The Princess Bride

Following the previous year’s success of Marie Ernestine School and Marie Ernestine Science High School (Cebu-Lapulapu-Mandaue) in their “musicale” following their commencement exercise, the school director Marie Ernestine Denise Fajatin-Pegarido, also known as “Peachi” decided to venture into a new milestone in directing. This time, an adaptation. She wanted a different presentation this year.

 

“The Princess Bride”. This is their 2007 presentation at the SM Cinema 1. The original of this version is not a play or musicale you’ve seen in theatres but only a movie on video. There is no music involved in the video because it is just a plain movie with a storyline. So Miss Peachi sought the assistance of Pastor Dino Mapa to write the “libretto” of this play. She also asked this writer (Eugene Tan) to compose the music for the songs of the “libretto” result. This is a new challenge for creativity. This writer also did the task of musical arrangement of accompaniment or “minus-one” for the songs and background music.

 

My preparation in terms of the music and the songs started as early as December 2006. There were lots of changes made as to the tempo and voice range of the songs. The musicality should be adapted to fit the character of the song, and the lyrics of the song. The main cast and performers were mostly from the high school department while the dancers were from the nursery, kindergarten, elementary and also high school department of Marie Ernestine School and Marie Ernestine Science High School. There were two performances in SM Cinema 1, the gala and the matinee. The children and the youth did very well in terms of acting and dancing. Some acting was even very exceptional on versatility and flexibility.

 

To spice up vocal impact on the choir we recorded additional back-up vocals at Salonga Recording Studio. This writer did the technical while Miss Peachi supervised the entire individual recording and Ompong Chiong, the studio owner did the recording and mixing. The recording gave us headache but a KFC meal would just wipe them out. At the cinema, Mao Dizon’s supervision on the effects of light made a great impact on the scenes, Marty, the top tech of Salonga Audio System facilitated all the sound gadgets to be working satisfactory. The costume was artistically fabricated by the costume designers of Val Sandiego.