Farce Comedy, Rap on EJKs Win Palanca Awards

of missing persons and extra-judicial killings, the story revolves around a family whose members find themselves on the different ends of the political spectrum, and a father who strives to keep them together. Celestino once again goes against the grain here by adding a rhyme and meter into the dialogue. “There’s a lot of rapping here. It was difficult to write because of the scale since every character has to tell a story through rap.”

Conflict plays a huge theme in both winning plays as it also serves as Celestino’s source of inspiration in writing, which he acknowledges is abundant in society. “Mostly what I write about are things that affect me personally and what’s always around. I take the main conflicts happening all around me – plus the personal conflict within me, like the question of what’s right or wrong, and from there I explore the idea more.”

In order to achieve his goals of winning a Palanca award, Celestino decided to devote all of his time in the craft of writing by giving up his post as a Creative Director for a marketing and advertising firm. Before this, he was professor for seven years at the Asia Pacific College.

“I had an epiphany one day that got me thinking: What if I died tomorrow, what would I regret the most? I didn’t think of not having a family or not getting married or having kids. What I’d regret the most was that I’m going to die without validating that I can write, and that’s what I did from January 1 as a New Year’s Resolution up until the final deadline of entries.”

And writing every day is an activity that Celestino advices aspiring Filipino writers to do. “Don’t let an idea stay in your head for too long. Write it down, finish it, and continue to refine and mould it. That’s your clay. It’s always going to be bad the first time but through constant rewriting, it will eventually become good. You’ll find out how much better you can be once you start rewriting what you’ve already written.”