Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas (Philippines)

MULAT was born of Abadeja: Ang Ating Sinderela (Abadeja: Our Cinderella), a puppet play based on a Visayan folktale about the Cinderella-like Abadeja written and directed by University Professor Emeritus Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio who acknowledged influences from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Moved by the students’ enthusiasm and spurred by her own long-standing dream of founding a children’s theatre group, Lapeña-Bonifacio established TEATRONG MULAT NG PILIPINAS in 1977. “MULAT” means to awaken children to the beauty and richness not only of their own culture, but of still unfamiliar Asian cultures.

Teatrong Mulat seeks to entertain and educate Filipino children through the propagation of Filipino and Asian stories and theatrical forms in the Philippines and other Asian countries.

Storytellers/Puppeteers:

Amihan Bonifacio-Ramolete grew up no stranger to theatre arts, starting as a child actress when she was six years old in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author under the direction of Tony Mabesa. She went on to live out the discipline of the stage as her mother, Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, in 1977, founded Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas (MULAT). She teaches at the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, College of Arts & Letters, U.P. Diliman where she handles communication and theatre classes in the undergraduate and graduate levels and also conducts children’s theatre and puppetry workshops for children and adults.

Teaching aside, she acts as Company Manager and Senior Puppeteer of MULAT Theatre, the University’s only children’s theatre and puppetry group, and Managing Director of Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, the University’s premier theatre company.

Sigmund Roy G. Pecho is a senior Theatre Arts student of the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is a member of the Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas Ensemble (DUP), and a junior puppeteer of the Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas (MULAT). He is currently an Executive Committee officer of the reviving UP Theater Council, a student organization based in the College of Arts and Letters of UP.

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