#5 A short reaction to "Ming-ming"

It was not my first time to encounter a play hosted by the Integrated Performing Arts Guild or IPAG, when i was still in Highschool our school required us to watch the show performed by IPAG every year with a bill of a hundred pesos.Each year IPAG has different plays and different strategies of delivering the play.

This years play was headed by their director Steven Patrick C. Fernandez, It was entitled "Ming-ming".It was July 23, 2012 when i bought a ticket for mingming and watched the play ,live at the mini theater of MSU-IIT. This years  performance was amazing and I think it is one of their masterpiece.There were 4 main characters of the story there was R,I,P and Mingming, the names of the characters somewhat gives us a clue about what happens in the story.

This years mood of the play was serious and based on real life. The play was about the muslim culture, it was about parental marriage or "buya" where both family agrees to marry their children by force. It was about pride and honor of the family. The story all started with 2 spirits wondering around a dead body, It was the body of the young woman named Mingming. Ming ming was confused because she can see her Grandmother "R", her mother "I", and her uncle "P" but none of them can hear her, she doesnt know that she was dead already. Mingming suddenly started seeing flashbacks about how she was born and how she died.

The play was like a flashback with many twists, It started with her grandmother who was also a victim by parental marriage then up to her mother on when how she started bearing mingming on her womb and on how mingming spent the rest of her life.

Back on the generation of mingming`s grandmother R, "maratabat" or parental marriage was a must. Her grandmother was forced to ironically marry the older brother of his love just for their family to be more powerful and honored, then next is mingmings mother when she was allowed to study alone in college but ended up getting pregnant. It has affect her family`s honor and pride, They did not abort the baby, they raised it secretly. Mingming was the outcome,mingming done the same mistake as like what her mother had done,she indulged with illegal vices and was forced to go home to their home town. Mingming was then put in a room and was not allowed to go out. Mingming was discouraged on what has happened to her life so she decided to commit suicide.

Muslim families are very strict and very conscious in terms of the name of their family, they dont want any dirt on their names. But i think it was not appropriate to do such things on your relatives on like what happened to mingming.Any way, the play was very entertaining and was worth it.