ON A QUIET Saturday night — I found myself entering a different kind of space. The air felt still, the audience hushed, and as the lights dimmed, it was as if the outside world dissolved. I was about to experience Anino Sa Likod ng Buwan, the award-winning one-act play written by Jun Robles Lana, first recognized in the 1993 Bulwagang Gantimpala Playwriting Competition. ANINO is an adaptation of the Cinemalaya film of the same title. I’m more than glad to have been able to catch tonight’s show, it’s closing show.

This staging, directed with restraint and surgical emotional precision by Tuxqs Rutaquio, featured a cast configuration I now consider unforgettable: Edward Benosa as Joel, Ross Pesigan as Nardo, and Elora Españo as Emma.

I didn’t just enjoy this trio — I adored them. Their rhythm, tension, and emotional shifts felt instinctive and lived-in. Nothing felt performed. Everything felt dangerously real. This isn’t the kind of cast you watch — it’s the kind that pulls you into their unraveling.

The story takes place in a tight, almost suffocating hut during a time of political unrest. That confinement isn’t just physical — it’s psychological. There are moments when silence becomes heavier than shouting, when stillness says more than movement, when a glance wounds deeper than any raised voice. The play explores fragility, desire, power, betrayal, and survival — not with grand theatrics, but with the intimate cruelty and tenderness of people who have nowhere left to run.

As the dialogue unfolded, the audience leaned in — not out of curiosity, but necessity. The emotional shifts were quiet but seismic. Fear mixed with longing. Truth clashed with self-preservation. Love and danger circled each other slowly, like predators unsure of who would strike first.

There was a moment — somewhere in the middle — when I realized no one in the room was breathing normally. That’s the kind of silence this play creates: not emptiness, but pressure. A silence full of consequence.

And when the final line was uttered and the lights faded, the reaction was telling. No immediate applause. No quick exhale. Just stillness — the kind that comes when a story reaches deeper than expected and leaves the audience slightly altered.

Only after that pause — that necessary processing — did hands finally come together.

Walking out, one thought lingered: I wish I could see the other trio perform as well, especially since I’ve long admired Martin del Rosario, who handled the role in previous runs. Given how complex and emotionally volatile this material is, each casting combination likely evolves into a distinct version of the same truth.

Despite this being a second run, I find myself hoping for another. Plays like this deserve multiple lives — not because they seek attention, but because they hold difficult truths that are never exhausted in one telling.

Anino Sa Likod ng Buwan is not designed to comfort. It confronts. It lingers. It demands that the viewer sit with discomfort, contradiction, and the parts of humanity we rarely name — desire, fear, compromise, complicity.

If you ever watch it, enter willing to listen. Not just to the words, but to the silence — because in this story, silence is not absence.

It is evidence.

And sometimes, it speaks louder than anything else.

— Ely Valendez

Every place is a story waiting to be heard.