THEATER REVIEW: Liza and Ice’s intimate confessions in ‘Choosing’

Liza Diño’s playwriting debut, the two-hander “Choosing (Not A Straight Play)” provides unrestricted access to her and her husband Ice Seguerra’s romantic and sexual experiences. It is packed with intimate details, including auto-eroticism, graphic descriptions of sexual pleasure and painful confessions of sexual abuse.

Starring herself and Seguerra as Stella and Mitch, respectively, the play is a platform for the real-life married couple to open up about their private, highly personal stories that shaped who they are today. It’s an “oversharing” play, intended to resonate with audiences who may have dealt with similar experiences on gender identity and sexual orientation.

While Choosing feels like autofiction, Diño actually blended hers and Seguerra’s journey from childhood to adulthood to their married life with a collection of other people’s true stories, mostly from the LGBTQIA+ community.

The short vignettes in the first two acts — mostly romantic and sexual in nature — vary between amusing and serious. The final act, though, shifts into a major marital argument, which started out strong but eventually became bloated and dragging.

Director Anton Juan’s vision of the material manifests in sparse production design, simple lighting and visual projections. He simply let the stage become both a classroom and a confessional.

Diño’s storytelling, with additional lines from Seguerra, comes from a place of self-awareness and the desire to advocate self-acceptance. There is a constant nudge to the audience to choose to pursue their desired gender, sexual orientation and relationships.

But the writing is plain, lacking in style and poetry, yet coherent with clear descriptions. It reads more like a passionate, articulate blog post than an elegant novel (it was written in three days).

The advantage of its prosaic language, though, is that it leaves no room for misinterpretation, as it aims to be a serious educational piece for mature audiences about the complexities of human sexuality. Definitions of gender-related terminologies are even video-projected to tutor us.

The Philippines has been ranked as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly nations in the world. In Asia, we rank number one. We grew up exposed to drags and gays as a very normal part of society, even before the initialism of LGBT became a part of our collective consciousness.

And so Choosing guns for 100-percent acceptance and acquisition of equal legal rights rather than mere friendliness toward the LGBT community. It persuades a shift in our worldview, preaching that sexuality is mysterious and too complex, and that everyone should choose to embrace and feel comfortable with their sexual desires and gender expressions.

The play is an LGBT pamphlet-slash-adult romance, performed with competence from the duo, with Diño proving her natural gift as a dramatic stage actress. Its most engaging moments are Stella and Mitch’s backstories, sprinkled with comedy and drama.

Curiously missing from the material are their coming-out stories and family reactions. There’s also no insight into any religious or spiritual struggle, which most LGBT-identified people experience, especially in a very Christian country like the Philippines.

The play’s strength lies in its clear storytelling and a knack for easy humor, pathos and candor, despite some tendency to spoon-feed. It is unafraid to be uninhibited and bold for the sake of its advocacy.

Choosing runs until 7 July at the Power Mac Center Spotlight Blackbox Theater, Circuit Makati.