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Thoughts on Red Turnip Theater’s production of The Nether by Jennifer Haley. (Originally published on GIST)

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Say I have a perverted fantasy: dismember a child after intercourse. I rewind the scene each night in my head. Can you call me a criminal?

Say, elsewhere, another person has mutilation fantasies, and we discover a place where the imagined briefly comes to life. There we meet to satisfy, consentingly, our darkest desires. Are we committing a crime?

That imagination and reality share the same space in the mind is the most appealing theme in Jennifer Haley’s sci-fi drama, The Nether. Simply, The Nether is virtual realm. Somewhere in it, businessman Sims (Bernardo Bernardo) has built the Hideaway, a pedophile-slash-ax-murderer’s playground, which superior coding enables a life-like experience (think Black Mirror’s San Junipero).

Detective Morris (Jenny Jamora) is out to get Sims, believing that his Hideaway is dangerous and immoral. For her, when people spend entire days in that …

I just admire Matthew Koma. I will always wish him well. The first time I interviewed him (for his first show at Chaos Manila), I was surprised by his wisdom and candor. He says the most practical and at the same time profound things. He's witty and chill. My kind of guy.

Last week, March 11 to be exact, he came back for another show, and I did everything I could (which wasn't much, since the people at Chaos were super cool) to score another one-on-one with him for GIST. Matthew was in a better mood. He remembered me!

Told him it was my birthday the day before and that his show was my birthday gift to myself. After the interview, I asked for an updated selfie and told him, 'I want us to look like we're friends,' to which he quickly replied, 'We ARE friends'.

But the best thing that happened that night was he gave me a hug — an actual hug, you know, with pressure.


@matthewkoma accepted my real-life friend request. Happy birthday, indeed, to me. #MatthewKoma #…

(Had the pleasure of sitting down with theater actor, Jef Flores. We talked about his career as well his latest play, In the next room or the vibrator play. The interview originally appeared on GIST.)

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Don't call Jef Flores an award-winning actor“You have permission to slap me in the face if I turned into a douchebag,” actor Jef Flores asks us to mark his words, so here it is on record.

He has every reason to fear it: since making his debut in professional theater five years ago — without any training, save for doing improv and being a musician back in the States where he grew up — Jef has been cast in some of the most successful productions by a diverse set of theater outfits, and in 2015 snagged a Philstage Gawad Buhay Award for best male lead performance in a play.

His latest gig: artist Leo Irving in Repertory Philippines’ In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play. The title may well be a marketing ploy, as Sarah Ruhl’s tale, though billed as a comedy, reads like a domestic drama.…

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Every now and then, you will come across a musical that demands attention even as you feel like looking away — one that skims across the repulsive nature of (earning a) living and the twisted wonders of falling in love. Care Divas is such a musical.

The premise is there in the title (mind the font). This is a story of friends who are caregivers by day, drag queens by night. Prepare for unapologetic flamboyance and vulgarity. Expect that the intensity of laughter is commensurate with the pain.

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Wiping a geriatric’s ass — a stranger’s at that — to make ends meet and send care in the form of money to people whom you’d rather be with is insane. Imagine being in a room that reeks of urine and other smells that, while not completely alien, aren’t altogether pleasant. This is not to bring down the elderly, but the point is it takes either desperation or genuine altruism to be at their service.

Care Divas outlines this kind of life (at least in the beginning). Each caregiver is shown dea…

The Nether, written by Jennifer Haley, is a kind of play that is a pleasure to read and begs to be reread. It compels you to turn the page on certain occasions, while on other put it down and pace around the room to ruminate.

“We want someone to run with us to the dark side.” That is, satisfy a fundamental desire to have someone truly understand and accept us — flaws and perversions notwithstanding. The play revolves around this truism while touching on themes like playing God, imagination and reality as a shared space in the mind, and online privacy ethics.

A detective is set to track felonious affairs (one of which involves men and children) that might be happening somewhere in The Nether, a place which can be described as both a paradise and the darkest corner of the Internet. It may not sound ground-breaking — sex crimes and cyberspace, what’s new? — but Haley’s plot and philosophizing, how far she dares explore these aberrations without compromising artistic integrity, make it a…