When a group of the handsomest theater group Mr.

Frank Rivera labeled them as

the handsomest and most powerful theater group that existed in the world of
performing arts performed in front of you with all their might and power in their
very last pre-production rehearsal, your view of the world seemed to change. You
felt awed and it transformed you into becoming a different person all too suddenly.
It made you ask questions of why people seemed to change views of their choices
of leaders in the political world, it made you dig deeper and analyze why people
seemed to abuse and disregard the freedom that DEMOCRACY has given them. It
made you cry because of the hundreds and thousands of dead people and souls,
seemingly, FORGOTTEN. People who sacrificed their lives for change. People who
deeply believed in their ideologies. People who fought in their own little way for
freedom, for justice, for equality.

In an era of an almost forgotten past, this group of fresh and very creative people
brought one blogger back to an episode he did experience somehow when he was
still young and in teens. They all performed so truthfully and convincingly like, they
were the very actual people of those dead heroes in The First Quarter Storm of the
Edsa Philippine Revolution.

These dead heroes you met once or twice in your lifetime as you yourself
participated in marching and took the vigil in Edsa at the height of the peoples
unrest in 1970 and felt the beauty of their rebellion, again we say, came back to life
in living colors of perfect emotions, moves, dances and songs.

And you cried alone as no one saw you there. Because the dead heroes you saw
and felt anew, in the present generation and batch of people living as Filipinos, had
forgotten them- even in the pages of the textbooks of students of Philippines. And
even the son of a Political icon who became the President didnt live up to the
sacrifices made by his dad and the people who died for the sake of his dads legacy?
That, we ask now. Or maybe, its the people who simply abused the gifts given by
the spirit of Democracy.

The play challenged your intellectual beliefs, but more than that, it made you
remember again- most of all, the young man you met who disappeared and became
a Desparacido and victim in the darkest and most violent era of Philippine History.

You sympathized to all of the characters who got involved there. Dead heroes, you
say. People who fought, people who were regarded as N.P.A.s (New Peoples Army)
during that time, people who simply have a different view of the world, people who
were simply brave, outspoken, guileless, radical

The most beautiful character in the play KATIPS was the character that Vince Tanada
performed in their last theater rehearsal. He played the character of a very good
rebel who fell in love so truthfully to a female comrade who loved someone else.
But his female comrade soon discovered that the man she loved was the very man
who caused her death. And as Vinces character saw her dead corpse when the
military people killed her, it became the most powerful and dramatic scene of the
play.

That scene alone, you would honestly say, was all worth it. You wouldnt ask for
more because Vince delivered an acting moment and highlight that would last a
lifetime.