by Christina Alpad
We’ve always read his monthly column which takes us to the colorful and sweet eccentric world of theater; he’s given us what musicals and productions to look forward to and which theater actors to watch out for. He was basically telling us why should we get our feet inside the theater.
He chose to call this column “Toff’s World” because clearly, the theater was his world. It came then as no surprise when our resident theateratti, Christopher “Toff” De Venecia, along with his friends and colleagues, launched Sandbox Collective, a performing arts collective that’s committed in finding and developing new, groundbreaking, and cutting-edge theatrical works and bringing it all to bigger and younger audiences.
But before we see Toff in action this coming July (when Sandbox Collective is opening their first salvo, Dani Girl), allow us to take you inside Toff’s World once more through some of his favorite plays and musicals.
Waiting [not] for Godot … I am waiting for my corner of the sky. That’s a line from Pippin that I always found a tad bit cheesy. But it’s so true. As a young creative in an industry dominated by field’s stalwarts, there’s a lot of waiting in the wings that happens. But then, when exactly do you step up and put yourself out there? When do you get your one big chance? How soon is now?
Waiting in vain … Oftentimes, with my job, you sow the seeds and wait for them to bear fruit. Sometimes, the ground isn’t so fertile, sometimes it’s sown among thorns that choke, and sometimes it’s the perfect soil. You never know, but that unknowing, I feel, should never stop you from trying.
‘A New Brain’ to pick … I would pick the brain of Anne Bogart, one of my theater idols and one of the foremost theater directors in the United States. She’s not just a director but a philosopher as well. Her knowledge of theater seems to be wide spanning but even more her curiosity is boundless. It’s my dream to be able to get accepted at the Columbia University in New York, and learn under her and Brian Kulick under an MFA in theater directing program. #Bucketlist
The winning word… T–ireless, O–ptimistic, F–ixated, F–ighter.
His Sunday in the Park… These days, I hardly get to spend weekend afternoons for leisure. It’s been about work, work, work because I’m busy running a company, being both Managing Director and Artistic Director of The Sandbox Collective, and also the director of Dani Girl. I suppose it’s that necessary toil and struggle of being a startup before the cards fall into place. But I always believe that the moment you get complacent about your craft, the moment your curiosity ends, then you stop being an artist.
The Sugary Vengeance ala Sweeney Todd … The best revenge is for the youth to be able to prove their forebears wrong - that they can actually do it too, and that age is just a number.
Hit refresh … If I have the powers, I would turn the human race into tabula rasa or a blank slate so the process of creation never stops. Oftentimes people get complacent, and that’s a culture I hope would change.
Turn my life into a play and the title would be … Through the looking glass.
Theater, in a nutshell…is that contact lens you had forgotten was there. Without it, you wouldn’t have seen as clearly.
A theater director’s dream is … a mode of production that combines all sorts of competencies and art forms into a chimera anchored by the theater - and then have it become something entirely new and entirely different.
And then Sandbox Collective arrived…It came about as I became more and more restless with the kind of theater that I am exposed to here, and the possibilities of the kind of theater that is being done elsewhere in the world. It was also a reaction to the shifts and movements that are happening across different genres and I thought, why not create theater for and by new artistic voices? Imagine what you could do if you could do what you can.
Why Dani Girl? … I have a particular closeness to loss, tragedy and insurmountable circumstance as a person. And when I read through the synopsis of Dani Girl, I knew that this was going to be our launch production. To listen to the beautiful music of Kooman and Dimond is that sweet icing on top of a rather nourishing yet hard-to-bake cake. The themes are universally resilient - life in the face of death, hope amidst despair and the power of imagination. I like that while faced with insurmountable odds, Dani, our protagonist, fights and fights back. It is a kind of learning or lesson that we in The Sandbox Collective try to embrace.
Catch Dani Girl running from July 11-27, 2014 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati City. For show-buying and ticket inquiries, please contact 585-6909 or 0917-8996680, or Ticketworld at 891-9999, visit www.thesandboxcollective.com, or follow @TheSandboxCo on Twitter TheSandboxCollective on Facebook and Instagram.
Cover: Joyce Pring 
