This creative thesis explores how an actor can effectively perform multiple female characters in Tony Perez’s Sa North Diversion Road through the application of Stanislavski’s Emotional Memory and Magic If within the context of UP Dulaang Laboratoryo. The study is practice-based and grounded in the rehearsal and performance process of a production that requires a single performer to embody multiple distinct roles within one narrative structure.

The research investigates how character differentiation can be achieved through physical and vocal transformation, emotional engagement, and imaginative work. It also examines how Emotional Memory and Magic If function as complementary tools in creating truthful and varied characterizations. Emotional Memory was used to access personal emotional experiences for scenes involving betrayal, grief, and vulnerability, while Magic If was primarily used to navigate unfamiliar circumstances and support flexibility across multiple roles.

The creative process also incorporated additional techniques such as Meisner-based exercises, observational work, improvisation, and personalized actor methods. Collaboration with directors, scene partners, an intimacy director, and the broader production team played a significant role in shaping performance choices. Furthermore, the use of alternating casts revealed how performance evolves depending on scene partners, highlighting acting as a responsive and relational practice.
Findings suggest that portraying multiple characters requires a combination of technical skill, emotional regulation, adaptability, and embodied specificity. The study concludes that character work is not solely developed through theoretical frameworks but through continuous rehearsal, performance, and reflection. Ultimately, the process demonstrates that acting knowledge is generated through practice, and that each performance becomes a site of ongoing discovery.

In a musical production, the roles of an actor and composer are separate. This creative study investigates the intersectionality between the roles of an actor and a composer in the musical adaptation of Las Viajeras by Joi Barrios. It integrates the physical and psychological embodiment of an actor in the process of producing and writing the lyrics of a song that best fits certain sections in the adaptation. In turn, the musical composition and lyrics serves as an extension of the actor’s process in building the character’s intentions, movements, and treatment toward the character. The process of an actor-composer begins during the pre-production where one allots time for the composition of the music and lyrics. Beginning the actor-composer’s text analysis and script doctoring with the collaborators, the music and lyrics of the adaptation are formed along with the text. The music is then introduced to the play and is revised all throughout the creative process. This study also further explores the creation of music that is not found in the text. The music and lyric composition extends not only to what was written in the devised text but also with the aid of the actors’ analysis on subtext and thought processes that are not printed on the script. It also includes the exploration of the collaborators to play the produced music with live instruments. The study also explores the portrayal of the historical women and the investigation of written accounts and their autobiographies. The results of the study are based on the actor’s dramaturgical process, musical composition, and physical embodiment of the character during rehearsals and final performances.

This study develops Gunam-gunam as a dramaturgical framework for decolonial adaptation through the creation of Gunam-gunam: Ang Naglahong Paraiso, a Filipino reimagining of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Situated within the context of Philippine theatre and the University of the Philippines as a contested cultural institution shaped by colonial inheritances and nationalist critique, the study examines how adaptation can function as a practice of pag-aangkin (reclamation) rather than mere translation or localization. Drawing from Raniela Barbaza’s concept of pag-aangkin, Christopher Balme’s theory of theatrical syncretism, and decolonial perspectives on coloniality and cultural production, the research investigates how inherited Western texts may be critically transformed through contemporary Filipino epistemologies and performance practices. Central to the study is the Filipino concept of gunam-gunam, understood as a cyclical process of recollection, contemplation, and yearning. Mobilized as a dramaturgical method, it frames adaptation as an act of remembering, interrogating, and reimagining inherited narratives. Through practice-based research involving textual analysis, translation, cultural adaptation, collaborative dramaturgy, devising, rehearsal experimentation, and performance, the project documents the transformation of Paradise Lost into a site of decolonial reflection and cultural negotiation.The study argues that decolonial adaptation extends beyond the reinterpretation of canonical texts by challenging the epistemological assumptions embedded within them. In doing so, Gunam-gunam offers a dramaturgical framework through which Filipino theatre practitioners may engage colonial inheritances critically, reclaim interpretive agency, and generate new forms of theatrical meaning grounded in local histories, memories, and ways of knowing.

Traumatic experiences can cause a change in an individual’s behavior, attitude, and personality. These changes can be triggered by repetitions of the traumatic event, even faintest reminders of the experience, and can affect the individual’s life orientation and purpose. This study aimed to answer the question: How can theater aid Filipino children in coping with post-traumatic stress disorder? This study also aimed to: (1) conduct a basic theater workshop that will help the participants achieve catharsis through the activities; (2) observe how the theatre workshop affects the participants and (3) observe and collate data on the efficacy of the workshop on the achievement of catharsis; and (4) present the data to the interested persons of the theater arts community for possible future applications of the method.

In this study, the coping strategies from the trauma of the participants, through an 8-day basic theater arts workshop, were addressed and studied through Mooli Lahad’s BasicPH and Susana Pendzik’s Six Keys of Assessment. Two objectives were fulfilled: to find out the participants’ personal coping mechanisms and to achieve catharsis through the basic theater workshop activities.

Through the creative outputs, observations, assessments, and feedback of the participants used for this study, the following were found out:
The most common coping mechanisms that were highly exhibited by the participants were refocusing on priorities like school and daily chores, peer support, and religious involvement. These coping mechanisms were also reflected through the participants’ creative outputs in the basic theater workshop activities. This study aided the participants in achieving catharsis and helped the center’s resident psychologist and social workers be guided in addressing and relieving their clients of their trauma.

Rooting on the researcher's Catholic upbringing, this study explores the role and directing process of a director in staging a religious community-based theatre production particularly the Daan ng Krus 2026 of the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in UP Diliman. Grounded in Richard Schechner’s Performance Theory and Community Theatre Theory, it examines how directing functions within a non-conventional performance context where spiritual and theatrical practice intersect. The study is qualitative in nature because of the Practice-as-Research methodology, drawing on the researcher’s director’s journal, rehearsal documentation, video recordings, production notes, and reflective practice as primary sources of data. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis and interpreted using performance and community theatre frameworks. Findings reveal that directing in a religious community theatre setting extends beyond artistic leadership which include facilitation, service, and spiritual guidance. The director negotiates the balance between scriptural fidelity and creative staging while responding to logistical constraints, limited resources, conflicting schedules, and shifting performance spaces. The study highlights the dual nature of Daan ng Krus as both religious activity and theatrical performance, requiring a directing approach that is adaptive, participatory, and sensitive to communal faith practices and beliefs. Moreover, the director often assumes multiple roles including actor, facilitator, and technical coordinator reflecting the collaborative and resource-limited nature of community theatre. Despite these challenges, the process fostered community engagement and spiritual formation. Overall, the study conceptualizes directing as a hybrid practice situated between theatre-making and spiritual practice, emphasizing flexibility, collaboration, and the integration of faith within performance practice.