tickets to the April 19, 7 PM show, contact 09175112110 to buy directly. Senior and PWD discounts available.
