Toff de Venecia considers himself “a lil freak” and it’s one of the reasons he identifies with the characters in his latest production.
“Side Show is the story of the othered in society, the misunderstood,” Christopher “Toff” de Venecia says of the Broadway musical about real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hamilton who became famous stage performers in America in the 1930s. Daisy and Violet were part of a group of performers, each of whom had their own oddity. Audiences were fascinated; they saw them as freaks of nature.
“Oftentimes, I find myself very much misunderstood and othered in terms of my worldview, proclivities, or the things I believe in or fight for,” the 38-year-old director tells The POST in the interview for this piece. “I often find myself swimming against the tide. It helps to find your fellow freaks and then you start to grow your tribe.”
De Venecia’s tribe, insofar as it pertains to people who are like him, is not a very big one. He is that rare creative artist who is also a politician. And not just in the way of an artista who has parlayed their popularity to a career in public service as an elected official, although he is somehow that, too.
He may have even been the only one of his kind from 2016 to 2025 when he served three terms in Congress as representative of the 4th district of Pangasinan while working behind-the-scenes as full-time Managing Director and occasional director for The Sandbox Collective, the local theater group he co-founded in 2014.
His ‘baby’ is the Creative Industry Law, a landmark piece of legislation mandating the state to promote, support, protect and strengthen creative firms, artists, artisans, creators, workers, indigenous cultural communities.
“I was born into both worlds,” Toff says of entertainment and politics. If his last name rings a bell, it’s probably because of your familiarity with his father, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Jose de Venecia, who served in Congress from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2001 to 2008. The older de Venecia ran for president in the 1998 election, but lost to then Vice President Joseph Estrada, finishing second among 11 candidates.
His mother, Gina de Venecia, comes from the Vera-Perez clan that owned the iconic Sampaguita Pictures, one of the top Filipino movie companies from the 1930s to the 1970s.
“I grew up around Sampaguita stars,” Toff says. “Susan Roces, Gloria Romero, Amalia Fuentes, Kuya Germs, they were always at the Sampaguita compound.” It was inevitable that he would become an actor himself, which happened when he was very young.
Two worlds
Toff also grew up going to Congress, dropping by his father’s office regularly before going to his shoots for the weekly sitcom Ober Da Bakod in a nearby production studio. He also starred in TV commercials and movies, including Ober Da Bakod: The Movie and the Sharon Cuneta drama Kung Kailangan Mo Ako. As an adult, when he was no longer as active in front of the cameras, he went into publishing and the visual arts (he has had at least one painting exhibit). In his own words, he has been a creative all his life.
“Both have been part of my DNA,” he says. For most of his life, though, he was just an observer, “or son of” in politics. He made the shift to being an actual participant only in 2016. And the move wasn’t even made voluntarily, much less wholeheartedly.
“I was pressured, totally,” he admits candidly. “My family was convincing me forever to run for politics and I didn’t want to.”
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It took an insight from his mom to see things differently and finally give in. “In 2015, mom said something like, ‘I know you’re passionate about creatives. You can tap that for tourism for the district. Something clicked there.” She clearly knew what she was talking about: she herself was a creative who got into politics. In fact, she was the district representative from 2010 to 2016.
When he got elected into office as his mom’s successor, the political scion and showbiz son finally saw for himself what it was like to be an insider looking out after decades of being an outsider looking in. He recalls thinking, “Oh okay, this is the thing that I’ve been seeing forever.”
A law supporting the creative industries
He wasted no time in starting his advocacy work as a sitting member of Congress, championing the creative industries. But, according to him, it wasn’t until his second term, from 2019 to 2022, when he found his groove. “I saw a synthesis between my congressional life and my creative life.”
That’s when the Creative Industry Law was enacted, which Toff calls his “baby.”
Officially known as the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act, the law is a landmark piece of legislation for the Philippine creative industries. It mandates the state “to promote and support the development of Philippine creative industries by protecting and strengthening the rights and capacities of creative firms, artists, artisans, creators, workers, indigenous cultural communities, content providers, and stakeholders in the creative industries.
In particular, the law obligates government to “establish a creative industries development council mandated to implement a long-term plan for the development and promotion of the Philippine creative industries, with programs aimed at creating opportunities and employment, nurturing human resources, ensuring financial-enabling mechanisms, and providing incentives to encourage and sustain Filipino excellence in the creative industries.”
Crucially, the law orders the government to raise awareness of the creative industries’ role in nation-building and socioeconomic advancement and appropriate funds for it.
The law is dated July 28, 2022, a month into de Venecia’s third and final term in Congress, which ended last June. It’s the crown jewel in his political career, thus far, and it wasn’t handed to him on a silver platter. On the contrary, working on it and pushing it was like going through the proverbial eye of a needle or giving birth.
“There’s definitely a lot of frustration in politics,” he notes. “There’s a lot of sh*t that you have to deal with. I don’t even like the term ‘politics.’”
This is why he relishes the success deeply and finds so much fulfillment in it. He says, “There’s nothing like when you’re able to get a law enacted and you hear from stakeholders and they tell you about the impact on them of what you do, that’s a really different fulfillment. It gives me so much joy to sense the impact of what I do through policy.”
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Joy measured in rehearsals
Theater, he says, gives him as much. “When I’m creating in theater, when I’m in the rehearsal room, that also gives me so much joy.” In the past year alone, he has been in the rehearsal room dozens of times, directing three acclaimed hit productions — A Little Shop of Horrors, Next to Normal, and Side Show. The last provides a full-circle moment as it’s the same show he worked on as first-time solo director (in 2010, for Ateneo’s Blue Rep theater group).
The creative process for Side Show, in particular, saw Toff letting his actors come up with their own “freaks” and “others.” For example, one cast member chose the babaylan as her freak because her others are indigenous people. “There’s a lot of that in the show,” Toff says.
There is even an exhibit during the 15-minute show intermission of the costumes of the freaks, each coming with more information that audiences are invited to see up close. Toff notes, “There’s so much going on in the show that’s born out of people’s passions and advocacies.”
This is how his work in politics deeply informs his work as an artist, while his work as a creative deeply informs his work in policy and public service.
When asked to choose where he feels more alive, he says he can’t choose. “My life in the last 9 years has been both. Maybe if it’s just all theater for me, I wouldn’t be as fulfilled. If it’s all just government work I won’t be fulfilled either.”
A hiatus from both
For the next two years, though, theater and government will be absent in his life. In September he starts his Masters in Public Administration in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value in London.
This move, unlike entering politics, was all his. “I’ve always wanted (to pursue post-graduate studies),” he said. He has been contemplating it for years and feels now is the right time. In fact, he declined feelers and potential offers for an appointment to serve in another capacity in the Cabinet.
“I need to do this for myself,” he reiterates. “Ultimately I want to have more capacity to help the country the way that I want to. I need to be a small fish in a big pond (for the meantime). I need to learn from the best and they’re all there (in London).”
That’s Toff de Venecia swimming against the tide, being “a lil freak” and running his own main show exactly the way he wants to.
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