The hindrances of hiding:
A play review on Herlyn Alegre’s Imbisibol
Myna Herra
We all have something to hide—may it be a long-kept family secret, or a love letter from an old fling. But for four Filipinos living in modern-day Tokyo, it is the fact that they are illegal settlers in a foreign land.
The play opens with a Filipino woman (who became a Japanese citizen after marrying her Japanese husband), Linda, scurrying about inside her home—leafing through letters she received for the tenants she keeps in her building. Later, two of her Filipino friends (who are illegal settlers, changing jobs and locations to avoid being deported by the immigration office) come to visit her and they sit and have a happy lunch together. That is, until one of her tenants—another Filipino named Rodel, comes in and declares that he had just killed a man.
It’s a wonderfully written play—opening with a calm atmosphere, then shifting into a happy one in the middle—then drastically changing into a tense, thrilling one during the climax. It ends the way it started, calm—yet the atmosphere of tension still remains.
Though it is a work of fiction, it is sadly happening everywhere—not just with Filipinos but with other people as well, applying in different jobs just to avoid deportation. It’s more of a slice of life—peppered with the elements of Drama.
Imbisibol (Invisible) was first shown at the 9th Virgin Labfest—a festival of untried and unstaged plays at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on June 26, 2013.
Img source: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/files/2013/06/t0622totel-labfest_feat3_1.jpg
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