Subtext 4

Last Saturday was a very special Subtext show. Subtext, as some of you might know, is the most popular play we have in Koine. It won the 2002 Don Carlos Palanca awards for Filipino One-Act Play. It’s a story of the struggles of love in the face of communication and miscommunication. The first segment featured a couple haggling over dinner, the second part showed two high school kids flirting with each other via text messaging, and the third segment showed an old man reading to his wife a letter the wife mistook to be for his mistress.
Last Saturday there was a fourth segment. After the third segment, our director went onstage and sang a love song he wrote for Subtext. After the song, one of the audiences, the person who booked the show, stood up and went to the baul, part of the set of Subtext 3. He took the jacket, a prop of Subtext 3, and brought out a letter he wrote for his girlfriend. He read the letter to her, and to the audience, all of which are friends he invited for this special moment in their lives. He never got to finish his letter and with an “I can’t choreograph this moment anymore”, he blurted out his feeling for his girlfriend, knelt, and offered her a forever with him.
Life is special. Life is beautiful. And somehow being part of a moment like this, full of joy, full of drama, makes me thankful for being alive. To Tim and Wendy, may you have a wonderful forever ahead of you.