RADYO DRAMA
RADYO DRAMA is a five-episode radio drama podcast about an unbelievable queer family. The story spans three generations over five decades, hurtling across different sets of timelines and characters.Joy, the matriarch, disappears one day after her husband commits suicide. She leaves her two children, Jun-Jun and Roma in the hands of her unstable sister-in-law, Auntie Charlie.Years later, on the eve of her final gender affirmation surgery, Roma comes face to face with her father’s suicide note. She dreams of a woman with a thousand breasts. She begins her search for Joy.
EPISODES
EPISODE 1: ROMA
Roma is confronted by her dead father through a suicide note, and the ghost of her dead auntie, Auntie Charlie. We first learn that Auntie Charlie tried to kill Roma’s only son Felix when he was six years old.CAST: Mela Habijan · Sheryll Villamor Ceasico · Kristel Perlas · Abet Cruz · Kath Castillo
EPISODE 2: MANG LANDER
We go back in time and meet the family, Roma and Jun-Jun’s parents, Alpha and Joy. We get to know Mang Lander, the house caretaker, and we travel with him on high seas through deep forests, to his final return to the town he left behind with nothing in his arms but a baby.CAST: Ekis Gimenez · Mela Habijan · Jasper Villasis · Kath Castillo ·
Abet Cruz · Sheryll Villamor Ceasico
EPISODE 3: FELIX
In the future, Felix becomes a writer who gets cancelled online. Together with his filmmaker girlfriend, they visit the house Felix’ parents grew up in to uncover more of his family’s mystery.CAST: John Jerome Mongaya · Allen Marquez · Mela Habijan · Ekis Gimenez · Abet Cruz · Kristel Perlas
EPISODE 4: ANG PAGLILITIS KAY AUNTIE CHARLIE
Taking place in a dako paroon, Auntie Charlie is put on trial for the crimes she committed against Roma and Felix. But during her trial we learn that Auntie Charlie is also a victim: a victim of familial circumstance, and more tragically, time.CAST: Sheryll Villamor Ceasico · Kath Castillo · Ekis Gimenez · Mela Habijan · Abet Cruz · Jasper Villasis · John Jerome Mongaya · Kristel Perlas
EPISODE 5: JUN-JUN
RADYO DRAMA ends with a barkada gimik, a despedida for Jun-Jun before he flies off to Lisbon having landed a dream job as a chair designer. But what we will hear is not rejoicing but anguish as he tries to grapple with his family’s illness, and his own band of grief.CAST: Abet Cruz · Mela Habijan · Kristel Perlas · Allen Marquez ·
Mark Dalacat · Kath Castillo
ROMA
A radio drama for queers, trans, and non-binary
Roma, a trans woman is RADYO DRAMA's main protagonist. While RADYO DRAMA is also trans in its storytelling and presentation. A mutable, shifting story that is close to the trans, queer, and non-binary experience: the search for family. We see here unbelievable characters that re-imagine what family is made of, and how family can strain all too human relationships, but that can also heal the wounds that family trauma inflicts.RADYO DRAMA doesn't ask the question, how can family accept trans, queer, and non-binary beings? Instead it asks, what untangles the family to be reclaimed for trans/queer flourishing, and why it falls apart when it tries its best to be cis and binary, whether under matriarchy or patriarchy? Demand the impossible! If nature is oppressive, change nature!
VOICES
From left to right:MELA HABIJAN as Roma
She is a writer, actress, motivational speaker, and the first-ever Miss Trans Global. An active voice of the Trans Filipina community, she has been championing education on SOGIE and trans identity, forwarding LGBTQIA+ rights.SHERYLL VILLAMOR CEASICO as Auntie Charlie
Sheryll or SC, is a full-time public school teacher for 16 years, within which she also juggles a career as a freelance theater actress for 8 years. She is a cultural worker and communtiy theater practitioner being a member of the urban poor-based arts organization SIKAD since 2018 and also currently sits in its Board of Directors.EKIS GIMENEZ as Mang Lander
Ekis loves to hike.ABET CRUZ as Jun-Jun/Alpha
Daddy. Pinoy BL/LGBT Romance Writer: "Oh Boy, I Love You" "Sylvestre's Wedding" "As If Us" IG: urbandud. #SinongDaddyMoJOHN JEROME MONGAYA as Felix
Jerome is a freelance theater actor and director. He is into making contemporary dance choreograpy and movement pieces. (He is also an avid fan of Harry Styles.)KATH CASTILLO as Joy
An actor, traveler and businesswoman, Kath finished BA THEATRE ARTS in UP Diliman and was a former apprentice of Tanghalang Pilipino Actors' Company and a co-founder of Kolab Co. She has worked with different TV commercials, films & theatre companies like PETA and Gantimpala Theater Foundation. This is her 4th year with Standby April! TambayTimes productions.
From left to right:KRISTEL PERLAS as Aleph
Kristel Perlas is engaged in the business of travel and immigration. She occasionally does yoga and dabbles in fermenting kombucha. She lives up in the mountains with Andrea, Dummay, and Penny.JASPER VILLASIS as Kuya Remi/Uncle Blue
Jasper is a dancer and food technologist. During the pandemic, he put up "Batchoy ni Japs", an online karinderya featuring authentic Bacolod recipes, and food he prepared personally. He plans to revamp this.ALLEN MARQUEZ aka LIGAYA as Jacinta/Maribeth
Isang lumulutang na Ligaya, literal. Maraming ginagamit na pangalan sa sining at patuloy ang pagpapahulma nito sa iba’t ibang danas na hinaharap. Sa kasalukuyan, si Allen ay isang galit at lost na MA Theatre Arts student at graduate assistant ng Office of Anti-Sexual Harassment UP Diliman. Ninanais pa rin niyang tubuan ng mga pakpak at maging diwata now na.MARK DALACAT aka PEPPER as Sky
Mark Dalacat is taking up B.A. in Theatre Arts at the University of the Philippines Diliman, and day dreams about becoming a porn star. They focus on the intersection of performance creation and visual design for the stage. Mark believes that the world will be saved by the queers in their own special way. IG: instagram.com/macdalacat / Twitter: twitter.com/marktweeps
RADYO DRAMA takes place in a fictional city district, Metaltriste. It is a familiar city, a city much like the one we live in. Porous, not exactly urban, and always interspersed with the rural. The evocation of space in the drama is important. It tells us that the story is happening here, now, but we are given a bit of distance, a chance to compose. RADYO DRAMA plays on this distance, as it tries to re-purpose the genre of radio play drama not only to elicit deep emotions, but to interrupt, and discuss misplaced social values that turn into moral ills. The family house is in Metaltriste, once an old metal factory housing. When the factory shut down, and the workers were unable to afford the housing, the middle class families moved in. Metaltriste, sad sad metal.
📍METALTRISTE
IMPETUS
RADYO DRAMA—both the medium and the form—was conceived as a way to circumvent the huge gap the COVID-19 pandemic left on performance practices. The choice to utilize auditory medium is as much a necessity as it is a mitigating attempt to bridge the intimate connections performance practices provide, and that the leap to Internet visuality simply cannot replace. How intimate, someone speaking close to your ears. If we cannot come close, then we must come close through listening.
RADYO DRAMA is a supplemental text for a larger work,
a full-length epic family stage drama, projected for 2022.
RADYO DRAMA introduces nine out of the fifteen characters that inhabit the Metaltriste world. The radio drama mini-series aims to raise partial funds for the eventual staging of the flesh and bone RADYO DRAMA through streaming. It will release EPISODE 1: ROMA for free, and for those interested to follow the rest of the episodes and see what happens to the family, they pay what they can by streaming through a soon to be determined platform. STAY TUNED!
PRODUCTION TEAM
From left to right:RADYO DRAMA is created by CARLO PAULO PACOLOR. They write fiction, drama, and does lots of other stuff. Visit their portfolio: Paganong Puso.GIO POTES is a filmmaker, theater folk, and cultural worker, with Mark & Lenny and Julie as his most notable works. He is a fierce advocate of LGBTQIA+ rights and recognition. He is a co-producer of RADYO DRAMA.LEVI MASULI works with sound and text. He can be reached at levimasuli.com.ROBE ZAMORA DAGCUTA currently works as a video editor for television. He is a film student at the University of the Philippines Diliman with a chosen track in sound design and audio management. He mostly works as sound recordist and boom operator for student short films and commercial ads. His fortes are sound design and editing. His film sound designer credits include “Ito ang Daan Pauwi” (2017), “The Retreat” (2018), and “Tayo” (2019).
FB: fb.com/robnicoray / IG: @robnicoray.
MEBUYEN
MEBUYEN is a mutable and porous, transdisciplinary studio.The studio is named after Mebuyen, a mythological being mostly found in Mindanawon folk cosmology. Mebuyen sits at a crossroad in the underworld, and is usually described as a monster, a huge, heavy-set female form with a thousand breasts covering her body. It is said that babies who have died from plague, famine and war are nourished by Mebuyen before they move on to the afterlife.MEBUYEN is ensconced in an adobe hill. Set under a house much like a silong, it has a spacious ground for those who want to explore and experiment on different modes and methodological processes in various creative disciplines.RADYO DRAMA is produced at MEBUYEN. It is the studio's first offering. The studio is located in Tandang Sora, Quezon City.Contact us: [email protected]