Bibeth Orteza is no stranger to the stage. In fact, it’s where she got her start in the arts, over four decades ago.
“I was a founding member of the repertory theatre company of the University of the Philippines,” recalls Bibeth as we settle down for a chat in the green room of the Victoria Theatre. She later became the chairwoman of the company.
It wasn’t all fun and games, however, to be an artist in her home country at the time.
“The Philippines was still under martial law then,” she explains. “Our members were getting arrested left and right, and we developed a system where, if someone was detained, someone else could step in and do the work on short notice.”
That must have been a harrowing experience. But, as Bibeth puts it, “When you’re young, you’re not afraid!”
One gets the sense that she’s still not afraid, even now that she’s older and married with two grown children of her own.
“Once an activist, always an activist!” she declares, while noting that she’s been involved in her fair share of “scrapes”. She’s even been arrested once, although her case was never brought to court.
It’s evident that Bibeth firmly believes that art is activism – that the work she does matters because it makes people think.
“You need to say something in whatever you do,” she observes. “That must always be the case.”
Even Neanderthal man’s very first charcoal drawings in caves, she points out, must have made people reflect on their lives.
And so it is with Bibeth’s work on stage and screen. “We do the kind of work that could make someone in the audience – even if it’s just one person in 20 – have an epiphany and ask themselves questions like: ‘Am I really in the right place? Am I where I’m supposed to be?’”
Bibeth running lines backstage with (L-R) director Pam Oei,
stage manager Charlene Poh and co-star Shane Mardjuki
For a period of time, Bibeth’s activism extended to her working relationship with Singapore. As with many activists in the Philippines, Bibeth and her husband Carlos Siguion-Reyna (himself an artist and a film-maker) had been furious about the execution of domestic worker Flor Contemplacion in 1995 for murder.
“We swore never to have anything to do with Singapore,” she confesses.
Over time, tempers cooled, and Bibeth has since come to view Singapore almost as a second home. She became a frequent visitor to the Lion City when her husband was offered a teaching position at Singapore’s NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
“When my husband was in class, I’d be walking around,” she reminisces.
That’s how her love affair with curry leaves began. She remembers detecting the fragrance of curry in the air on a stroll past the market opposite Tiong Bahru Plaza.
To this day, she still cooks with curry leaves, even growing her own in her garden at home. “It’s heavenly,” she enthuses. “I make a really good curry-leaf omelette – you don’t have to use as much salt because the flavour comes from the curry leaves!”
She’s thrilled, therefore, to have her own opportunity to live and work in Singapore for an extended period of time because of Boeing Boeing.
For one thing, it means she can partake in another of her culinary indulgences. “My guilty pleasure here is durian ice cream,” she confesses with a laugh. “I get to indulge now, because my husband won’t be joining me until the last weekend of the show. He always says that bringing durians into our house is grounds for separation!”
She’s also glad to have the chance to “say goodbye to Orchard Road”, the ultimate destination for the average Filippino traveller. Over the past few weeks, she’s had the opportunity to discover more areas of Singapore for herself, from Tai Seng (where rehearsals for Boeing Boeing took place) to Chinatown and Little India.
Nonetheless, she admits that she was initially apprehensive about the prospect of moving to Singapore for a few months. “I’m rather spoiled at home,” she reveals. “When I got the job offer, I asked myself, ‘Do I need to do this? Do I need to be away from my home and my house?’”
Eventually, however, she chose the adventure of relocating to another country instead of sticking with the comforts of home. “I’m 63, and I’ve survived cancer,” she says proudly. “This is something I really want to do.”
The experience has allowed her to return to her roots as an actor.
“In the Philippines, I have a certain kind of status,” she says with disarming frankness. “So, when I’m under stress meeting other deadlines, I can pull rank and say, ‘I’m coming in an hour late’.”
But that’s not something she permits herself to do in Singapore. “There’s none of that here,” she continues. “I’m really putting my foot forward as a professional, and I really like that.”
All in all, she’s thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with the company of Boeing Boeing and her director, Pam Oei.
“My sister was here for two weeks to help me settle down,” she confides. “I thought I was going to be really sad by the time she left!”
Happily, that hasn’t been the case at all.
“This entire experience has been really great,” she says with a huge smile. “I love working with Pam – she’s so sensitive, as a director, and her mind works so fast. And my fellow actors have been taking very good care of me. I feel so welcome here!”
