Sunday, February 24, 2013

10 Things You Should Know About Audie Gemora


At play with Audie Gemora
The King of Musical Theater: Audie Gemora says, “I think when you’re an artist, the most important thing for you is your craft. That you spend an awful lot of time perfecting your craft and getting good at it, and the popularity or the adulation of people is a result of the work you put out.”

He has staged numerous plays ranging from the sweet and colorful Little Mermaid to the controversial and sensual Equus, and has mentored different generations of talent on both stage and television. He is the president of Trumpets and Stages, an actor, a director, a father, and everybody’s “Tito.” Here are 10 things you should know about Audie Gemora.

1. He was an average student in high school. But one day, he went from being the most unpopular kid in school, to being the “second most popular kid in school.”

“In the late ‘70s, nobody was into the arts. And our teacher at that time, an American lady named Ruth Butler, recruited me to be part of her high school musical. Ako naman, I didn’t have anything to do, I wasn’t really into anything, I didn’t have very many friends,” recalls Audie of his days in the International School. He said he hid out in the library most of the time, not because he liked books, but because he didn’t want people to see he had no friends. Until he was introduced to theater.

“We did a musical called Oklahoma and I played the kontrabida,” he says of his first-ever role at 15. “The response was just tremendous. Parang na-discover ko yung gift ko. Yun, tuluy-tuloy na, I became Drama Club president. Then after high school, I wanted to see if I was still good enough outside of school. There was the Manila Theater Guild, and that’s where I started, I did Grease. And again, ang laki laki ng response. So every step that I took just kept affirming that I had something special.”

2. On ego and the theater world: “There was a point I was just this very mayabang golden boy of Repertory.”

Audie: “Freddie (Santos) and I have had so many fights.”

Bianca: “Sigawan?”

Audie: “Oh yeah. I would submit to him as my mentor, but I would remember, two years older lang siya sa akin so di ako pwede masyado apihin. It was also largely because I was a lazy S.O.B.”

“Being an artist is very self involved,” Audie admits. “Everything revolves around you as a performer. Being an artist has a form of immortality, that you create something, you perform something and it affects people’s lives. They gather around you and idolize you. You get that feeling that it’s all about you. But it’s also the most insecure position to be in.

“I went to the States to study filmmaking in NYU. All of a sudden, this big fish in a small pond became this small fish in a big pond. It was like, who was I? That started my insecurity. Pagbalik ko dito, I knew I wouldn’t be happy just doing the same thing again. I was searching. I was really searching for something.” That was when some friends brought him to church, and that’s when his life changed.

3. Theater company Trumpets was born in 1991 out of a group of theater friends and a reaffirmation of faith.

“Friends led me to a church, and that’s when I became Born Again. Mari Kaimo, Freddie Garcia, sunud-sunod kami,” Audie recalls. “And of course being theater artists, our most immediate response was, how do we express our love for God? Eh di yung talent namin.” Their group actually staged two plays prior to putting up Trumpets — the comedy First Name and the musical Joseph The Dreamer. “I think it revolutionized Christian entertainment because up until that time, it was only kantatas or senakulos. This one was hip, modern, the music was Gary V and Ogie Alcasid, and we put in a lot of hip hop and comedy.” It was around 1997 when Stages, the events and talent management company, was put up.

4. On art and religion: “Art is supposed to reflect life. That’s where my Christianity stops.”

“I guess I’m liberal in that sense,” Audie shares. “Being an artist is the license, the privilege, the anointing of God to be able to express what you see. You are supposed to reflect what you see in the world, and that’s a gift. I don’t think anybody has the right to stop it, ban it, edit it or censor it. If you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. So it really scares me when the Church gets heavy-handed.”

He reveals there was a time that he left Trumpets for three years, because of the struggle between his being an artist and a man of faith. “I went back to Repertory and I found myself again. I had lost myself for a time, I lost the artist in me,” he recalls. “When you are supposedly a Christian theater ministry, there are things that are expected of you by the Church. But that’s precisely why I believe God got us to do this as artists. So we would be out of the box, because how can we reach out to people who would never be caught in a church to begin with, if we can’t be real? If we can’t speak of their issues and reflect what they’re going through, right?” He recalls a time someone questioned his staging of Little Mermaid because it was about a “demonic character,” and another time someone told him he couldn’t play his dream role, Sweeney Todd, because he was a killer. “I’m already in that frame of mind that I think it’s the Church that needs to expand its mind. Your testimony is how you live your life, it’s not the role you play.

“Yes, God is very important to me, but not in a way that people could dictate. I would have to find Him in finding myself first. In being honest to who I am, by being a good father maybe, learning to love properly. That’s when I found who I was as a Christian again,” he adds. Audie was once quoted telling the Church to “relax” during the issue of the controversial art exhibit in the CCP, and was also a vocal supporter of the RH bill. “Maybe that’s the reason bakit palaban ako sa ganyan, kasi pinagdaanan ko yung struggle na yan.”

5. Audie Gemora in numbers:100-plus: Number of plays watched

50: Theater productions done

4: Awards won for performing and directing (including Aliw Awards Best Stage Director for Noli in 2011)

2: Number of dogs owned. “They’re aspins (asong Pinoy), Skipper, who’s really furry, and Yuki, who looks like a Japanese Spitz. They say when they’re rescued that they love the amo more.”

100: Number of opening night gifts in his collection. “Like for Footloose, I got a cowboy boot. For Les Mis, I got a troll dressed as Javert.”

120: Approximate number of hours it takes to prepare for a play. “Around one month, four hours a day, and then eight hours a day during production week.”

6. He has a modern-day family. “My son has a mother and two sisters.”

“I saw this kid walking around the lobby of Meralco Theater. I said, who is this? Whose kid are you?” Audie recalls the time he met Richard. “He was like the Trumpets baby because his tita worked in Trumpets. He was being brought there a lot and I just fell in love with him. It was at that point in my life when I had achieved everything… And I always had this fatherly instinct in me. When the boy was there, we just gravitated towards each other and it became an instant bond. It’s amazing.”

Since Richard was two, it was Audie who would go to their house to be a surrogate dad to him. Until 2009 when Richard was nine years old. “I said, ‘Son, it’s time to live together.’ So I went back to the house and took the whole family.” He says that Richard is starting to show interest in theater, but as of the moment he’s much more into sports. “You’d think at 13, mag-uumpisa na yung problema. He would tell me about classmates and what they were getting into, and he’s not into it. I’m just so blessed. Ang bait bait na bata.”

7. He is called the King of Philippine Musical Theater, and was once actually in a five-year relationship with the Queen of Philippine Musical Theater, Menchu Lauchengo-Yulo.

“That started in Repertory, and we weren’t even acting together. She’s very pretty, and we were barkada,” Audie recalls. On how they were able to remain friends after: “I love Menchu! I think we just both recognized that we were not for each other. But we remain very close.”

“Nangyayari kasi sa theater, nagsasama kayo madalas, so you will get drawn to someone. In Trumpets, we have so many theater couples, and a lot are married now.”

8. He once headed the Talent Center division of TV5, but despite being a mentor himself, realized it was not for him. “I realized hindi ako showbiz, I’m a theater person.”

“I had to follow the artist around, talk about their love life, think kanino pwede ipares, pano magkakaroon ng intriga,” he explains. “Sometimes you get lost and you think, ‘Wait, where does talent come in here?’ At one point it wasn’t even about the project anymore.”

On the difference between an artist and an artista: “I don’t mean to demean artistas, and I hope I can make the distinction well so nobody gets offended. I think when you’re an artist, the most important thing for you is your craft. That you spend an awful lot of time perfecting your craft and getting good at it, and the popularity or the adulation of people is a result of the work you put out. In showbiz, it’s the complete opposite. You are now dealing with a different market, and so it is personality-driven, looks-driven and youth-driven.

“You can look at any talent center of the three networks. There’s a big bench of talent there, and a lot of the talented ones aren’t being used. For an artist like me, that’s hard to take,” he shares.

“Pero dito naman ako bilib with artistas. Tatanggapin mo yung script ngayong araw, tapos magsho-shoot na. Because you don’t have the process of creating your character, you just need to now have a library of emotions that you just have to pull out.”

9. He is now taking his craft to the next level. Audie is putting up the Talent School of Academics and The Arts.

“Playshop was a summer workshop we developed in 1993. We wanted to make it different, so we were the very first to offer Musical Theater, Hip-hop and Modeling,” Audie recalls. “As many as 2,000 students would enroll and parents would tell us why not have it all year? We then put up Musicademy that was year round, but nobody enrolled. I always had it at the back of my mind that it was an unfinished formula.”

Fast forward to 2013, and as fate would have it, this June, their school is opening. “It’s progressive. We will have dance, literature, theater, visual arts and music. Then that’s parallel to the academic, which is science, language, math, and other subjects. Those are the two pillars, and in the middle we have our Art Integration Program. We will use the arts to teach the subjects. For example, if you’re teaching the solar system to kids, you put them in a dance and they form the solar system. Its experiential, they realize the movement, rather than just memory work. Or for example history, instead of struggling through voluminous books of Noli and Fili, experience life at that time with theater. So you come to appreciate the characters of Rizal as real people. The possibilities are endless.”

He strongly believes that if it weren’t for that happy accident of getting recruited for theater in high school, he probably would’ve become a bored haciendero. “I don’t want that to happen to other kids. I want all children that will go to our school to have the opportunity to develop all their talents.”

10. More than the awards or the titles given to him, the biggest compliment he has received is: “Uy, yung anak ko nag-Playshop.”

“I hear stories of parents saying their children gained confidence or came out of their shell after taking our classes, and that just gives me so much fulfillment,” Audie says with a big smile.

On making a name in Philippine theater: “It’s definitely flattering, it’s an affirmation of my body of work. It’s also nakaka-pressure because you have to live up to it. More than the awards actually, yung respeto ng tao is something I really, really value.”

* * *

As I transcribed and wrote this piece on Audie, I looked over the course of his life and career and sincerely learned two things. First, that it is okay to do things that are out of the box, to define things differently from the way convention defines it. And second, that it is okay to lose your way. Because with the right mindset, you will eventually find yourself on the path where you were meant to be.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

10 Things You Should Know About Anne Curtis


Anne Curtis: From party girl to best actress
Twitter girl: The year began with a bang for Anne, as she hit the four-million follower mark on Twitter, solidifying her status as the most followed Filipino on the site. But with more clout also comes more critics. “I’ve learned the art of deadma (not minding bashers) perfectly na.”

It is highly unlikely that a day goes by that you do not see Anne Curtis either on television or along major highway billboards, in the mall, on magazine covers, at the supermarket, when you go online, or even hear her voice on the radio. As the “Princess of All Media” turns 28 this month, her star’s light is blinding, and is shining even brighter as each year passes. What makes this woman everyone’s favorite sweetheart? Here are 10 things you should know about Anne Curtis Smith.

1. She doesn’t deny being a party girl when she was younger, and points out she was never obsessed over her looks.

“Sobrang fun! Uuwi kami may araw na. Nights of going home at 7 a.m., because we’d eat out after going out, then even do badminton the next day,” Anne recalls of her gimmick days. “I was so happy that I did it when I was young. I was around 18, 19, 20, till 21. Those were the days na it was fun, it wasn’t as hectic as it is now.” She says there was no one instance that turned her from partyphile to responsible adult, it was only age. “I guess it comes to that point na you all start growing up, everyone starts having boyfriends, starts settling down, it just came naturally. You reach that point when you just don’t want to go out anymore. You would just rather hang out to catch up.

“I was chubby! I was so chubby in the cheeks and I was so white,” Anne bashfully adds about how she looked a decade ago. “I guess I wasn’t so conscious back then. I don’t recall wanting to be thin, but I knew I had to lose weight. I learned about the South Beach diet and it worked. Now, it’s such a trend to be fit or thin.”

2. Four lessons in love that Anne learned from past relationships:

“No more naming names,” Anne begged off with a smile. “I don’t want that I’m in a relationship but I’m still talking about my exes.” (Anne is currently in a relationship with businessman and food blogger Erwan Heussaff.) She shares that she’s been lucky to have “good” breakups in all her past relationships, and that though communication was cut for a few months, she ended up being friends with all of them.
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1. “I don’t like to say they were mistakes or regrets; because if you ever really did love someone, you may not be in ‘love’ with them, but you still have that love because it was something that was genuine at the time.”

2. “I’ve learned how to balance my career and personal life — which is hard! If you make an effort to make them feel that they’re important and that you have time for them, it can work. But it doesn’t happen overnight.”

3. “To just be more sensitive. As girls we sometimes have that brattiness, that ‘I’m gonna get my way, I don’t care what you say.’”

4. “I used to have this behavior of ‘getting even.’ Now no more. When you get even, the only person you end up hurting is yourself. It’s better to just say, ‘Okay, moving on.’”

3. She has 10 brothers and sisters and never had any angst about her family setup. “We were very, very lucky that we all grew up together.”

“I don’t say ‘This is my half-brother or half-sister.’ This is my sister this is my brother. It’s really about not having that barrier of saying this is my half, regardless of the color of your hair or skin is, you all have the same blood somehow,” Anne explains. “I’m the panganay of the second batch,” she says. “Then now Dad has a new family with Charlie, and Clare Bear who passed away.” Both her father James and mom Carmen had a family prior to their getting together, and both sides got along well even before she was born. “No one ever had that feeling of, ‘Why does he love this family more?’ Because we were all together.

“When we’re out in Australia, it’s so funny, we’ll meet random people when we’re out drinking beers and we’ll ask, ‘Guess what our relation is?’ And they’ll stay there looking at us, ‘Umm, cousins? Sisters? Whaaat?’” Anne says with a laugh.

4. Looking back, if she could have done things differently, would she have not quit school rather than entering show business? “I think so, yes.”

“I wish that I had done high school the normal four years, but you know, at the end of the day I have no regrets. It got me to where I am today,” Anne says. “I think now, it’s more doable to do both (school and showbiz), that’s why with Jasmine (Anne’s younger sister who recently entered showbiz), we’re very strict.”

She admits it was quite a struggle when she decided to leave school to focus on her career. “I was probably around 15, I was two or three years into showbiz. At that point, you can’t turn down work. Either I do it or I miss my break. At the school I was in, they don’t accept artistas, so they were the ones who suggested I go to DECS for home study. My whole high school stage took me maybe six years to finish. It was just so hard.” For her junior and senior year, she was able to get a special class schedule at Angelicum. “I got to do cheerdancing na, at least I got to go to junior prom, I had that sense of being in school rather than being at home just doing my modules.”

On college: “I really want to go!” Anne reveals she signed up for open university in Australia late last year, and got accepted. “Basically, you’re online for a class and everyone can talk to each other. But I don’t know, I would just get awkward, because you have forums so everyone can talk to you. I’m like, ‘Ack! I don’t want to talk, I’m shy!” Anne shrieks. Anne, shy? “I just put it off for a little while, maybe I’d do better if I’m actually with people.” She is leaning towards the field of Early Education. “I love kids!”

5. The seven life-changing decisions Anne made:

1. Saying yes to guesting on TGIS. “It was a Christmas Special in Star City to promote Magic Kingdom, the film I did that time. The director Dominic Zapata asked me, “Do you want to be part of TGIS? I said yes,” Anne says with a big smile. “Then I became part of the cast.”

2. Moving from GMA to ABS-CBN in 2004. “I was in Nuts Entertainment with Carmina and Gelli, and I was talking to them about it — I should transfer, how I love Nuts Entertainment and that “it’s so much fun. They asked, ‘Gusto mo bang umarte?’ ‘Here kasi I always get the balikbayan roles, mga comedy, and I want to act.’ They said, ‘Then gawin mo.’ And I did. And that was majorly life changing.”

3. Auditioning for Kampanerang Kuba. “I knew at that time that direk Wenn (Deramas) was eyeing a different actress. So I went into the audition knowing that there was already someone for the role. But I was so happy that I got the role. Having the guts to say, you know what, go, why not.”

4. Deciding to own up to her actions. “It was when I fell over in Boracay. There was no such thing as social media back then so it was by word of mouth, chismis, ganyan, that I was too drunk and I fell. So when they interviewed me about it, I was 18 at that time, I said, ‘Yes, nakainom po ako.’ And if you’re known to do teenybopper roles, it’s more like, ‘Ano ba yan napaka liberated naman.’ It’s about just being very honest all the time, even if it was negative I always owned up to it. I think that that is one of the major reasons why people trust my word, because I don’t lie.”

5. Choosing to play the other woman in No Other Woman. “Instead of playing the wife, which Viva wanted me to do.” (Anne won a FAMAS Best Actress award for No Other Woman.)

6. Doing Showtime. “It definitely helped change my career all together. People got to see who I was as a person. When I act, I get roles that are either fashionista or mayaman or kontrabida. But they saw how kalog I am in real life which is really, really who I am.”

7. Signing up on Twitter. “A friend just convinced us to join and we were following all these Hollywood celebrities. It’s been a big way that I’ve been able to connect to people, to make it more personal and reachable.”

6. On how she chooses her battles: “I choose not to have a battle.”

The year 2013 began with a bang for Anne, as she hit the four-million follower mark on Twitter, solidifying her status as the most followed Filipino on the site, with a number much higher than that of international celebrities. But with more clout also comes more critics. “I’ve learned the art of deadma (not minding bashers) perfectly na. Because of all the chismis that have come my way, I’ve learned to just say okay and brush them off,” Anne shares. “But the one thing that always gets to me is if anything is said about my sister, or my mother, or my family. I can’t explain it! Grrr! I cross the line if someone crosses the line.”

7. On what fearless Anne is actually afraid to do: “I admire people who have the guts to just pack up and leave and never look back. That’s one of the things I’ll never have the guts to do.”

“After auditioning for a role in an indie film in the States (she played the role of Crystal in Blood Ransom), it crossed my mind. Should I go? Should I try it out?” Anne shares. “But why give up something when you don’t have a concrete plan? It’s all about taking risks and chances, but I’m not yet ready to pack up and leave. I came from Australia and I made a life here. To just leave and build a whole new life, it takes a lot of courage.

“I know that I’ll follow that dream one day, but there’s no rush,” she adds.

8. Anne’s personal and professional bucketlist:

1. Start a business. “I haven’t gotten anywhere near it and it’s hard. Because I haven’t started college, I don’t know a thing about marketing or business management. But there are people who have studied that, and it’s all about finding someone I can team up with for that. So definitely, maybe this year.”

2. To go skydiving. “My gosh, it’s so scary! I’ve gone bungee jumping already. But this, if your parachute doesn’t open...”

3. More concerts. “So many concerts to watch and festivals to go to!” What’s on top of the list? “U2!”

4. More challenging roles. “I definitely want to do something action, like Angelina Jolie. But it’s hard because sometimes there’s no audience for that. Or maybe a romantic comedy with action like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Or a dark role, like Girl Interrupted.”

5. An Australian tour. “Erwan and I really make an effort to go somewhere we’ve never been when we travel. I’m from Australia, but I’ve never actually done a full-on tour! I never leave Melbourne, New South Wales, Queensland. But it’s so big, there’s still the northern territory, South Australia, Ayers Rock, and all the major monuments.”

6. To own at least one first-edition book. “I recently renovated my apartment and in my new library, I want to have all hardbound books.”

9. Anne Curtis in numbers:

22: Total number of current endorsements, with five more coming out soon.

30: Number of moles on her body. “There are probably some in places I don’t even know!”

100: Estimated number of pairs of shoes in her collection.

85: Percent of earnings saved. “For basic spending, there are certain sweldos that are meant to pay the bill. I have quotas for myself every year, and until I reach my quota, I can’t spend anything. I only spend when I go out of the country.”

15,0000-plus: Estimated crowd at “Annebisyosa No Other Concert” in Araneta Coliseum. She had 12 costume changes and 10 special guests.

10. She admits to wanting to live a quiet life someday. “Like Audrey Hepburn, who bought a house in Switzerland and would just fly to Hollywood to shoot movies. But it doesn’t work like that here.”

“I really, really enjoy what I do, and I won’t stop until I’m too tired talaga to work. That’s why I take one month or two-week vacations, because you need that so you don’t get burnt out,” Anne shares. “But it’s not anytime soon before I stop working or settle down, no, not anytime soon. I want to at least have enough set aside to live by the means I want to. I don’t want to be some has-been that has nothing left of what she worked hard for.”

On the massive success she has achieved, she says: “I’m really enjoying it while I can. It was a really, really long climb to get where I am now. It didn’t come easily for me. I’ve been in the industry, going on 16 years, so right now I’m just enjoying it. Because at any time, you know, the seasons will change. As my dad always says, ‘There’s always someone younger than you, young lady, so if I were you enjoy it while you can.’”

* * *

Anne is known for always telling her fans to “dream big” and “go for their dreams.” What if a young girl tells her, “It’s easy for you to say go for your dreams, look in the mirror, not everyone is that beautiful.” Anne replies: “That’s why I add that you have to have patience and faith in yourself. It’s not like my dreams started to happen overnight. I’ve been in the industry since I was 12 and it’s just in the past three years when everything started to fall into place. You really have to have patience. I don’t want them thinking na parang you can just dream and think that it will happen. You have to want it and pursue it. That’s why I say I’m a pursuer of dreams.”