The actor, not the role
On the local entertainment scene, “toasts” or complimentary comments are much more common than “roasts,” because our homegrown talents take everything personally.
Even when, once in a rare while, a star agrees to be roasted in a tribute presentation, when the satirical comments get hot and feisty, the honoree has a hard time being “game” and “sport.”
That’s really a pity, because it prevents us from enjoying the spicy humor that comes from the fond put-down. In the States and in England, for instance, stars’ colleagues and relatives have a whale of a good time “honoring” them with funny zingers and stingers that really hit the spot (ouch!).
Our distaste for celebrity roasts also indicates a deeper flaw in how we regard performers and performance itself in these parts: We can’t separate the talent’s person from his work. As a result, stars and starlets often end up playing mere variations on their real selves when they’re portraying a role.
In other performing cultures, it’s clear both to the actor and the viewer that the performer isn’t playing himself, but somebody else, so his own persona shouldn’t be judged in relation to his portrayal. This gives him much greater leeway in creating many different “people” in the course of his acting career, and no value judgments are made, or intended.
Try telling that to local actors and fans, and you’ll probably get a quizzically uncomprehending look. What are you talking about? In our film-going culture, of course fans fall in love with a star’s person and screen persona, not with the character he creates.
We can understand and explain it away, but it’s still a huge drawback against truly creative work in local TV-film productions—because it limits our actors to merely playing little variations on themselves, rather than doing what thespians are really supposed to do—namely, to create a gallery of characters very different from their own selves.
Limited portrayals
Given this excessively personal relationship between stars and viewers on the local entertainment scene, only a few of our actors are able to turn in truly creative work.
This is particularly and embarrassingly evident in our teleseryes, where attention-calling melodramatic flourishes instead of real drama are the order of the day. Even otherwise estimable actors like Christopher de Leon and Cherry Pie Picache are thus limited and discouraged from coming up with really felt and organic portrayals.
Lesser actors turn in even more limited portrayals, like Robin Padilla and Iza Calzado. Robin’s signature “bad boy” persona continues to limit him, two long decades after he first established it (and it established him).
Even his new teleserye, “Guns and Roses,” is fraught with repetitive intimations of his patented screen persona, thus compromising his ability to surprise.
As for Iza, she’s been making a name for herself as an actress, but when you put her recent and current portrayals side by side with each other, from her “beauty queen” soap to her “I (Heart) You Pare” replacement gay outing, to her recent series (“Andres de Saya”), it’s clear that it’s still the “Iza Factor” that’s running from role to role, not her versatility and creativity.
That’s the tragedy about the “persona” acting style and expectations prevalent on local screens. It prevents many of our actors, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, from becoming genuine artists.
To be fair to the likes of Iza and Robin, we should raise our own expectations and invite and challenge them to truly come into their own, not as fave TV-film “idols,” but as actors in the real sense and spirit of the word.
