At some point, most people wonder about the life they did not choose.

What if you had taken the other job? Pursued a different career? Stayed with someone—or walked away sooner? What would life look like if, at one crucial moment, you had simply chosen differently?

It is a familiar exercise in imagination, and one that becomes the premise of “Muli: An OPM Musical,” a new original Filipino production opening this September at the BGC Arts Center in Taguig.

The musical also marks a reunion for some of the creative minds behind “Sa Wakas,” the acclaimed Filipino musical that helped bring a distinctly contemporary voice to local theater more than a decade ago. Executive producer and writer Charissa Pammit and director Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan are working together again, this time on a story concerned less with youthful heartbreak and more with the questions that follow us as we grow older.

The idea for “Muli” had actually been around since 2018, although in a very different form.

“The original version of ‘Muli,’ the characters were like in their 20s, and even I couldn’t relate to them anymore,” Pammit said.

When she revisited the concept last year with her close friend and eventual co-writer, lifestyle journalist Jose Paolo dela Cruz, they realized the characters—and the questions they were asking—needed to grow up with them.

“We wanted to write something that conveys the truth of what millennials and Gen Xers are going through right now,” Charissa said. “What if I had a different career or had a different path?”

At the center of the story is Anita, a 42-year-old housewife who begins imagining the lives she might have lived had she made different choices. Through a series of alternate realities, audiences see those possibilities play out.

For Paolo, however, that instinct to wonder is hardly confined to one generation.

“You can be a Gen Xer, you can be part of Gen Z, and you’ll always have this sliver of—not doubting—this sliver of wonder of how life could be if you chose something else,” he said. “And it’s not even grounded in being unhappy or happy. It’s just, while you’re alive, you just keep that sense of wonder. I guess that’s what makes life worth living.”

Familiar voices, a new story

Taking on the role of Anita is Gawad Urian-winning actress and theater performer Kakki Teodoro, whose stage credits include “Isang Himala” and “Every Brilliant Thing,” the latter earning her a Philstage Gawad Buhay Award for Female Lead Performance in a Play.

Joining her is singer Janine Teñoso, who makes her professional stage debut as Anita’s daughter. Known for songs including “Tingin,” her collaboration with Cup of Joe, and “Pelikula” with Arthur Nery, Teñoso brings one of contemporary OPM’s most recognizable voices to the production.

The cast also includes Vien King of “Passion,” Marvin Ong of “Man of La Mancha,” Justine Peña of “Sa Wakas,” and Marynor Madamesila of “Gregoria Lakambini.” Social media creator and “Dog Show Diva” host Baus Rufo makes his professional theater debut.

Set against the 1990s and early 2000s, “Muli” uses music and nostalgia as the backdrop for a story about memory, choices, unfulfilled dreams and the possibility of second chances.

That makes OPM particularly fitting.

Singer-songwriter Nica del Rosario, known for songs such as “Rosas” and “Tala,” and violinist, musical director and composer Matthew Chang wrote and produced a suite of original songs for the musical. Both are Gawad Buhay awardees for their work on “Gregoria.”

They are joined by talents from FLIPMUSIC, the group behind contemporary Filipino pop hits including BINI’s “Pantropiko,” “Salamin, Salamin” and “Karera,” as well as Sarah Geronimo’s “Tala.”

For a musical preoccupied with alternate lives, even its own journey to the stage seems appropriate. “Muli” began as one thing in 2018, was interrupted by a pandemic, and returned years later with older characters and a different understanding of what its story needed to say.

Perhaps that is also why its central question feels so recognizable. The older we become, the more paths accumulate behind us—some taken, others abandoned, and a few we may occasionally revisit in our imagination.

“Muli” does not necessarily ask whether we made the right choices. It asks what might happen if, for a couple of hours in a theater, we were allowed to see the other ones.

The show runs on select dates from Sept. 11 to 27 at the Globe Auditorium, Maybank Performing Arts Theater, BGC Arts Center in Taguig City. Tickets are available through TicketWorld and the production’s official website.