FEU Theater Guild’s 90th Theater Season spectacular, Teresa Lorean Jopson’s ANG PINAKAMAKISIG SA MGA NALUNOD SA BUONG DAIGDIG, a witty adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” is a special collab production among FTG’s present crop of talents and its seasoned alumni.
The collaboration has produced a masterpiece of campus theater that is unique as an immersive theatrical experience, a surreal psychosocial treatise, and a bawdy tragicomic confrontation of the sexes.
1. Get Wet Stranded on a Poolside Spectacle
This isn’t just a typical stage play—Ang Pinakamakisig na Nalunod na Lalaki is performed on water, giving audiences an immersive, multisensory experience with Pipi, the mute narrator played by petite beauty, Raven Relavo Singh. Raincoats are provided as the ensemble fling, scatter, splash, stomp, and trample water in abandon while they sing, bringing the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s story surreally to life, keeping audiences on the edge of their seats, vigilant for accidental showers and missed revelations.
Directed by Dudz Teraña with staged designed by Marc Nicolai Ducut, the FTG blurs the boundary between stage and audience by making audiences feel they are themselves islanders, wet and wild, tired and traumatized, intrigued by the women’s gossiping and fantasizing as much as by the maddening power of the world’s most beautiful dead man.
How would the men react to womenfolk suddenly changed by a strange death? Set foot on Isla Esteban and witness the answers unfold.
2. Get Crazy with a Crazy All-Male Cast in Grunge Couture
In an interesting but funny twist, we witness an all-male cast playing every Saturday the island’s strong-willed women—led by alumnus Jesus Singh III playing Lola rallying the town’s three strongest women figures: Haliparot (alumnus Jasper Estaras of IAS ’18 as the Vixen), Hipokrita (Jonas Cunanan of IAS ’25 as the Fanatic), and Buntis (alumnus Kobe Hachero of IAS ’19 playing the Expectant Widow)—who, in authentic small-town fashion, infuses the tragic scenes with Pinoy humor with their bawdy, gossiping, and catty ways.
Standing out is Singh not only as the isle’s oldest denizen possessed with wisdom and of youthful desires but also the play’s musical director, keeping the musical afloat with original music by Jeff Hernandez to dramatize, pace, and empower the dialogues with songs.
These dramatic musical elements alongside neo-ethnic choreography and the awesome grunge earth-palette couture by Margarita Barrameda and Dianne Andallo help the scenes merge and meld with the water and the set to turn this backward island tragedy into a complete entertainment package.
How would the Pipi literally ride the waves as she belts a plaintive song about the biggest man they’ve seen? Find out on Isla Esteban!
3. Get Wild with Punchlines from Pop Culture
Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World was given a Filipino soul in Teresa Lorena Jopson’s adaptation peppered with Filipino humor and drama, wit and absurdity, and references to pop culture and current events, making this world classic by a Nobel Prize laureate funny while tragic, engaging while philosophical, and hopeful while painful.
Watch the play and see how the arrival of a drowned giant preserved by the sea in all its beauty shakes this small, sleepy island, which might as well be one of the Philippines’ more than 7,000 islands, and stirs the women’s deepest and basest emotions and secrets in a way that is comical but darkly so, heartfelt but alienatingly obsessive.
How did the men’s reaction to seeing nearly crazed women worship a cadaver change when they themselves gazed upon the dead man’s face? Dive into this tragicomic spectacle and drown in a thick soup of Filipino mysticism and present-day realism, only to swim up refreshed!
Playdates and Tickets
Co-presented by the FEU Center for the Arts and the Alumni Relations Office, Ang Pinakamakisig sa mga Nalunod sa Buong Daigdig runs at 6 PM on these dates:
- October: 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 30
- November: 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23
Tickets are available for 200 PHP (FEU community), 400 PHP (guests), and 600 PHP (VIPs). Secure yours now for a night of unforgettable theater!
