“The Kundiman Party” was Mean to My Actor Friend
The script of The Kundiman Party is pretty mean to whoever plays Antoinette, a role my friend Teetin Villanueva played during several shows of the play’s original 2018 run at the University of the Philippines by Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas.
For those who haven’t seen the play, it’s about a millennial social media expert named Bobby who convinces his girlfriend, her singing teacher Maestra Adela (a retired opera and kundiman maestra) and the teacher’s friends to create an online video series about the beauty of kundiman that also indirectly protests against the current Philippine government and its use of EJK (extra-judicial killings) and violence. Thus is born what the group calls “The Kundiman Party”.
While Bobby’s cause is just and admirable, his zeal in fighting against the government (who most likely represents his estranged senator father) starts to becomes almost exploitive. He diminishes and sacrifices the integrity of the art form he is using to simply further his rebellion. He choses buzzwords over artistic subtlety, shock value of a death over decency, and angry rhetoric over artistic meticulousness. Soon, he is willing to sacrifice the safety of the others for his cause. He unwittingly becomes the thing he claims to be fighting against when he tells the maestra that sometimes lives need to be sacrificed for a greater cause. He tries to fight fire with fire, anger with anger, and leaves when he felt kundiman may just be a novelty, that it can’t be used to fight as strongly as he wants to. By the end of the play, I wanted to punch the character of Bobby in the face and wanted to yell at him just how wrong he was going about things.
The character of his girlfriend, Antoinette, on the other hand, was the character I sympathized with the most. While most of the other characters talked and strongly expressed their points of view, Antoinette was often quiet, the one listening. She was balance. While Bobby stopped college to pursue his passion and join rallies, Antoinette graduated and got a good job as a management trainee while still also finding a way to pursue her love of singing at the same time. She joined Bobby in his fight, while trying to still keep him grounded and mediating when he would go too far in dealing with the others. All she wanted to do was to sing and learn to sing well. The conflict between them came when Bobby showed he didn’t really care about Antoinette’s singing, about actual kundiman, and only for the effect the maestra had on people when she talked about kundiman. And when his father slyly convinced him that using kundiman was not truly fighting right before a live meetup with viewers of their videos, Bobby leaves the group and Antoinette (either to give up and join his father or to go to the mountains where the “real fighting” is). And while Antoinette is heartbroken and the person who started this whole thing is gone, she still sings for the people who come, no matter how few they may be. She doesn’t do it to fight for the sake of fighting. She does it because she loves the art of kundiman. And what I took away from the ending was that kundiman, that art, with its power to draw out emotion, to make people want to love, would in the long run turn the public against the belief that violence and killing is necessary to gain peace and prosperity. Her belief that sticking to something higher: higher values, higher standards, would win out even if it does not spread as fast as anger.
This may be my interpretation of the play and the characters, but it’s something that inspires and drives me to this day, informing how and why I create art. To say I found this play to be influential would be an understatement.
The play celebrates the art of kundiman, to make people understand what really good can do when done really well. The script has Antoinette doing most of the singing. And kundiman, from a technical standpoint, is to singing what ballet is to dance. It’s demanding, challenging, and a spectacle for a layperson to behold. It’s doesn’t resonate because it makes you want to sing along. It leaves you in awe because it’s a feat that you know you cannot do, like watching a graceful acrobat do a mid-air flip. And yet kundiman is also meant to be deeply emotional, as its purpose is often to spark strong emotional responses in those who listen to it. It’s why kundiman is often used when a suitor needs to stir feelings in his beloved strong enough to make her have no choice but to act on these feelings.
And the reason I know this about kundiman is the very same reason the script is mean to whoever plays Antoinette. The masterful script by Floy Quintos has Maestra Adela, (masterfully played by Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino) explain kundiman in eloquent and convincing detail to her pupil Antoinette, gushing about it the way Salieri did about Mozart’s music in the film Amadeus. Not only does she explain kundiman, but Adela describes to Antoinette, and by extension to the audience, what a listener’s reaction to this level of kundiman should be. Adela talks about the audience being made to feel pity by kundiman done right, made to feel yearning and desire, to make them stop in their tracks or even be pulled in towards the singer.
And that’s why the script puts so much pressure on the actress playing Antoinette. Her singing has to accomplish exactly what Maestra Adela has just described. She has to make the audience feel exactly what Adela has said they should feel when they hear Antoinette sing, otherwise it would undermine the point the story is trying to make. It’s the equivalent of a baseball batter or a pool player calling out their shot before making it. Most other scripts do this when the artform being described is either an already completed masterpiece, like Mozart’s music in Amadeus, or when they won’t show the audience what is being described as it couldn’t possibly live up to the build-up, like the painting that drives the story of the film “Ang Larawan”. But The Kundiman Party doesn’t back down from this challenge, nor does it allow whoever plays Antoinette to. And the actress for Antoinette needs to do this live, with no edits, redos, or lip syncing.
Also, the play isn’t a musical where characters sing out dialogue that would be perceived as spoken in the story’s world. The music is diagetic, meaning all the singing done by the characters happen in the world of the play, are heard by the characters as music, and are organic parts of the story. So the singing has to be authentic. Two other characters also sing, but their songs are there for comic relief. Antoinette does most of the singing in this play and her songs don’t have comedy as a crutch or safety net. The songs are meant to work in-story with the actual character singing, yet also work on a deeper level. Kundiman is essential to the theme of the story; how it uses emotion and beauty to stir the soul in contrast to the anger utilized by both sides of the political spectrum. And the theme only works if the singing of these kundiman songs are done exceptionally well.
It’s an ambitious and ballsy move by the script to really make audiences fall in love with kundiman, but it lays an seemingly unfair amount of pressure on whoever plays Antoinette. It’s a tough role and I have huge respect for all those who have played it.
When my wife Iyay and I watched Teetin play Antoinette, I have to admit I felt a bit nervous for Teetin at first. A few days before I got to watch the show, Teetin had mentioned to me that she was doubting herself because of how different singing kundiman was compared to her usual style or singing. And I’ll confess when she told me that, I didn’t quite understand why kundiman would be so difficult to do. But when that starting scene played out with her and Ma’am Shamaine, I realized how high the stakes of this role was. It was a bit like breathlessly watching a tightrope walker walk fifty feet in the air, hoping she could hit all those impossibly high notes that couldn’t simply be belted out while also hitting those emotional targets Shamaine’s superb elocution was laying out within the audience.
I didn’t need to worry at all.
Teetin’s very versatile and has done all kinds of different roles which is one reason why I’m always eager to see what she performs in next. I’ve heard her sing before in all types of shows, like a cabaret where she sang as an unlucky-in-love velociraptor and a cartoon troll, a Filipino superhero musical ballet (Ballet Philippines’ “Manhid”), a broadway hit where she sings in a British accent (Atlantis Theatrical’s run of “Matilda”), and a Filipino children’s play (PETA’s “Tagu-Taguan, Nasaan ang Buwan”, where, strangely enough, her character also had a British accent). I know she sings really well and I was expecting her to sing really well here. And even given that, I was still not prepared for how amazing she was at singing kundiman.
Her singing is what opens the show, the lights first coming on to reveal her already singing a kundiman song, and right off the bat I was stunned by how beautiful kundiman sounded and how skillfully Teetin was pulling it off, singing high notes with a restrained vibratto that made it both exhilarating yet tender. You know P.T. Barnum’s stunned expression when he hears Jenny Lind sing for the first time in the film The Greatest Showman? That was pretty much my expression.
Then Shamiane, as Adela, interrupts and says that while her singing was technically clear, the emotion wasn’t clear yet. Shamaine then builds up kundiman and its intended effect as I mentioned earlier. So this first song was not even supposed to be kundiman at its highest level yet! Teetin, as Antionette, sings again, and this time the emotional goals have been set, Adela has called for a home run over the west bleachers. And Teetin hits it out of the park. I’m not quite sure what it was exactly, but some subtle yet powerful touches she put in her second rendition made quite a difference. Maybe it was little things like how she would pull back her voice just a teensy bit during some notes as if to hint at a sigh. Or how she would change how soft or how slowly she would sing certain words, to give some more weight than others. Perhaps it was little added physical ticks like how her fingers trembled a bit more when she gestured this second time, or how her eyes would squint a bit tighter as she hit the more emotional beats of the song. Unlike a typical Filipino pop song or dramatic performance where more emotion means louder belting or shouting or bigger crying, this was an understated yet stirring performance. There was a restrained and controlled power, as if immense feelings were being held back and just seeping out, barely being contained. Her singing’s subdued beauty perfectly brings out the emotions kundiman is suited for: yearning, desire, empathy. After all, one does not yell or belt out a declaration of love to the object of their affection, at least not if they hope to get the reaction they are hoping for.
Teetin would then have to sing kundiman in various other emotional contexts throughout the story. At one point, she has to fake not hitting a note. Another part has her barely able to sing, with immense sadness overwhelming the technical necessities of kundiman. One pivotal scene has Antoinette singing to her soon-to-be boyfriend Bobby, causing him to finally ask her to be his girlfriend. Each song had a different balance of emotional and technical clarity. And I found myself reacting strongly and unconsciously each time she sang. When Antoinette had Bobby pulled in with her song, I found myself unintentionally leaning forward as well as I listened and watched. When she sang after Adela gave her impassioned speech about the death of one of the side characters, I found myself gripping my wife’s arm a bit tighter, as if the song was reminding me to hold on to the one I love while I could. And I remember distinctly that when Teetin would finish a song, the reaction wasn’t immediate applause like when the hilarious comedic songs were done by Jenny Jamora and Rica Nepomuceno. Whenever Teetin would finish a kundiman song, I would find myself frozen, still silently staring and leaning in to listen, not quite ready for the song to finish and not yet quite fully believing that I had heard something so mesmerizing. The rest of the audience also appeared silently stunned. It takes a few seconds for my brain, and the rest of the audiences’ I imagine, to register that the song is over and only then after a few seconds does loud and deserved applause suddenly erupt. To me, that was the figurative eight ball in the corner pocket Adela had called earlier for the song to sink.
The role of Antoinette doesn’t have as many lines or big speeches as the other characters, as she is meant to be the point-of-view character for the audience. She is the one the other characters say their speeches to and whose soul they are fighting over with their philosophies. So Antoinette is there to react and listen mostly. But yet there is an eagerness to please, a sincerity behind the lines she does have and her expressions that frames how we as an audience are supposed to take in all these ideas thrown at us. And when Antoinette sings, the audience then becomes aware of her as a separate character and that is where she processes all the things given to her by the others.
Yes, the role of Antoinette is tough and that’s why I have to give Teetin and the other two actresses who have also played the role my highest admiration. Considering I saw the play three times, the perceived “meanness” of the script towards that role was apparently the right move, as it elevated the story since the performers were all up to the challenge.
Teetin captures that eagerness and that vulnerability so well when she acts and it frames her song numbers perfectly, giving the right emotional context that makes her songs all the more powerful. When her heart breaks on stage, your heart breaks for her as you see real tears drip down her cheeks. When she declares her love for singing, you believe it. You can see it all comes from somewhere real. Teetin is someone, like Antoinette, who also made hard decisions moving away from a “safe” major (medicine) and instead shifted to her passion for theater. She also experienced heartbreak and hasn’t shied away from using her art for socially aware causes, even when it was difficult for her to do. It was almost as if she was born to play this role.
Other actors who have played Antoinette have done a great job as well. I saw another performance of the play in 2019 with another actress playing the role. But I have to say after watching that run, it made me realize that no one will ever be The Kundiman Party’s Antoinette to me other than Teetin.
The Kundiman Party told me why I had to fall in love with kundiman. But Teetin’s performance is what actually made me fall in love with it.
I do hope that won’t be the last time she gets to perform that role.