Isay weighs in on controversial issue

ALVAREZ. Joins arduous fight to give homegrown creative ‘content’ its due. FILE PHOTO

Friends and fans of singer-actress Isay Alvarez are exceedingly happy that she appears to have won her daunting struggle against leukemia.

The serious medical challenge couldn’t have come at a worse time—she was rehearsing for “Katy!” with us one day when she felt faint and had to rest for an hour. She initially pooh-poohed the dizzy spell away by surmising that it was just her anemia acting up, but later somberly admitted that it was much worse.

At first, she was prepared to give up the iconic role of bodabil queen Katy de la Cruz, but later agreed to portray only the mature Katy in Act 2 of the hit musical, while Aicelle Santos was tapped to portray her teen and young-adult counterpart in Act 1.

The risky casting maneuver turned out to be phenomenally successful for both Aicelle and Isay. Aicelle bowled audiences over with her buena-mano musical-theater portrayal, while Isay romped off with the Aliw award for Best Female Lead Portrayal in a Musical, no less!

Even better is the news that Isay is in fact currently doing another Filipino musical, “Rak of Aegis,” at the Peta Theater Center, again with Aicelle also in its stellar cast. More to the point, Isay believes so much in supporting original Filipino musicals that she and some friends are sponsoring the 8 p.m. performance of the hit show on Sunday, Feb. 23—so, please make it a point to get tickets to that performance. (Call Spotlight Productions at 899-8089 and Peta at 725-6244.)

Of late, Isay has also vigorously weighed in on the controversial “foreign is superior to local” issue that has divided our musical-theater practitioners. You know of course that we have been railing against our “deathless”  cultural “colonial mentality” for a long time now, so it’s both a relief and joy to see that some theater stalwarts like Isay are joining the fray.

As a producer and supporter of original Filipino musicals, Isay is only too sadly cognizant of the fact that, when it comes to support for  musical productions by way of sponsorships and ticket sales, the ratio is 80 percent in favor of foreign works, and only 20 percent for original Filipino musicals!

It’s truly a tragedy that our creative theater artists, specifically our playwrights, composers and directors, are being treated like second-class citizens in our own country—so, we should all join the admittedly arduous fight to give homegrown creative content its due.

Some sponsors and venues fudge the issue by claiming that they support “Filipino (performing) talents,” whom they cast in their stagings of foreign musicals. But, we shouldn’t be distracted by this facile ploy, because the key point here is not the performer but the creator of original Filipino content (script, lyrics and music) that is for and about us. —We really have to “tell our own stories and sing our own songs!” Let’s do it now!