Tipid Muna Tayo Sa Therapy: Inside the World of 'We Aren't Kids Anymore'

Barefoot Theatre Collaborative's first offering for 2025 is a stubbornly hopeful song cycle about the highs and lows of growing up.

- By Andrea Panaligan

As is often the case in a world joyed by paradox, the more universal a feeling, the more difficult it is to capture just right.

We continue to feel the likes of love and grief in varying magnitudes, and we keep writing songs, novels, and letters—attempts to accurately document them, or, at the very least, commit the aftertaste to paper. Borrowing from Emma's Mr. Knightley, if we experienced these feelings less, we might be able to talk about them more.

Broadway composer Drew Gasparini navigated this struggle by zooming in even more closely. The result is We Aren't Kids Anymore, a 19-track song cycle about the contradictions of adulthood: loving your family then having to leave them behind, or pursuing your own path through gritted teeth then doubting if it's even the right thing to do.

Featuring a poem by Keith White with orchestrations and vocal arrangements by Gasparini and Justin Goldner, the show is currently running at Power Mac Center Spotlight Blackbox Theater in Circuit Makati until May 25 as Barefoot Theatre Collaborative's first offering of the year. It is directed by Rem Zamora and stars Gab Pangilinan, Maronne Cruz, Gio Gahol, Luigi Quesada, and Myke Salomon, who all play Gasparini.

"No matter how old you are, this (show) will hit you if you're trying to find your purpose or if you're going through the changes necessary to achieve it, including all the joy and grief," Cruz tells Young STAR. "His songs have a way of bringing out incredibly specific personal memories."

Gasparini based the songs on his own life, but the opening track Hello, My Name is Drew establishes that while this is about Drew, we are all Drew. "The songs found me at the perfect time, and I found myself in the material. We continue to find ourselves in (it) every rehearsal process," Quesada shares.