PedXingOtso Review: In Emman Barrameda’s ‘Kasama,’ Revolution PTSD is Real

According to superstitions, a new house must be slept in for an entire night by an elderly married couple for it to be blessed and to strengthen the relationship of the people who will be living there. Delfin, an old aged drunkard invited Auring, his old lover to accompany him in his new house. At first, you might think this is just a harmless scene between two old lovers, with the dialogues of flirting and teasing, bantering like something out of a rom-com movie. But then the lights shift. Everything at the black box theater glows red. Everyone is on chokehold as the stage suddenly breathes danger. Later on, we are introduced to a far darker truth about Delfin and his kasama.

WHAT IS A ‘KASAMA?’

Did you know that Kasama means company in English but in this 20-minute one-act stage play, we are offered an entirely new meaning. It is of Barrameda’s brilliance that we are being reintroduced to the word Kasama as the silent companion that clings to us in the dark: our deep-seated traumas.

They are the shadows we walk and live with everyday. The fear that whispers when we eat our meals. The guilt that stains our white clothes. The pain we cannot emotionally let go of no matter how hard we try to shake it. Our shame that doesn’t let us sleep at night peacefully.

Kasama are the things that we continue to bury and sweep under the rug through alcohol and other vices. It accompanies us when we finally allow them to visit. It’ll take shape and form, a visible persona that won’t let us forget the bad things we did and the bad things that happened to us. Something that feels almost real. Something that not only torments our minds, but also our souls.

DELFIN HAS REVOLUTION PTSD

Through Delfin, we are reminded that history is not only written in pages but are also carried quietly on the backs of those who were traumatized by events larger than themselves. His character symbolizes the lingering wounds of PTSD brought about by the revolution. Wounds that echo the silent suffering of many Filipinos who lived through the horrors of Martial Law. Kasama brings to the spotlight how these wounds from the past continue to shape lives in the present, and how it continues to affect the lives of those who are still surviving its horrors everyday. They are walking through life and with them, an open wound, that never scabs. It happens to survivors because their nervous system cannot distinguish between then and now.

IN NO TIME, Martial Law will only be a figment of the past that a dying generation talked about, which is now laying utterly vulnerable to history’s revisionism by the daughter (now Senator) and son (now President) of the dictator Marcos.

And though the novelty of EDSA was not in the roar of guns or the clash of armies but in the quiet courage of ordinary people rising — a revolution that blossomed from linked arms, rosaries held high, and prayers whispered in front of tanks, a peaceful defiance that changed the course of our nation, it would be a crime to forget that alongside this gentleness were the necessary risks taken in the shadows: the unsung heroes who hid leaflets, sheltered fugitives, whispered the truth in the dark, and sacrificed away from their families , so that we might finally see the light at the end of the red bloody tunnel.

Into the twenty-first century and over forty years of Post-Marcos, we cannot forget the past that happened during Martial Law. It is an insult to forget something that survivors continue to live with every day.

“Into the twenty-first century and over forty years of Post-Marcos, we cannot forget the past that happened during Martial Law. It is an insult to forget something that survivors continue to live with every day.”

SURVIVOR’S GUILT, FORGIVENESS, AND EVERYDAY GRACE

A survivor’s guilt clings like a stubborn kasama (company). It is that unspeakable pain carried by those who lived after the violence when others failed to survive. Those haunting questions at the back of your mind: Why me? Why is it only me that survived? Why did I walk out of the darkness when others were swallowed whole by it? What did I do to deserve to live when others did not? Did I do something so selfish to save myself?

And in that endless questioning, forgiveness becomes both a burden and a prayer.

Forgiveness for the self that ran. Forgiveness for the hands that could not save everyone. Forgiveness for continuing to breathe when history demanded silence.

For many who survived Martial Law, living itself became an act of grace and forgiveness, between remembering and healing. They may never fully escape the ghosts of those left behind, but perhaps the most courageous thing they can do is to keep living anyway, carrying the memory of the fallen with a gentleness that says: Your suffering was not in vain. I live because you could not. But I will tell them your story.

To all survivors of Martial Law, you have rewritten what survival means. You are the living monuments that even when cruelty tries to define our nation, dignity can outlive terror. Your existence is a whisper of defiance against forgetting the atrocities, a promise that truth will always resurface, no matter how long it is forced to be buried and erased.

FROM MY SEAT: PEDXING8 EXPERIENCE REVIEW

I hadn’t meant to watch Kasama at all. It was sheer coincidence: my dear friend Rollymie Bonilla (who also directed ‘Kasama’) learned I was in Legazpi and pressed an extra ticket into my hand. I remembered telling him once how I had seen Sining Banwa perform years ago in Ticao and how, since then, I had wanted to return to the theater, to write plays but of course, I am miles away and cannot afford the time it will ask. So I found myself inside the Pasakalye Black Box, unprepared, wandering into a night that felt almost fated.

The characters: Delfin’s portrayal is extraordinary in its restraint. It was subtle yet thunderous, his presence almost unbearable in its honesty. Auring, too, wields her pain like a blade: every line she delivers? you can’t help but remember it.

But it is young Auring who shatters the room. Her terror, her violation, her desperate attempts to survive. She cries with the kind of grief that makes the audience look away, only to look back again, powerless. I even found myself clutching my cardigan, pinching myself, trying not to break. Convincing myself that this is only a play. Right?

I give Kasama a 9/10, only because it ended. How I wish it was longer.

Kudos to Sining Banwa for producing such amazing plays. Pasakalye Black Box is smaller than I imagined, but I think that’s the point—like a jack-in-the-box: something so small, and you don’t expect it will actually surprise you. I even saw familiar faces in the lobby, production, and even in the audience. I always like it when I feel like I am exactly where I ought to be.

Nagulat ako when I saw that Sining Banwa is just a small number, and yet what they create is enormous. Just like with Kasama, it proves that great theater doesn’t need grandeur—only truth and the courage to show it. I can’t believe such brilliance thrives here in Albay, and the ticket price is unbelievably affordable for what they offer — three plays plus a stage reading. I’m more surprised that mostly young people are in the audience aside from the family and friends of the actors who watch it. I hope more age groups will come to their shows.

This may be too much but Sining Banwa feels like a gem on a dusty bookshelf : an unexpected treasure waiting to be discovered. They are thriving in a community that insists on giving voice to what history keeps burying, and that is a gift worth fighting for. Lalo na if taga-Albay ka? I don’t know why you can’t come to such events. We should champion them, you know. We should fill their seats. Doon mo marerealize na: Wow! ang dami palang talented na mga Bicolano pagdating sa teatro. We need something like this — a space, a platform, irog sa Sining Banwa — to show and nurture that brilliance. How I wish Masbate had something like this.

I hope Kasama will be restaged and performed even more, and that many more people across Bicol will get to experience it. Until then, I will carry Kasama with me — a reminder that the ghosts of Martial Law have never left; they continue to breathe through the lives of those who survived.

Maraming Salamat, RM. Masaya akong makita ka sa spotlight na isang ganap na Director. Pinagkukuwentuhan lang natin ‘to sa gilid ng kalsada ng Daraga ng hatinggabi. Ngayon andito na.

Maraming Salamat rin Sining Banwa at sa PedXing8 para sa magagandang entries at pagbibigay ng core memory sa akin. Padayon!