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ANTONIO O. MABESA
National Artist for Theater (2022)
January 27, 1935-October 4, 2019
In a career that spanned more than four decades, director, actor, and teacher Antonio Mabesa, also known as the Lion of the Theater, greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of Philippine theater. In the early seventies, with some Filipino students in Hawaii, Mabesa formed Tanghalang Repertory, a theater group devoted solely to the production of traditional and modern Filipino plays. Upon returning to the Philippines, he joined the Department of Speech Communications and Drama in the University of the Philippines Diliman where he laid the ground for a solid theater curriculum founded on the classics Thus, the Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas or DUP was born in 1976. In 1976, he initiated the formation of the UP Playwrights Theater, an adjunct production arm of DUP to exclusively stage original works and revivals of plays by Filipino playwrights. He was instrumental in the development of an academic program for the training of theater artists and scholars. He was the Metropolitan Theater’s Theater Director in 1978. In the twilight of his years, he helped another university, the University of Angeles in Pampanga with its theater arts program, directing plays and conducting classes with the school’s students.
