MEDIUM RARE
Prinsipe Bahaghari, aka The Little Prince, has taken on an unexpected form as a puppet – “papet” in the vernacular – in a surprising show of what an amateur reviewer might call transfer of technology.
First of all, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a story, not a play, and it’s set in the Sahara Desert. Saint-Exupery being French, his copyright stays in France, unlike in other countries since the book reportedly entered the public domain last year. Thus the Philippine adaptation by a bunch of talented producers, writers, designers, animators and puppeteers is a coup de grace, congratulations to team for translating, adapting, staging, and successfully selling tickets at P2,000 each.
The complete title of the play is “Ang Paglalakbay ni Prinsipe Bahaghari,” or The Adventures of Rainbow Prince, by Aina Ysabel B. Ramolete and Vladimeir B. Gonzales. My group caught it on its first weekend run at the Power Mac Spotlight Blackbox in Circuit Makati, with a sizeable crowd who were eager to buy keepsakes before and after the show.
With puppeteers manipulating the puppets on stage, dialogue and action moved forward, helped along by clever lighting and animation simulating a shadow play. Between the lines the audience caught the message of the play: For environmentalists, our planet is the only one there is, but for the general audience it’s still and forever going to be a love story, the lengths one will go to protect the beloved.
There were charming touches in the Filipino version. To begin with, the puppets are made of rattan. The aviator-narrator in the story is now a mechanical engineer who has built bulldozers; the rose is a gumamela; the fox is a cat. In addition, each ticket is labeled a “boarding pass” for departure from Earth with boarding time at 15:38 for the matinee performance. What’s the significance of those numbers – a feng shui thing?
Prinsipe Bahaghari has won a rainbow of prizes as one of six finalists in the Good Theater Festival for Young Audiences in India, plus awards for best direction (Ramolete), best production (Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas), best production design (Ramolete), and honorable mention for script (Gonzales).
After its Makati run, Bahaghari will show its colors in Palawan on Feb. 23.