MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Writer’s Bloc, and Tanghalang Pilipino host this year’s Virgin Labfest on the digital platform anew. Now on its 16th year, the festival will be streamed from November 24 to December 5, 2021 on the CCP, VLF, and Tanghalang Pilipino Facebook Pages.
Choosing to focus on education, festival components are FFF – Fair, Fellowship, and Flashback.
The Fellowship Writing Program will be conducted from November 16 to December 5 under the tutelage of award-winning playwright Glenn Sevilla Mas. The Culminating Activity which will be streamed for public viewing on December 5 will be directed by Dennis Marasigan.
The Playwrights Fair will be held from November 24 to December 5 featuring conversations with playwrights from all over the country. As part of the Fair, the 4th Edition of the VLF Anthology and Elemental, a book of plays by women playwrights will be launched.
For 2021, the festival takes on the theme of “Yakap” (embrace) as its catchphrase. This year, the festival strives to embrace the artistic community as it strives to survive the terrible pandemic; embrace new possibilities and new narratives emboldened by the times, and embrace the audience with works that have provided comfort and enjoyment in the past.
Established in 2005, the Virgin Labfest is the premier playwrights festival in the country producing untried, untested, and unstaged works. It is known for programming and providing support for the development of plays that dare define and defy the times.
In 2020 at the early stages of the global pandemic, the Virgin Labfest spearheaded processes and new possibilities of staging and presenting performances for audiences across the Philippines and the World. It was a dream to bring the works onstage and document the works for audiences to watch online this year. Given the rising number of cases and the precarity of the situation, the organizers chose to prioritize the safety of performance-makers and make use of the time to pause, reflect, look back, and move forward.
For more information, follow VLF on CCP Social Media platforms, or visit www.culturalcenter.gov.ph.
