Written With Sass
ljoson@theguidon.com

Hidden on the other side of the Old Rizal Library is a theater.

It’s not much of a sight really— slabs of gray concrete make up much of the entrance to the place, while two dismal-looking glass doors stand feebly outside, trying hard to play their role of a glamorous gateway to the stage. Several plastic benches settle themselves around the perimeter, begging in vain to be sat on by scurrying students speed-walking from Bellarmine to Xavier Hall. A lazy silver sign caps the eye-glazing experience of it all— “Rizal Mini Theater”— a pitiful attempt to welcome guests in.

If you think that, right about now, I’m about to turn this entire article around by revealing the majesty and grandeur this theater has inside, then let me tell you this— it isn’t going to happen.

This is the Rizal Mini Theater or the RMT, supposedly the best of what the Loyola Schools has to offer in terms of venues for collegiate performing arts. Granted, it has the basics of what a theater should offer: a platform, a backstage, several speakers, a lights board, good ventilation and 200 seats for the house.

But when you’re performing your heart out on the stage and the entire theater literally blacks out due to a faulty electrical system that can’t support an amateur production, the basics of the RMT suddenly turn into a crucial lack.

And that’s when you realize— how rugged and chipped the platform is, a long overdue for a make-over; how the backstage is completely bare, with only a single partition and a mirror to offer; how unhelpful the speakers are on the long run, since the place has awful acoustics anyway. How the light boards are useless without lights, basic theater equipment that the Ateneo seemingly cannot provide for all of its students to use; and how the 200 seats reserved for spectators are slowly crumbling, and rusting on all sides.

It would be perfectly fine if we weren’t any good at what we do. If no one needed good theatres on campus, and if no one cared about the quality of performing arts in this university, then the RMT can go happily deteriorate with other performing venues on campus, like the teeny-tiny Fine Arts Theater, and the pseudo-sauna that is the Exhibit Hall.

The problem, however, is people still care. The situation matters to Theater Arts majors and students from the School of Humanities, because their craft needs a decent venue for application. It matters to the members of the five performing organizations in Ateneo, all of whom have been putting up with the “basics” of what Ateneo theatres have to give.

It matters to every Atenean who has watched a play on campus, and who left the theater wishing how the stage could’ve been bigger, or that the lines could’ve been heard better. It matters to the entire community, because we have a reputation as the 14th best Arts and Humanities university in Asia, and the number one in the country.

The state of the Rizal Mini Theater, and the other theatres on campus need attention, repair and renovation. Soon, even the best of theatrics won’t be enough to save them from deterioration.