HALLUCINATION, BEHIND THE SCENES!
JUAINY SALALILA AGGABAO
We, third year college of Education, Santa Rita College; actors were very excited to show-up our talent in acting, but at the same time butterflies on our stomach won’t stop-stop! The tense was there! We never know what and how it would run as it goes.
That was March 20, 2015 in the evening when we performed our one of a kind stage-play at the SRC gymnasium that has been served as our finals to our subject “Speech and Stage Play/ Theatre” with our beloved mentor, Sir Alvin Manalang. The story was entitled, “Hallucination” and it’s actually idea of Julius Agulto, and written by: spearheaded by Danica Pineda, then Paula Ocampo, Ailyn Galang, and Camille Laplana, and generally directed by Lenard Yaya. Two weeks before, we are about to practice the play, unfortunately, some are unable to read the whole story/script because there were many exams to take. As days goes by, we are trying to make it up, but then again, most of us were having a bad misunderstanding with regards of the play. We thought that the play wouldn’t work any longer and just have to give it up and have a failed mark. We were really frustrated and hopeless that time, because Wednesday (March 18) was the previewing day of our play, and yet we still don’t have a good practice on it.
Monday, we decided to talk about the matters with the play in our room, St. Agnes, to fully clear everything. I still remember Danica once asked to everyone, “Do you still want to continue the play?” while everyone was crying even her, including me. There was a part where some of them were already shouting and arguing because of so much anger, and I experienced apnoea during that time. Yes. I can hardly breathe just because of that situation. Luckily, Mrs. Avelina Saplala came in, our professor in ASL, she was the only one who solved our problems. She let us poured all of our displeasures and dislikes with each other, later on everything became fine... So, we continued practicing. We gave everything we can. Time, effort, even we’re already hungry we tried to finish the scene which is yet undone.
Previewing day, we played at least 20 scenes out of 40. Then, Sir Alvin have told us to improve those things for us to meet the things that we have learned and seen through watching a theatre play in UP. Then after that, aside from good comments on us he said to us sincerely, “You deserve to rest.” And so we continued practicing on the next, we followed everything that he said. We were just really hoping that audience would like our play even our mentor.
Until presentation day! We really tried not to panic and just relax and remembered all the things that we only practiced. Each of us reviewed the lines we’d utter. In just few minutes the play would start, yet we’re practicing the transitions of settings, that’s all that matters. Because all we want was to make our play less boring. During practice, then again, there was a fire sparked between actors and the director, we thought again that, this play would really be a failure and become worthless. How could anybody won’t get stressed with these incidents? Ugh! However, we tried to comfort Lenard; our director, because for me the play wouldn’t work without him.
After a long time of waiting, five minutes before the play would start everyone gathered and prayed to God, to guide us, and give us strength so that we could deliver our lines well. As it goes, we just enjoyed the play. We gave all the best that we could to all of the audience, for ourselves and of course to our mentor, Sir Alvin. As the curtain closes, we were emotional, hugging one another, jumping for joy and praising God. We’re very glad that we made it until to the last part!
Right now I’m crying. I just can’t imagine how we survived all of the trials we’ve gone through? All we thank is that our friendship gets stronger and stronger. Through this play, we have learned many things one of it is that “Never ever break the friendship no matter what. In the end, you can never tell that you can do things without them.”