Media celebrity G Töngi, newly appointed Artistic Director of Upstart Productions, heads the cast of a dramatic reading of the powerful American play The Baby Dance, brought to you by Metrobank Card Corporation. 

It was different king of setup for a production. Simply no props, no sets, not even costumes. Totally new for me personally; yet interesting. You need to listen carefully to every line the actors were saying. There is no actual acting (just like those we see in most theater productions) but you could feel the actors acting thru verbal and facial expressions. Impressive!

But What is Dramatic Reading...

Drama is literature written for performance--or at least written in a style that would allow for stage performance. As a text form, drama can be thought of as story told though spoken remarks and stage directions. It relies on simulating the language of everyday speech as well as the encounters and interaction of speech: lying, confronting, prevaricating, concealing, admitting, proclaiming, and a wealth of other social/linguistic interactions. 

And of all the literary forms, drama is the one in which the author/dramatist almost never speaks directly to the audience/reader. 

(from source)

About Baby Dance..

Jane Anderson’s The Baby Dance, the performance of which also doubles as Ms. Töngi’s birthday celebration, is the story of a well-to-do suburban couple and their desire to adopt the unborn child of a poor couple living in a trailer park. Witty and deeply moving, the drama ex-plores the complications and consequences of surrogacy from the first meeting of the contrasting couples to the fateful day of the baby’s birth.

An actress turned playwright, screenwriter, and director, Jane Ander-son has won numerous awards, including an Emmy for writing the 1993 TV movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Tex-as Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. Her recent accolades include an Emmy nomination for writing and directing the movie version of The Baby Dance, the script of which she adapted from her own play; a Writer’s Guild of America nomination for her work as a writer on the enormously successful TV series Mad Men; and the screenplays for the 2005 film The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (which she also directed) and the 1994 Nicolas Cage romantic comedy It Could Hap-pen To You.

The Baby Dance was originally produced by The Pasadena Playhouse, State Theatre of California, and then subsequently produced at the Wil-liamstown Theatre Festival. The Manila cast features Ms. Töngi and some of her closest friends in theater, including Upstart founder Joel Trinidad, who also directs the dramatic reading.

The Kick Off...

Metrobank Card Corporation in cooperation with Century City Mall presents Upstart Soundstage: The Dramatic Readings. Starting Sunday, June 15, at 7:00 pm at the Century Plaza Event Center, 5th floor, Century City Mall, Kalayaan Avenue, Makati, and playing continuously every other Sunday from then on. Tickets at P300 for plays, P500 for musicals, available at the door. From Upstart Productions.