Titus Andronicus

In a land where politics and carnage exist as a way of life, where fear and blood begets allegiance, and where the muffled cries of injustice are buried in a hapless pit, is there a chance for honor and integrity to prevail? – Dulaang UP on Titus Andronicus

Direction

Tuxqs Rutaquio

Adaptation and Translation

Layeta Bucoy

Cast

Shamaine Buencamino

Mailes Kanapi

Bembol Roco

Paolo O’Hara

Paulo Cabañero

Cris Pasturan

Mike Tan

Olive Nieto

Photos by Jojit Lorenzo courtesy of Dulaang UP.

Reviews

The absurd as real in Titus Andronicus

Katrina Stuart Santiago | GMA News Online

The material is as heavy and harrowing as it sounds, with the original’s tragedies made heavier by the truths of current times. In this adaptation there’s a clear sense of political dynasties and the versions of violence it upholds, and the audience is held captive by a social realism taken to such preposterous extremes. Here is also where Tinarantadong Asintado’s genius lies: it creates a world where the real and absurd are intricately intertwined, where each character is both oppressor and oppressed, the powerful and the victim, and anarchy is a space that allows for everyone to hold a gun and render humans as animals, lives as mere bodies.

Bembol Roco is Filipino ‘Titus Andronicus’

Walter Ang | Philippine Daily Inquirer

Titus is now a hitman named Carding, and the play is set “two weeks before the elections, where political chaos and religious frenzy intertwine in a world where politics, show biz and a town feast drown the people in murky violence.”

“The play is very violent and full of anger and revenge, which are all very familiar to Filipinos,” Roco says. “It’s good that it’s been adapted to a Filipino setting because it will be easier for Filipinos to relate and understand what the play wants to say.

Titus Andronicus: Ang Tinarantadong Asintado

The Regular Grind

The juxtaposition of this cannibalistic ritual with the crass and badly edited video of Asintado’s son campaigning for the election and eventually, winning, posed a good contrast between image/simulacra, what we see, and what is really happening. Strangely enough, as Baudillard has predicted, in a world dominated by mass media, simulacra tend to overpower certain realities, so that people buy the images presented upon them, while constantly denying every thing that could taint that image, even if it is right under their noses. We are a country in denial.