Sa Kaharian ng Araw [To the Kingdom of the Sun]
Book by Onofre Pagsanghan
Music and Direction by meLê yamomo
Additional Lyrics and Choreography by Karen Camposuelo

Albay Astrodome, Legazpi City (2003)
Sinag Arts Studio (2002 )
Pundaquit Festival of the Arts, CASA San Miguel, Zambales (2000)
GANAP Theater Festival, Quezon City (2000)
University Theatre, University of the Philippines-Diliman  (2000)
With the UP Integrated School (1999)
Cultural Center of the Philippines (1997)

Director’s Notes for the 2002 Performance

The first decision that I had to make when we did our 2000 theatre tour was to make Ponce and Paolo speak in Southern Tagalog accent. It was after five years of sojourn in the metropolis that I began to search for my roots and identity. Interestingly, as Pagsi’s lyrical verse drama remains to speak to me of a poignant point in life, it provokes me to juxtapose the play’s narrative to our own history. I have earlier on written an article about Kaharian in a Historical and Geographical Perspective (which I later on conveniently submitted as a paper for my Literary Criticism class). I had to go through Soja, Foucault, Benjamin, Adorno and Tadiar to piece together the postmodern re-interpretation of the play. While Pagsanghan brought the play in various spaces of the allegorical kingdoms, and while I attempted to explore the multi-spatiality and multi-dimensionality of the theater stage, Neferti Tadiar points toward virtual space that our nation is heading for in the fast-growing global/internet age. It is in this complexity of the postmodern age that we long greatly to find our identity, our roots and our soul as a people and as human beings. With the rise of the “modernist project” of economic-efficiency embodied by industrialization and high-capitalism, the human soul proportionally diminished. Pagsi speaks through Paolo,” Kahibangan! Tao ang sa pangarap mo’y kabayaran,”