THE REVOLUTION INSIDE 'PINGKIAN'

The award-winning musical returns, exhibiting heightened form and spirit.

- By LÉ BALTAR

Vic Robinson, who plays the titular character, says Pingkian is "always evolving." Photos by JYLLAN BITALAC and SHERIE BOLO of Tanghalang Pilipino

(JYLLAN BITALAC SHERIE BOLO)

Riding the momentum of its seven-win sweep at the 2025 Gawad Buhay Awards, Tanghalang Pilipino’s original production Pingkian: Isang Musikal made its return to the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez last month, running until Oct. 12. It’s the theater company’s 39th season opener, a new season centered on three figures of the Philippine revolution to call into question our relationship with the making and unmaking of heroes throughout history and how we locate their storied lives in our fractured present.

"We don’t learn," says playwright Juan Ekis. "As a people, we don’t learn from history. It’s disappointing, it’s frustrating. Maybe because it’s boring the way it’s taught in schools. It’s dates, events, and sometimes biased accounts. So I think it’s important to translate them into art."

It’s only apt that in Pingkian, Ekis insists on a kind of reframing. Rather than a conventional biopic method, the musical plays as a delirium, a series of vignettes in which the past and future are one and the same. The intention is for the audience to view Emilio Jacinto, the young revolutionary at the center of the staging, as a real person instead of a saint or heroic ideal.

"I don’t want this to be (his) greatest hits," says Ekis, who co-wrote the historical rock opera Lorenzo in 2013. "Pero dahil manipis din ‘yong biography ni Jacinto, sabi ko, ‘Sige kakapitan ko ‘yong works niya,’ and for me that’s the more interesting part: To explore his mind through his works and to imagine what he was thinking and why he wrote what he wrote."