Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Sangdosenang Sapatos



Saw last weekend at CCP the SANGDOSENANG SAPATOS, a children’s musical based on a book by my good friend Dr. Luis Gatmaitan who is a Palanca Awards Hall of Famer, about a shoemaker’s love for his physically disabled daughter and his family.

 The play revolves around a middle class family in the Philippines, with a father who is an excellent shoemaker, his loving wife, and their two beautiful daughters. The father’s longtime dream is for their younger daughter to become a ballerina someday. He vows to make the best ballerina shoes for her. But his dream gets shattered when they find out that the baby’s feet are not and will not be developed as normal limbs. Hoping to help realize his father’s dream, the older daughter enrolls in a ballet class but fails to make it good in the art form. The father remains hopeful that someday he will have a ballerina for a daughter.

As the physically-challenged younger child grows, she suffers from unfair and rude treatment from other children. Her entire family tries to protect and defend her from the unkindness of the people who make fun of her. The elder sister patiently and lovingly takes on the role of her only playmate and her constant protector. The entire family showers the younger girl with unconditional love, affection and special care.

Every time her birthday draws near, she tells her older sister her that she always dreams about certain pairs of shoes. Then, bad luck strikes the family. The father dies after the younger daughter’s twelfth birthday. After the burial of the good father, while arranging the personal items of the deceased, the older sister discovers an unopened box filled with the best shoes crafted by their father. The two sisters and their mother are surprised to see that the twelve pairs of shoes in the boxes look exactly the same as the shoes that the younger girl saw in her dreams.

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