This Was My Youth, Maybe

Currently playing: Herman’s Hermits tracks.

I’ve always had this perception that Red Turnip Theater is the leading Philippine theater company for Off-Broadway plays. I have never been disappointed and last night’s preview of This Is Our Youth certainly delivered.

Right smack in the middle of their third season, Red Turnip Theater goes unconventional with RT 0.5 by choosing a smaller venue to actually make things bigger for the audience. With A Space_Gallery at 110 Legazpi Street, Makati, things have become smaller, more comfortably intimate, and even pleasurably relatable.

RT 0.5’s first offering, This Is Our Youth, will open November 6, 8PM and will run until November 22. Tickets are selling fast! The opening night is sold out already.

This Is Our Youth originally opened Off-Broadway, 1996 and it tells the story of 3 faces of the youth in the time of Raegan’s presidency. The writer Kenneth Lonergen, has written such a wonderful script that it transcends even to the present. You tend to realize that not problems facing who we are has not changed that much.

Jef Flores, Nicco Manalo, and Cindy Lopez joins the ranks of Hayden Christensen, Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Anna Paquin, and Alison Lohman by portraying 19 year olds lost in the web of materialism, while managing their wants and dreams, and dealing with the brokenness of who they are.

The director of This Is Our Youth, Topper Fabregas, shares that he took the script as it is, at face value, without consciously referencing to previous stagings. The material, it appears, is largely dependent on how it is interpreted. It gives much opportunity to the 3 actors to engage the audience.

Right from the start, memories of high school reappeared as I sit on a throw pillow, sipping vodka tonic. Alongside every line, a parallel movie-like experience of my not-so-recent past played in my head. Growing up in the South, the scenes were very familiar. Despite being set in New York in the 1986, Topper was correct to describe Lonergen’s works as “time-specific but never dated, stylistically distinct but widely universal.” It’s easy to classify each character as just stereotypes but the wonderful direction and witty script prove otherwise. The lines creep into beyond the surface and despite the humor, you are hit with shards of reality that go in deep.

“The youth are immortal until they realize that they are not.” - Jef Flores during the Q&A. This is one thing that the youth would have to understand and if you have already forgotten, remember it like it is one of the greatest truths in this world.

Take in the new venue, take in the lines, absorb the scenes. Please do not let This Is Our Youth pass you by like a missed opportunity.