Dili sayang
By Earnest Hope Tinambacan
One of the first shows that I watched at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium when I enrolled at Silliman University in 2001 was Fiddler on The Roof. It was a fantastic local musical production, and I just found myself standing and applauding as the cast lined up for curtain call.
I was touched and entertained by what I just watched, but at the same time, I was feeling jealous of the cast. “Nganong wala ko’y apil ani?” I kept asking myself.
While I was still enthusiastically applauding them, I was also thinking: “Someday, I will perform on the Luce stage. I must join a musical production at Silliman!”
I was a freshman then, an ambitious freshman. I scanned through the program notes of the show, looking for the name of the person who was behind the major production. “Directed by: Evelyn Rose Aldecoa”. Suddenly, I realized that the applause was getting louder and longer, until an elegant woman went on stage to take a bow.
It was Ms. Evelyn Rose Aldecoa herself. Watching her on stage, I made a promise to myself: Someday, somehow, I will get to work with the Director, Ms. Evelyn Aldecoa, and that day would be major!
Then school requirements at the College of Mass Communication got more hectic. I patiently waited for almost a year for that breakthrough moment to arrive.
I was in second year college when Kuya Michael Alar, one of our youth leaders at Silliman Church, saw me walking from Guy Hall to the Cafeteria. He approached me, and asked, “Bass singer man ka sa Men’s Glee Club diba? Invite tikaw, Bai! Join sa Souled-Out Singers. We are in need of bass singers.”
I didn’t know what to respond so he explained further that Souled-Out Singers was not a university-based choir but a gospel singing group organized by “Ms. Evelyn Aldecoa”.
Of course, I immediately said YES. Kuya Mike gave me further details about the rehearsals, etc. One Sunday afternoon, I was at the gate of the Aldecoa residence, waiting for the SOS members to arrive. I did not expect to see a lot of familiar faces. Most of them were in the cast of Fiddler on the Roof I had watched a year ago; and they were ‘campus figures’, popular to many students.
They warmly greeted me, and welcomed me to the group. It was an awesome feeling to be in that circle. I was nervous, especially when Ma’am Evelyn and her sister, Ma’am Jenny Delorino greeted me, and started asking me some questions. I wanted to melt then and there, but the moment they started cracking jokes, or when the group started rehearsing the songs, the nerves just turned into excitement.
“I belong here,” I was saying to myself.
It was indeed an honor to be part of the SOS family. The music, the fellowship, the friendships, the fun, and the food – a lot of good memories with SOS.
Later in 2003, Ma’am Ev Aldecoa asked some of us from the bass section of SOS to be part of The King and I that she was staging. She needed some skinny, bass singers to portray as monks. Good! I was skinny, and I sing bass. “This is the beginning!,” I thought to myself.
I mean, that time, I was not new to theater as I had been a member since grade school of the Liyab Cultural Group in my hometown Misamis Occidental. And I was able to participate in a PETA-designed workshop [Philippine Educational Theater Association] when I was 13.
But this one with the Evelyn Aldecoa, I thought, was going to be that major chance in theater that I had been dreaming of.
Eventually, my part in the play was short. We simply passed through the stage two times while humming, then appear at the King’s death scene. It may have been short, yes, but for me, it was most important.
For the biggest surprise in my life: after one of our SOS rehearsals in 2005, Ma’am Ev Aldecoa approached me and asked if I wanted to join her next production, Man of La Mancha. I gave her a wide grin, and excitedly said YES!
Then she continued… “I want you to play Don Quixote.”
I just fell silent. I was actually thinking, “Hmmm…the name sounds familiar.”
Then maybe detecting my ignorance, Ma’am Ev kindly explained to me that Don Quixote is the main character of the story, and that the character fits me perfectly in terms of the physical requirements, she said: “bony, hollow-faced, with eyes that burn with inner vision”.
In a state of shock, I was only able to utter one word: “Sure??”
Then I immediately realized that it was stupid of me to show any hint of skepticism to “the Evelyn Aldecoa” so I quickly said, “Sige, Ma’am!”
I honestly freaked out, especially when the SOS members told me the other actors who previously portrayed Don Quixote were Elmo Makil and Dominador delos Santos. Now who would not panic?
But Ma’am Ev Aldecoa assured me that things would go well, and that there’s nothing to worry about. Besides, who would not trust Evelyn Aldecoa’s powers? The rest is history.
It was truly a pleasure working with Ma’am Evelyn Aldecoa. I learned professionalism, theater etiquette, acting lessons, and developed a higher respect for theater.
Ma’am Evelyn was the director in the rehearsal room, but she was also a mother, a friend, and a mentor outside theater.
She once told me, “Sayang, Hope, sayang, short-lived imong acting career. Sayang jud!” She said that with genuine sadness in her eyes when she learned that I decided to work in a BPO after the successful production of Man of La Mancha.
But what she didn’t know is that I had always wanted to be as successful as she was in the field of theater. I promised to myself that one day, God willing, I will go back home (theater), and follow her footsteps.
So when fate gave me a chance to return home (through the Youth Advocates through Theater Arts ), one of the things that I aimed to do was to make Ma’am Evelyn proud.
And just before she left ys, I had the chance to tell her about my numerous activities within and outside YATTA as a theater artist-teacher. I was like a young boy showing his medals to his mom. I saw the spark of delight back in her eyes, and she showed so much support to all my endeavors in theater, like a mother cheering on her son. “That’s very good! Keep yourself busy doing theater works,” I remember Ma’am Ev telling me.
I know this path in theater is what Ma’am Evelyn Aldecoa had wanted me to choose, and I will not stop here. There’s no turning back. She inspired me so much, I am so encouraged to do even better, haron dili sayang.
