Good afternoon, everyone!

We wish that you are in the best of conditions as together we

fight to survive this pandemic. We're so glad to have you all here today in this short but
sweet Find Your Light Locked and Loaded virtual BAsica recital. My name is Francis
Matheu, founder and artistic director of Twin Bill Theatre.

With my twin Brother, Joseph, we established Twin Bill Theatre in 2013. Twin Bill Theater
is an independent theatre company existing to stir minds for constructive societal
revolution utilizing theatre as means for formal dialogue and intellectual intercourse
foregrounding socially relevant issues that continue to plague the human condition. But
it was not until the year 2016 when we started to produce and present critically
acclaimed productions mirroring different human conditions.

We started by opening an acting and technical theatre training programs through our
company’s training department, Find Your Light. Through this program we have
conducted workshops on basic acting, stage management and lighting design.

When the pandemic is finally over, Twin Bill Theatre will enter into its 4th theatre season.
For the first 3 seasons, Twin Bill Theater presented plays that tackled social issues in Dog
Sees God: A Confession of a Teenage Blockhead, Suicide,Incorporated, My Name Is
Asher Lev, Wit, the staged reading of Disgraced and Dancing Lessons which garnered 4
Outstaning award nominations for this year’s Gawad Buhay by Philstage

As Twin Bill Theater is known for its English theatre productions, we have developed an
initiative called PAMANA COLLECTION, a program that aims to champion Filipino plays
and playwrights with objectives to protect, preserve and promote Filipino history and
culture. Through this program we aspire to utilize the arts to empower marginalized
Filipinos here and abroad connecting with the 2nd and 3rd generation Filipino migrants
to assist in meeting their cultural exigencies.

During the pandemic, we developed Find your light: Lock and Loaded, an online
streaming-tutorial-initiative during the Enhanced Community Quarantine. It was
launched via Open House last April 20 when Twin Bill

Theater was invited to stream an interactive talk on Basic Lighting Design+ as part of the
fundraising campaign for the performing arts community. The initiative continued with 3
other online programs - Intro to Acting+, Mental Health+, and Access to Acting+.

Our student, Monina Baxa is a recent graduate of Speech Communication from the
Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts at UP Diliman. A performer at
heart, her affinity for the art roots back to her younger years. During her high school
years, she actively participated in English and Filipino elocution contests and joined
different performance school clubs. She also took various acting and production roles in
high school plays – which include (the Ilocano epic) Lam-ang, High School Musical,
Ibong Adarna, Florante at Laura, Noli me Tangere, and El FIlibusterismo. As an
undergraduate, she was able to channel her passion for performance by taking classes in
oral interpretation and chamber theatre. She was involved in student-led productions
namely, Si Eba ang may Sala, IX, and Tuta.

Now fresh out of college amidst the pandemic, Monina has been making efforts to
become a versatile performer and to pursue her dream of having a career in the realm of
Television, film, and theatre.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Monina Baxa!

*Good People

Written by David Lindsay-Abiare, Good People is about the no joke life in Boston’s
Southie neighborhood for single mother Margaret Walsh. Fired from her job and facing
eviction, she doesn’t know whether to risk it all on a game of bingo, or join a drunken
old classmate on a warm bit of sidewalk.

Thank you so much, Monina! That was a great start!

In 2018, Twin Bill Theater was installed as a bonafide member of Philstage. Philstage is a
coalition of performing arts companies that aims to keep the theatre performances in
the Philippines to its highest standards.

Nearly a month ago, Twin Bill Theater received 4 Gawad Buhay nominations for the play
Dancing Lessons in the categories of outstanding production of existing material for a
play; outstanding direction; outstanding female lead performance for a play; and
outstanding set design. The 12th Gawad Buhay Awards Night goes on live through
YouTube on October 8, at 8 PM brought to you by Philstage.

In October, Find Your Light Locked and Loaded opens classes for the next batch of Intro
to Acting+. Intro to Acting+ is a 3-day online-interactive-tutorial on introduction to
theater performance for aspiring actors. Classes start October 10.

For a more intensive class, you can join Access to Acting+ with courses on Basic Acting
Techiniques; Physical Theatre; and Song Exposition. Access to Acting+ program starts
October 5.

For inquiries, email us at twinbilltheater.info@gmail.com

Follow us on Facebook; Instagram and Twitter @twinbilltheater.

Monina’s second and final performance is a monologue from the play Lungs written by
Duncan Macmillan, which premiered in 2011 at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C.
under the direction of Aaron Posner. Lungs revolve around the story of M and W, a
young couple finding themselves examining the scope of their lives together and the
world around them when they begin considering starting a family.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Monina Baxa.

Lungs

Ladies and gentlemen give it up for, Monina Baxa! Congratulations Monina! How do you
feel? What’s your take away from this experience?

We would like to acknowledge our technical person, John Hernan Trinidad. Hernan is a
Twin Bill Theater on the job trainee from the University of the Philippines Los Banos.

We would also like to thank Trisha for her backstage assistance.

On Monday, October 12, we will start circuit #4 of our Intro to Acting+ program. This
program aims to give students the full landscape of the theatre profession. For more
detailed courses techniques, we will also open our program on Access to Acting+
starting October 5 with courses on Basic Acting Techniaues, Physical Theatre and Song
Exposition.

Find Your Light Locked and Loaded is brought to you by Hues n Cues and Manila Vinyl.
Follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Friends, would like to thank all of you for supporting Monina and Find Your Light Locked
and Loaded this evening. On behalf of Twin Bill Theater, please stay safe, keep those
facemasks on whenever you need to leave the house. Take care and FIND YOUR LIGHT!

SCRIPT

From:
Lungs by Duncan Macmillan

Look. Alright. Listen, you have to understand, alright, / I’m thinking out loud here so
please just let me talk, just let me think it through out loud. Please, alright, don’t just
jump in if I say something wrong or stupid, just let me think, okay. / Because I’ve always
wanted – alright – and I’m talking in the abstract, / I’ve always wanted, /I’ve always had a
sense or an idea of myself, always defined myself, okay, as a person who would./ That my
purpose in life, that my function on this planet would be to./ And not that I ever thought
about it like that. It’s only now because you’re asking – or not asking but mentioning.
Starting the conversation. Only because of that, that I’m now even thinking about it./ But
it’s always been sort of a given for me, an assumption ever since I was a little girl playing
with dolls./ I mean long, long before I met you. / It’s never been what I guess it should
be which is a a a a a a an extension of an expression of, you know, fucking love or
whatever. A coming together of two people. It’s always been this, alright – and this will
sound stupid and naive./ But it’s always been an image, I guess, of myself with a bump
and glowing in that motherly – or pushing a pram or a cot, or a mobile above it or
singing to it. Reading Beatrix Potter or Dr Seuss./I don’t care, never cared about it being
a boy or a girl. Just small and soft and adorable and with that milky head smell and the
tiny socks and giggles and, yes, vomit even. It’s all part of it. Looking after it. Caring for it.
That’s, I think, the impulse./ And there’s always been a father in the picture but sort of a
blurring background generic man. /I’m sorry, it’s just this picture of my life I’ve always
had since I was able to think and I’ve never questioned it. Never./

Notes:
The speaker is one half of an educated, thoughtful (bordering on neurotic) couple who
discuss having a baby throughout the play but come up against the moral dilemmas of
having children. Here, after much discussion, the speaker has finally said “yes.” This
edited text includes punctuation to make it more straightforward to learn, but the
original has only two full stops – one after “never questioned it” and the other after
“Never.” Feel free to move the punctuation around or do away with it altogether.

It’s a deceptively simple speech because, although the speaker says she’s “thinking out
loud,” might some of this have been in the back of her head for some time? There’s
plenty of opportunity to show how you can think “on the line” but it will take hard work
and some sharpening of your skills to ensure you never play a moment of this speech “to
yourself.” Remember to play the scene.

___________________________

Character:
Margaret, late 30s and up, comic.

From:
Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire

Did I ever tell you the turkey story? Up at Flanagan’s? When I worked up there and she
came in? She never told you that turkey story? Huh. She was pregnant with you. No,
Jimmy actually – she was pregnant with Jimmy – because it was near Christmas, and your
father was locked up in Walpole again, so she didn’t have any money for anything. She
had nothing. So your mother comes into Flanagan’s, and she’s out to here. (Indicates
belly.) When’s Jimmy’s birthday? January. Right, so she’s out to here, and in this big coat.
Remember that blue coat she always wore? And she’s walking up and down the aisles,
slipping things in the pockets – potatoes, and cans of cranberry sauce, cookies, because
you guys gotta eat, right? So she comes waddling up to my register. And I’m like, “Hey
Suzie, how are the kids?” And she doesn’t wanna talk obviously, she’s just trying to push
through the line, “Oh they’re good, I was just looking for something, but you don’t have
it, so I’m gonna try someplace else.” And then there turkey falls out of her coat. It hits the
floor right between her legs. A turkey. Boom. And I swear to god, she didn’t miss a beat.
She looks up, real mad, and yells, “Who threw that bird at me?!” (Really laughing now).
Oh we died. Everybody there. Ya had to laugh. “Who threw that bird at me?!” She was a
funny sonofabitch. Pardon my French. God she was funny. I think about her all the time.
Your mother was a good lady. It’s a lesson though. You’re lucky you don’t smoke. Too
young, your mother.

Notes:
Margaret is on a cigarette break at work, talking to her younger boss who also happens
to be the son of her dead friend, Suzie. Margaret is gregarious, quick-witted, and often
uses comedy to lighten how tough her life is. In this edited extract, she’s telling a comic
story to avoid a serious conversation with her boss about being late for her shift. In the
original text, she motors through or deflects his interruptions, which is worth playing
here.

There’s an opportunity to show your comic timing, movement skills, and explore
different voices in telling the story. But there’s also a turn at the end, where Margaret
switches from telling a story that makes light of poverty to admitting that she thinks
about her dead friend all the time. Try to find the moment the switch happens as well as
an intention for it – is Margaret still playing for time? Is she trying to ingratiate herself
with her boss? Or something else?