This week, we had the presentations for the Last Order sa Penguin play by groups made up in our humalit class. Before we presented, I made sure I read the whole play by Chris Martinez myself so I could understand the story better.
As I read the whole thing, I realized that as an 18 year old, I am already having the same problems as the characters did. I have already reached a point in my life where my feelings of being a teenager forever clashes with my feelings of what is there to come. My favorite character of the group has to be Tuxqs because he strikes to be the happiest but all the saddest of the group. With that, I raise an observation on why male homosexuals (or the "bakla"s) tend to be more lively and joking about compared to when we look at female homosexuals (or the tomboys). Tuxqs is the happiest because he's funny, he says the most hilarious lines like "Ako simple lang- to have a baby before menopause" which clearly has to be the funniest line in the whole play, for me. He is also the saddest because he toys with the idea that even when his friends have miserable relationships with their partners, at least they have somebody. Another funny scene attributing to this is when Tuxqs and Sweet, the flower vendor, fight out in the end of the play how which one of them have the most unfortunate situation. Sweet says she wins this category because she doesn't have anything to feed her family with, that she's "gutom" all the time. While Tuxqs argues that he is most unfortunate because he's lonely. I can see how ironic this situation is. Another observation is that it doesn't clearly say in the play whether Sweet is a male or a female but I read somewhere how Sweet Lapus himself played as Sweet in Last Order sa Penguin, which could be a clue to what Sweet's gender is, doesn't really attribute much to the play but I find it interesting.
My least favourite character, however, has to be Harlene because she is, for the lack of a better word, the most adult person in the group. She's already living in with her boyfriend which is like being married already. They're already undergoing a mid-life crisis in their relationship. Harlene says that Nico is getting old plus they're both kind of sick of each other already.
For the play, I ended up playing Tess, the character with the lesbian lover. She's confused whether she really is a lesbian already. One funny indication would be when Harlene shared an article that when you've performed sex with the same gender 7 times then you're already a lesbian. She argues "what if I have sex with a lesbian 6 times then I get to be with a man after? will I be considered a lesbian still?" and so on.
Also, for the presentation of the play, my group got to play the scene where the barkada finds out that Dyna is dating a 16-year-old "jolog". Then, they argue about the gross but equally hilarious question of which they would rather eat when given a million dollars, "taeng lasang ube o ubeng lasang tae". The question then progresses to which one they would rather have sex with for a million dollars as well; Jinngoy, Erap or Loi. I think our part is a really interesting scene because it says a lot for the characters of the play; Tuxqs, Dyna, Harlenes, Tess, Mario, without dwelling a lot about their life stories as for the other parts of the play. Even Marcel and Sweet got airtime.
Our scene ended with the characters revealing their wishes and dreams for their future selves when they were younger. My particular favorite, as mentioned before, is Tuxqs' "Ako simple lang- to have a baby before menopause."
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