Well, it took six years but I finally got to watch PETA’s Care Divas. It’s also taken six years before I figured out that ‘Care’ wasn’t pronounced as ‘Ca-Re’ (like kare-kare), but as ‘care’ the word. Silly me.
Luckily PETA chose to re-run Care Divas for their 50th year (and 43rd season). I remember seeing their poster on Ticketworld way back when but the theater was just gosh darn too far from a Southerner like myself and me being on a night shift job then made it almost impossible to spend a whole Saturday in Manila. Also back in those days, Waze was not yet a thing so there literally was no way I could have driven all the way to New Manila.
Luckily, times have changed. When A asked if C and I would be interested in catching a show one Saturday, it was an immediate ‘yes’ from me. By this time I’ve already considered myself infatuated with Jerald Napoles – who’s now shot to relative stardom after his stint in Rak of Aegis – and I remember reading that he was part of Care Divas’ original cast. It had been only a matter of contacting PETA via their Facebook page to buy tickets and we were good to go.
Written by Liza Matoto and directed by Maribel Legarda, Care Divas is about five gay OFWs working as caregivers in Israel. We have the unofficial leader in Shai (Ron Alfonso), the token ditz in Thalia (Dudz Teraña), the cynical beyotch who minces no words in Jonee (Buddy Caramat), Kayla (Ricci Chan) who’s having a hard time adapting to the OFW life and the eternal optimist in Chelsea (Red Concepcion). Together they weave through the difficulties of working in a foreign country with a culture vastly different from ours while also dealing with the pressures of being the sole breadwinners of their families back in the Philippines. Luckily they have each other to lean on for support; together they’ve created a drag act where they can let it all hang and be the divas they truly are.
PETA plays are always interesting to watch. The stories are always so original but so distinctly Filipino in its core. Plus, they’re always funny – a feat difficult to pull off since they usually tackle the more depressing issues in our society. In Care Divas they address the plights of OFWs (how sometimes it can seem like they’re just piggybanks to their relatives and how some employers take advantage of desperate workers), the plights of the modern gay man (how they are still considered as ‘different’ by society) and also a little bit of the political conflict in their setting, Israel. Those are pretty heavy topics but luckily, the “gay” humor shines through in both the script and in Vincent De Jesus’ music and lyrics.
The songs were pretty catchy and I could not, not stop listening to one song in particular days after watching the play:
Don’t ask me why, but this was the song that jumped out at me.
Anyway, Care Divas was a fun watch and was definitely worth the three and a half hours of EDSA traffic I sat through going to and from New Manila. They’re running until March 19th 2017 and they’re still selling tickets on their Ticketworld.ph page.
