The Story That Led to DALAN

For years, I have simply been a theatre enthusiast.

My earliest experience was far from professional theatre. I participated as a supporting actor in local street passion plays, fascinated by how ordinary spaces, people, music, and words could come together and become stories that stayed with you.

Stories could make us remember the past. They could make us live it again in the present.

My mother was a singer, and growing up, she tried to hone that same love for music in me. Somewhere along the way came Wicked, and the songs everyone seemed to sing at auditions. Then there was Disney, which opened an entirely different door.

That was when I began to understand something I still believe today: Stories are better with music.

Music makes us feel a story differently. It helps us remember. Long after the stage is empty and the actors have gone home, someone can still hum a melody and suddenly find themselves inside that story again.

In a way, music immortalizes stories. It allows them to be carried from one generation to another.

Then came 2023.

I discovered Higit sa Pag-ibig, The Musical, a regional production by Sining Banwa and The Dawani Project.

I cried from the moment the curtain opened until it closed.

Not only because the scenes were beautiful.

It was the pride.

Bikolano pride.

There was something powerful about seeing our own stories, our language, our people, and our talent occupying the stage with that much confidence. For the entirety of the show, I felt proud of what could be created here.

And somehow, that production opened more than a door for me.

It opened the windows, too.

Because as I became more involved, I also began seeing what happened behind the curtain.

The talent was there.

The community was there.

The stories were there.

But I began realizing that talent alone was not enough.

The Regional Theatre needed support.

It needed awareness.

It needed audiences.

It needed people willing to invest in it, work for it, talk about it, and keep coming back.

And most importantly, the people creating theatre needed a way to keep creating theatre.

In 2025, Direk Sari Saysay, one of the founding directors of Taragbo Collective, invited me to one of their collaborative sessions with local theatre communities.

That conversation opened my eyes to something even deeper.

Many of our artists and theatre workers have extraordinary talent, but very few have the opportunity to develop that talent locally while also earning enough from it to build a life.

That stayed with me.

Because if there are no opportunities, talent eventually runs out of oxygen.

Not because everything should revolve around money.

But because livelihood matters.

Artists are people.

They have families. They have responsibilities. They need food on the table, a roof over their heads, and the ability to build a future.

Passion may be what makes someone choose the theatre.

But passion alone cannot pay for the life that allows them to keep choosing it.

Looking back, all the little “side quests” that brought me into the local theatre scene suddenly began making sense.

I started talking with actors, directors, musicians, production workers, organizers, and fellow theatre enthusiasts. Everyone had a different story, but somewhere in those stories was the same struggle:

There was immense talent here.

What was missing was a clearer path.

And that is where the story of DALAN began.

Starting a theatre collaborative was never part of my plan. As a theatre enthusiast, putting my eggs into a basket I barely understood would probably have been the last thing I imagined myself doing.

But sometimes you encounter something worth building before you feel completely ready to build it.

With Anka Zapanta, our dear friend from Sining Banwa, and Cha Ibo, who became one of my strongest sources of support during Higit sa Pag-ibig, The Musical, we established DALAN.

Not because Bikol needs another theatre company.

But because the people already making theatre here deserve stronger paths around their work.

Paths toward audiences.

Paths toward partnerships.

Paths toward resources.

Paths toward sustainable work.

Paths toward the next production.

We cannot promise to solve everything.

But we can help build the systems that allow more stories to be told, and give the people behind those stories more reasons to stay, grow, create, and make a living here.

That is why DALAN exists.

And perhaps, in the years ahead, someone discovering Bikol theatre for the first time will walk through one of the doors we helped keep open.