#TheaterPH - This New Filipino Play About Drag, Identity, and One Chaotic Night Might Be 2027's Most Captivating Theatre Story
There's a particular kind of theatre that doesn't ask you to simply observe — it asks you to reckon. Not with someone else's life, but with the parts of yourself you've quietly set aside. Kho-Lab Productions seems to know exactly what that feels like, and with their preview of How To Train Your Drag Mom, they've offered us an early glimpse at something that could be one of the most emotionally rich stories on the Philippine stage next year.
The play centers on Anya — also known by her drag name, Lady Titania — an old-fashioned drag queen navigating a single, eventful night that forces her to confront everything she left behind and everything still waiting ahead. It's a premise that sounds deceptively simple, but anyone who's ever sat with the weight of an identity they've slowly drifted from — a version of themselves they thought they'd outgrown — will know there's nothing simple about it. Stories like this have a way of finding you.
What makes this preview worth paying attention to isn't just the subject matter. It's the hands it's in.
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| OJ Arci |
OJ Arci, who plays Anya/Lady Titania in the preview, is a Filipina transgender actress whose career has been defined by exactly this kind of bold, identity-forward work. She's an Aliw Award winner — twice over, for *Felipa* in 2020 and *Chameleon* in 2022 — and her body of work alongside acclaimed directors like Brillante Mendoza speaks to an artist who doesn't take the easy version of any role. Casting her here isn't incidental. It's a statement about whose voice should tell this story and how.
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| JP Lopez |
Behind the production, JP Lopez serves as both director and playwright — a combination that, when it works, produces something rare: a play that feels written and staged from the same emotional center. Lopez brings years of experience across television and theatre, with credits spanning GMA's Tadhana to major Philippine Stagers Foundation productions. He's joined by Rena Lazaro as assistant director, whose roots in stage management and community theatre suggest someone who understands how productions breathe from the inside out. The rest of the preview cast — Jayvee Natagoc, Matt Gregorio, Fidel Redado, and Grace Nicolas Schuke — rounds out an ensemble with genuinely varied backgrounds, from community theatre in Bulacan to independent film festival recognition.
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| Fidel Redado, Jayvee Natagoc, Matt Gregorio |
That diversity of origin matters more than it might seem. Philippine theatre at its best has always been a gathering place — for stories that don't get told elsewhere, for artists who built their craft outside the spotlight of the main cultural centers, for audiences who show up because something onstage is finally speaking their language. How To Train Your Drag Mom sounds like exactly that kind of play.
The full production won't arrive until April 2027, as part of Kho-Lab's upcoming season, with casting auditions slated for October. Which means what happened at this preview — this room full of people watching OJ Arci inhabit Lady Titania in a story about what we carry and what we leave behind — was something genuinely rare: the first breath of a play that's still becoming itself.
Kho-Lab Productions describes its mission as creating work that amplifies Filipino stories through collaboration across disciplines. There's something quietly radical about that framing in a cultural moment when so many institutions still default to the safe and the proven. A play about a drag queen reconciling with her past isn't risky material for its own sake — it's the kind of story that reminds you why theatre exists at all. Not to entertain from a distance, but to hold a mirror up close enough that you can't look away.
Mark April 2027 on your calendar and keep an eye on Kho-Lab. If this preview is any indication, Lady Titania's night is going to be one worth witnessing.
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