#TheaterPH - AI, Abuse, and Unspoken Words: VLF 21 Set C Is the Boldest Night in the Black Box!

There's a particular kind of theater that sneaks up on you. You sit down expecting a play and walk out carrying a question you weren't prepared to answer. That's what Balat Kalabaw — Set C of this year's Virgin Labfest XXI: Hubo't Hubad — does to you, quietly and without warning. Three plays, three completely different worlds, one unmistakable through-line: what do we actually owe each other in a relationship, and are we brave enough to be honest about it?

The VLF, now in its 21st year, continues to be the best argument for why Philippine theater deserves your full attention. Running from June 3 to 28 at the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez (CCP Black Box Theater), this festival of untried, untested, and unstaged one-act plays this year chose Hubo't Hubad as its theme — stark naked, stripped of pretense. Set C delivers on that promise more than most.

Elehiya

Dustin Celestino opens the set with something deceptively still. Elehiya is structured as a series of monologues — an impressionistic montage of the important conversations that should have taken place between fathers and sons, but never did. There's no confrontation, no melodramatic breakdown. Just absence, rendered beautifully.

What elevates this production is the decision to cast real-life father and son Carlito Siguion-Reyna and Rafa Siguion-Reyna together on stage, alongside Dennis Marasigan, John Sanchez, and Yan Yuzon. The Siguion-Reynas don't just perform the material — they inhabit it in a way that makes the silence between them feel inherited. Carlito's restraint is commanding, and watching Rafa hold his own against a veteran of that caliber is quietly thrilling. Director Ron Capinding has crafted something spare and considered here; the stage design (shared across the three plays with Mark Lorenz as set designer) allows the words to carry the weight they're meant to carry. 

Betamax

Faith Ferrer Lacanlale — herself a VLF Writing Fellowship Program alumna — arrives with something completely different in Betamax, and she hits you like a slap. After a minor road accident, a woman named Brenda begins seeing "human pigs." Her older sister Brianna grows increasingly alarmed as Brenda's visions escalate, particularly when their youngest brother Bryan starts to look like one, too. What begins as a psychodrama slowly peels back into something far uglier: a family's long-buried secret around abuse, masculinity, and the particular brand of machismo that gets passed down through generations without ever being named.

There’s a reason Betamax is one of the loudest entries in Set C. Director Sheenly Gener gives the play room to be in-your-face about what it’s saying, and the cast matches that energy fully. Jam Binay is devastating as Brenda — unhinged in a way that is completely controlled and completely heartbreaking. Jorrybell Agoto, the acclaimed indie film actress, plays the older, pragmatic Brianna and grounds the piece, and the interplay between the two women is electric. And Sean Inocencio, a new and upcoming actor, holds his own as Bryan in what is genuinely a breakthrough performance worth watching. Betamax isn’t subtle, nor should it be. It’s angry and raw and necessary, and it earns every bit of discomfort it creates.

She's Electric

And then there's She's Electric, which is the one I haven't stopped thinking about.

Ron Evangelista's play sounds like a setup to a barkada comedy at first. Robert (Joshua Cabiladas), a reformed womanizer who has long avoided the mess of real romance, finally brings his girlfriend Rose to meet his friends — Andrew (Aldo Vencilao), Stacy (Yesh Burce), and Borgs (Ybes Bagadiong) — for dinner at his condo. The set itself is perfect for this: a fully furnished, modern condo unit that feels immediately recognizable, the kind of space you've been to, or maybe the kind you scroll past on Airbnb and save for someday. Warm lighting, clean lines. It looks like a date night, not a stage.

And then Rose walks in, and everything shifts.

Glaiza de Castro plays Rose as an android — and the revelation, when it comes, detonates the comfortable setup in the best possible way. What follows is a conversation that is simultaneously hilarious and philosophically loaded: Can what Robert has with Rose be considered love? Can an AI companion replace human intimacy? Is what's happening objectification, or is it something the language of traditional romance just hasn't caught up to yet? The play presses on those questions without letting anyone off the hook, including the audience. The condo set design, far from feeling limiting, becomes a crucial storytelling device — everything about the space whispers normal, which makes the central question hit harder. You're watching a dinner party in an apartment that looks like yours, debating a future that already feels like now.

The ensemble is exceptional. Cabiladas carries the emotional sincerity of the piece, and Vencilao, Burce, and Bagadiong give the comedy real texture — they're not just reaction machines, they're actual characters with actual points of view. But Glaiza de Castro is the axis the whole play rotates around. Her performance is precise, deliberate, and strangely moving — she makes you care about an android in a way that is itself a kind of argument for the play's central question.

What makes all of this remarkable is that She's Electric is JP Habac's first time directing for the stage. Known primarily for his film work, Habac navigates the intimacy of the Black Box beautifully, finding the rhythm between comedy and drama without forcing either. This is the kind of debut that signals a long, interesting second chapter.

For my money, She's Electric is one of the strongest entries in this year's entire VLF — the kind of play that gets talked about after the festival closes, that audiences want to revisit. If the festival directors are building a list for next year's revisited plays, this one already belongs on it.

The Set as a Whole

Part of what makes Balat Kalabaw work as a curated set is exactly what its name suggests: thick skin, endurance, the posture of someone who has seen enough to keep going anyway. The festival directors made a deliberate choice in pairing these three plays together, and it shows. All three, in wildly different registers, are asking the same question about moral accountability in relationships — the ones we choose, the ones we're born into, and the ones we're still not sure how to classify. Elehiya asks about what fathers and sons leave unsaid. Betamax tears open what families hide. She's Electric asks whether connection itself can be manufactured — and whether that even matters.

None of them give you easy answers, which is the point.

Set C: Balat Kalabaw runs as part of Virgin Labfest XXI: Hubo't Hubad at the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez (CCP Black Box Theater), CCP Complex, Pasay City, June 3 to 28, 2026, with shows at 2 PM and 8 PM. Tickets are priced at ₱1,000 (regular) and ₱1,200 (premium), with festival passes also available. Get your tickets via the CCP Box Office, TicketWorld at premier.ticketworld.com.ph, and Ticket2Me. Note that several Set C dates have already sold out, so grab yours while you still can.

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