Cacai Bautista —ALEC CORPUZ
Comedienne Cacai Bautista said she learned only from the best.
The actress, who traces her acting roots to musical theater, considers Celeste Legaspi and Lea Salonga her heroines in the said field. “Add to that Ate Regine Velasquez, my mentor in music,” she said during her recent visit to Inquirer’s Makati office.
Cacai was a celebrity storyteller at a recent session of the Inquirer Read-Along. She recalled the time when she worked as Lea’s wardrobe assistant for the musical, “They’re Playing Our Song,” in 2000.
“She’s strict, but she never gave me a hard time,” said Cacai of Lea, the Tony winner who’s also a columnist of Inquirer Entertainment. “It was my job to take care of her costumes and help her during quick changes. In the 80 shows that we’ve done, she was never late. She’s very disciplined—a true professional.”
Celeste shares the same traits with Lea, Cacai observed: “Celeste is a perfectionist. We would all be singing together (for the play, ‘Alikabok’), but she would still be able to pinpoint who is singing in the wrong key. There was a time when, while the show was already running, she would go backstage to say, ‘Hi! You’re a little bit flat. Maybe you can do this…’”
Regine, meanwhile, has remained humble through the years, said Cacai. “She told me I have a good singing voice, and that I should pursue performing. That’s my idol already telling me that I should sing publicly, so why won’t I listen? She’s really an inspiration to me and to a lot of artists.”
She was in the cast of the long-running musical, “Rak of Aegis.” Cacai was first seen on television in 2003, in the John Lloyd Cruz-Bea Alonzo series, “Kay Tagal Kang Hinintay.” She has since appeared in various shows and movies, the latest of which was Julius Alfonso’s rom-com, “Harry & Patty.”
Cacai mused: “I can say that I have indeed come a long way from the time I left home, without my parents’ blessings, to pursue my love for the arts. They wanted me to do something else because they said there was no money in performing. Look where I still ended up!”
In fact, because of her work as an actress, Cacai was able to send her three siblings to school and buy her mother a piece of land. “We’re now in the process of building a house on that lot,” she disclosed proudly. To our comment that, unknowingly, she has become a heroine to her family, Cacai replied: “Sumobra pa ako kay Darna! I guess we’re all heroes to someone at some point.”