Gian Magdangal still open to TV work amid boom in Philippine theater scene

Gian Magdangal/ARMIN P. ADINA

Gian Magdangal has never been so busy with theater, with the local scene seeing an unprecedented boom. But he said going back to television is not something that is out of the picture.

INQUIRER.net sat with the thespian during rehearsals for his latest production “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” for Repertory Philippines at the Philippine Opera Company in Makati City last month and asked if he still misses going on TV. “Oh, yeah, definitely,” he responded.

“I’m never absent with something like that in my schedule for the year, because it’s also something that I yearn to do, also, equally well. It’s a different medium. And, you know, it reaches a wide audience at a very short time. And it’s really something that I also dream of doing also together hand-in-hand with theater. Because they really go together,” Magdangal said.

However, there is one thing that does not amuse him when working on TV. “I don’t miss the waiting for the whole day. It really takes up a lot of your time during the whole day. Because in theater you’re done in just the night. You know when it’s gonna start, you know when it’s going to end,” he shared.

Magdangal said working in TV entails a lot of guessing, when one’s going to start, and when the work will end. “You have to block your whole day. In theater or in concerts, you already know what you’re getting into before you started today. The rehearsal is 1 to 8, or something like that. It starts and ends that way. And you know what you’re going to expect,” he explained.

For his current production with Repertory Philippines, Magdangal and his fellow actors in “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” are challenged by director Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo to take on 10 characters each. The four actors take turns in breathing life to several stories told from different perspectives in a unique, non-linear, play that tells more than one story that are not connected.

He said it is one of the most difficult jobs for him. “It seems simple but it’s not. Because the scenes may be short, but that’s the whole point of it being difficult. There’s no time to recover. It has finish, and climax, and end in a short span of time,” he explained.

Magdangal also said that the actors need to move the sets themselves to change for the next scene. “One more thing that you have to be aware of is the set change. And then you have to get out, and go back right away. So, basically, we don’t rest in the whole show. It’s a tiring show,” he shared.

He also gladly shared his observation about the current boom in the local theater scene. “More and more productions are coming up. Everybody’s, like, opening at the same time, like, every month. You can see social media accounts that post ‘opening this weekend,’ and then they get like three productions, and they’re all local,” Magdangal said.

He also cited the foreign productions staging shows in the country, as well as the theater workshops during the summer getting a lot of children into acting. Magdangal also shared that one indicator of the thriving theater scene is the difficulty in booking rehearsal venues and actual performance venues that they are experiencing now.

“I think our industry is really growing. And I think in this day and age where everything is online, there’s still a genuine exclusivity, and a yearning for, and demand for people to watch something that you are exclusive to see. Like, ‘I saw that, you didn’t,’ you know, that kind of culture,” Magdangal said.

Repertory Philippines’ adaptation of the off-Broadway musical-comedy production “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” will open at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium at the RCBC Plaza in Makati City on June 14. The play will run until July 6.

We would love to hear more from you! Help us improve your reading experience by answering this survey.