Vince Tañada: Actor, writer, director, producer

VINCE Tañada is a critically acclaimed and multi-awarded playwright,

actor, director and producer. He turns his passion for theater and drama into an instrument to reach out to everyone, especially the marginalized sectors of our society, and rekindle their appreciation of the value of culture and the arts.

            Vince writes all the librettos for the various musicals of the Philippine Stagers Foundation (PSF), guided by the principle of utilizing theater as a medium to entertain, educate and inspire its audience. He believes that theater, or generally the arts as the soul of the nation, for that matter, is a necessary tool for nation-building, just like education.

            Vince went to La Salle-Greenhills for elementary and high school (a member of Kundirana) and San Beda College for his undergraduate and law studies. At once, he took and passed the bar, and litigated for a living, so to speak, while putting his artistic career on hold due to familial duties, being the grandson of the Grand Old Man Lorenzo of the lawyerly and political clan from Quezon or Southern Luzon.

            In time, theater beckoned, and in 2009, Vince was cited by the Aliw Awards as Best Director for “Ako si Ninoy, A Filipino Musical,” which also won as the year’s Best Musical. The following year, he got his second Best Director award for the Musical “Enzo… Santo.” In 2011, he bagged the Best Director honors in the Broadway World Awards for his work in “Cory ng EDSA.”

            A lawyer by profession, Vince heads the PSF or the PhilStagers as president and artistic director. The PSF holds the distinction as the most successful theater company in the country today, breaking box-office records for many years now. His leadership has brought recognition to the group as one of the Ten Most Accomplished Youth Organizations in the Philippines (2010), conferred by former President Benigno Simeon Aquino III. Because of his work and contribution to the cultivation of culture and the arts, he was awarded the honor Dangal ng Bansa (also in 2010), by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino.

            Recently, Vince was recognized by the City of Manila as one of the Ten Outstanding Manilans of 2015, for his invaluable contribution to the field of culture and the arts, courtesy of former president and incumbent Mayor Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

            The foundation, for its outreach program, helps the poor, the sick, the elderly and the abandoned by sharing goods and services in different depressed areas in the metropolis and the provinces. It also engages in certain activities which benefit the PSF beneficiaries.

            To train and develop talents, the PSF offers the annual free summer workshop and festival, an intensive six-to-seven-week theater school in acting, dancing, singing and holistic personality development for any ages, at its own studio in Balic-balic, Sampaloc, Manila. It also has a scholarship program, with 200 high school and college students currently enrolled in some schools. In fact, the PSF has tie-up arrangements with the National Center for Mental Health, Golden Acres, PGH Pediatric Cancer Ward and others not only to promote its cause but also to realize its advocacies as well. Life is theater made real offstage.

            Vince is an educator, too. For a while, he taught humanities and labor laws at San Beda College-Manila, College of Arts and Sciences. He is currently the Dean of the College of Law of Bestlink Colleges of the Philippines, in Quezon City.

            For a lawyer-artist, Vince walks in some tall stage: he won in 2012 the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, full-length play category, for his gruesome tragedy, “Ang Bangkay”; was chosen twice in the Best Book and Lyrics category in the Broadway World Awards for “Filipinas 1941“ (2014 ) and “#popepular: Pa’no Kung Pinoy si Kiko?” (2015); and was cited Best New Actor in the Philippine Movie Press Club (PMPC) Star Awards for Movies for the film Otso (2013).

            A single father of two, Vince Tañada is father-in-fact of all the Stagers (as members of the PSF are called) past and present, and it figures every day. The dictum “the show must go on” rules, even as the unique PSF Family culture holds sway.

(JC NIGADO)

                                                        Vince Tañada as Panyong