Avenue GR

There is perhaps no better director to work at the helm of Lea Salonga’s 30th anniversary concert than Freddie Santos, whose association with the international singer-actress dates back to three decades ago. That’s why when Lea...My Life...Onstage was being conceptualized last year, Freddie was the most ideal, if not perfect choice, to direct the concert-musical to be held on May 23 and 24 at the PICC.

Freddie was there in many of the highlights in Lea’s career, particularly in the early years. He was her long-time mentor and teacher. “I was aware of the many highlights in her life because I’ve seen them,” the veteran stage director Freddie asserts. “In fact, I’m more aware of her younger years than she is because she was too young to remember. I was the one who filled in the gap. Isa ako sa mga saksi and it was very exciting in that sense.”

He remembers the first time Lea’s mother, Ligaya, presented her for the role as one of the kids in Repertory Philippines’ The King and I, her maiden theater salvo. Back then, Freddie was already assisting (the late) Zeneida Amador in directing plays.

“Since it was Zeneida directing, she passed on all the coaching jobs to me,” Freddie shares. “I was Lea’s first coach. Lea, Raymond Lauchengco and Rajo Laurel, they all began in theater at the same time. Rajo was the worst. He was a butterball even back then and the most naughty of the lot. Lea was the most well-behaved and the most professional.”

Even in her theater debut, Lea already displayed her working style which did not escape the watchful eye of the very strict Amador. “She was only auditioning for the role and she already had the part memorized,” Freddie offers. “She knew the whole spiel and delivered it with aplomb. She’s like a sponge.”

One of Lea’s biggest assets, according to Freddie, is that she is very phonographic. “When she hears something, she retains it. It’s locked in like crazy. By the time we were doing Annie, if you didn’t know your lines, it would throw her off. You’d see her eyes get as large as anything because she completely knew what the lines were. She’s that unique even as a child performer.”

Back then, Freddie knew Lea was going to hit it big. “When she did Annie and sang Tomorrow, she was alone on that 60-foot-wide stage at the CCP,” he grants. “She was in the spotlight with a ferocious German Shepherd who was as big as her. But night after night, she flashed that smile, she stretched out her hand and the entire theater just broke into cheers and applause. It was just unbelievable.”

Freddie, in fact, was Lea’s first leading man in her first starring role in Annie, where he played Daddy Warbucks. “Back then, I had to put on a bald cap, but today, there’s no need for that,” he jests. He was also her teacher at OB Montessori in Greenhills. “She was a valedictorian for every good reason,” he proudly says.

So when they called him and asked if he was willing to do an anniversary show for Lea, Freddie readily gave his nod. “I didn’t know if this is something that she really wants for her 30th year,” Freddie surmises. “Lea is not the type who thinks that way. It’s others who think that way and she simply agrees with it or not. She’s a quick reactor to everything. You’ll know instantly when she doesn’t like something.”

The concert was conceptualized middle of last year. That’s why even while Lea was still in New Yorkdoing Fantine in Les Miserables, she was already in the thick of preparations for her 30th anniversary show. “We were already doing video and telephone conferences towards the middle part of last year because the script was already done,” Freddie says. “By the time she returned last November, the concert was fully blocked, scored and scripted. The original date for the concert was her birthday on Feb. 22, but she requested it to be moved because she was doing a lot of other things.”

Initially, Freddie thought the distance would pose to be a real challenge in planning the concert. But technology solved that for them. “When Lea e-mailed the highlights of her career, that took forever to go through,” he recalls. “My job is to control the big picture. So from the original list she gave me, I had to counter why we had to include this or that. There were a lot which didn’t go through. We simply included the ones that will move the story alone.”

The concert is written like a musical, which is only apt for Lea’s illustrious career background in theater. “She did a lot of plays locally, but we are only citing one or two songs from the local productions. Then there’s West End and Broadway. The songs represent one era and another area all together. That’s one beautiful thing about stage music. It’s storytelling, so you can use it to apply to the format which is what will fit Lea best. She grew up in musical theater, so we came up exactly with that concept.”

Freddie cannot be more pleased that they have practically every important video footage of Lea’s performances and public appearances to put her 30th anniversary show together. “It greatly helped that Lea is a daughter of a woman who shamelessly recorded her daughter’s life,” he laughs. “We have a phalanx of videos that we need.”

Joining Lea in the show are the people she worked with in Philippine musical theater — Michael Williams, Menchu Lauchengco, Robbie Guevarra, Raul Montessa, Chari Arespacochaga and Annalyn Bantug, the latest Miss Saigon. “This is a dream cast of actors,” Freddie beams.

Throughout the show, Lea will don fabulous gowns by Rajo Laurel and will have very brief time for costume change as the Filharmonika Orchestra, conducted by her brother Gerard, plays a suite to introduce the next number.

“The important thing is the amount of trust you have to put in to the people around you because you won’t even have time to look at yourself in the mirror before you come out again on stage,” Freddie explains. “Lea learned to trust her wardrobe people way back during her Miss Saigon days. The Rajo-Lea connection also goes back 30 years ago when they began together in The King and I.”

Freddie wrote the lyrics for Lea’s opening song titled It’s in the Genes, which will see her in a rap number, believe it or not. When Lea was 14, Freddie and Louie Ocampo wrote a song for her titled Kailan, about a girl wondering when love would come to her. It was used for her Viva Films movie, Like Father, Like Son, with Herbert Bautista.

On Lea’s wedding in January 2004, Freddie and Louie wrote another love song for her, Two Words, which she rendered as she marched down the aisle of the Los Angeles Cathedral, while her then groom, Robert Chien, was crying in the altar. “There was like a 20-year gap between the two songs and we are bringing it together in a medley which Lea can claim to be her own,” Freddie says. “Two Words is like the answer to Kailan.”

Throughout all these years, Freddie laments that Lea has not given herself the time to develop her other fields of interest. “The girl is so smart in so many things,” he says of his student. “She is so intelligent. Her sense of political science and the academe are very impressive. I believe you need to do other things that interest you to make you very whole. That’s what I wished she could have done, although I know her priorities now. It’s family and career. She’s very protective of her family and her life. She’s actually very contented in maintaining whatever talent was given to her. Her own hunger for perfection is only with her work.”

http://www.philstar.com/index.php?Entertainment&p=49&type=2&sec=31&aid=2008051640