The Labfest Turns 15

From 20 Jun to 7 Jul, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) with its partners, the Writer’s Bloc and Tanghalang Pilipino once again host the Virgin Labfest, an annual festival of untried, untested and unstaged one-act plays.

This annual playwright’s festival is designed to discover new works by playwrights from all over the country, using any of the nation’s languages in dialects. For the past 14 years, 12 new works have been produced and given full stagings and three to six works have been read in front of an audience. Writing Fellows are mentored throughout the duration of the festival.

This year, in celebration of its 15th year, new components will be added to the already full slate. Staged Readings of the first works of award winning playwrights includes CCP’s Chris Millado, Rody Vera, Liza Magtoto and Nick Pichay of the Writer’s Bloc, well known film maker Jun Lana and Dulaang UP’s Floy Quintos.

A Playwright’s Fair shall be held at the Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino (Little Theater) Lobby to allow the audience to meet and interact with the writers of the festival and finally, a grand reunion of writers, actors and directors will be held.

Photo credit: Cultural Center of the Philippines

From its inception, the Virgin Labfest has produced some of the most outstanding and iconic one-act plays of the period. For the past five years, the top three winners of the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature have been products of the Virgin Labfest. Some of the works have been translated into film and have become entries to Cinemalaya, the annual independent film festival. 

The cast of the Labfest is a virtual who’s who of Philippine Theatre and includes many film and television actors as well.

Click here to visit Cultural Center of the Philippines’ website.