My experience as I watched "Ming-Ming"

#5.

        It was a rainy Tuesday evening (July 24, 2012) when I with my block mates ate our dinner at Chowking. Our class on that day was finished at exactly 6:00PM so we hurriedly took our dinner to watched the "Ming-Ming", a kind of play to be perform by the Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) of Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) because it will start at 7:30PM. We rushed in entering the campus because it's almost late and the play has about to start. We've went our ways to the MSU-IIT mini-theater, located near the administration buliding, because that was the venue where the "Ming-Ming" will be perform.

        As we arrived there, the ushers told us that we should hurry up because we are about to missed the play. We presented our tickets and directly went inside the dark and solemn venue of the play. As we entered the theater I felt an extraordinary amusement as I experienced the ambiance of the place. The characters of the play were already there, and seemed to look like statues, no movement and were prepared already. We've sat and waited for that play to start and I was so excited because that was my first time to watched a live drama.

        Then the play begun in a few minutes. I was shocked on what I've saw. It was a different kind of play composed of six characters namely R, I, P, the two "tonongs" and the main character Ming-Ming itself. It was new to me because honestly at first I didn't understand what was going on with the play and it was so confusing. The dialog of the casts were so difficult to analyzed. There were no interaction between them. There eyes has its own direction that you cannot determined whom they are talking with. Absolutely there are some connections with that dialog but for me difficult to know what it was.

         When the play was going on, I slowly understand what was the story all about but not that fully. It was about one family, a Moro family. The story was about three different generations but was played simultaneously in one stage. The first generation was the time of R, the grandmother of Ming-Ming. It was all about the broken hearted P, who was Ming-Ming's uncle who admired R but did not win her hands because R was destined to marry P's uncle. The second generation was about the life of I, who was the mother of the main character whose story was about her forced marriage to a Sultan. Because she didn't like  that sultan, she escaped and went away to Manila to have her studies and there met her professor whom she fell in love. And that was the father of Ming-Ming. Because of that Ming-Ming was considered as a taboo child.

         The third generation was Ming-Ming's generation. In that generation, the life of the main character was described when she was already at the adolescent age. There stated how difficult and horrible life she had. She was imprisoned in a room because first, she was a taboo child and second she was very hard-headed when he was sent to Manila to have her studies, and it seemed like he inherited her mother's attitude. Ming-Ming died by killing herself. She mixed Valium with wine and drank it maybe because of the hardships she experienced inside that room.

        After watching that play, all I can say is it was so terrific and a one of a kind. My one hundred pesos was so worth it. Though it was my first time to witnessed that kind of play, I can say that among the hundred plays worldwide, it might be the one of the most interesting and the best play.