By Leah Salterio

Veteran singer-actress-comedienne Mitch Valdes was in a quandary before receiving Ballet Manila artistic director Lisa Macuja Elizalde’s offer to essay the iconic role of Lola Basyang in the company’s restaging of its beloved Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang trilogy.

“Not that I’m one of the busiest performers,” Valdes qualifies. “After quarantine, when everybody was getting back to their feet, I couldn’t go back to the old stuff I was doing – events, lounge acts, concerts.

“I said I wanted to refresh and we needed new materials. You know if you are in this age, it’s hard to look for writers who understand the performance that I like doing. It’s a new generation.”

Valdes discloses she didn’t exactly know what to do at that time. But then came the call from Macuja Elizalde asking her: “Do you want to do Lola Basyang?” And she readily grabbed the offer. “I said, ‘Yes! Go!’ There was the only request I made to Lisa. I told her, ‘Can I get off the rocking chair and interact with the cast?’ Lisa agreed.”

While the character indeed still has her rocking chair, Valdes is steering away from the typical Lola Basyang most Filipinos have been used to who is dressed in baro’t saya with her hair knotted in a bun. Her short hair colored golden brown, this new Basyang will be seen in a loose, colorful housedress and sneakers as her take on the hip grandmother more attuned to the children she is telling stories to. Not surprisingly, the comedienne – a graduate of television gag shows such as Super Laff-In and Champoy – will also be injecting humor into the role.

To further put the actress-singer’s talents to good use, Macuja Elizalde requested her to sing a commissioned song, Kuwento ni Lola Basyang, composed by Von De Guzman with lyrics by Luna Inocian (who also wrote the script). Thus, Valdes gets to open the ballet production singing the song and closing it too with whole cast gathered around her.

Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang has been an eye-opening experience for Valdes who notes it is actually her first time to work with young kids. She read with the children who auditioned and has been running lines with those who got the roles since rehearsals started in the studio a few weeks ago.

Working with the dancers of Ballet Manila has likewise been a new process for Valdes, who expresses admiration for their exceptional abilities. “Ballet is a beautiful and a lovely art form. The ballerina, my goodness, she was flying from left to right but was still smiling, heaving but still on a performance level.”

As a young girl, Valdes reveals she actually dreamed of becoming a dancer. “I was about nine or ten when the West Side Story musical came out. I told myself, when I grow up, I want to be Rita Moreno! I’m fascinated with dance. That’s why my mouth was open while I was watching the early Lola Basyang rehearsals.”

Ballet Manila’s Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang premiered in 2008 in partnership with Anvil Publishing, with the trilogy based on author Christine Bellen-Ang’s retelling of the stories of Severino Reyes dating back to nearly a century ago. It enjoyed unprecedented success in its initial run and has since been restaged several times and even led to a sequel in 2013, Tatlo Pang Kuwento ni Lola Basyang.

Veteran actress Luz Fernandez, who originally performed as Lola Basyang on radio in the 1950s and played a storytelling grandmother on television in the series Ora Engkantada, was Ballet Manila’s first Lola Basyang and was cast in the same role in all succeeding performances numbering over 100 in all. She passed on in 2022.

“Luz Fernandez was a very good friend from the ’70s,” Valdes says. “She did a straight Lola Basyang role. She also came from the last end of vaudeville performers.”

Valdes, who herself has enjoyed a long and prolific career in show business, was exposed to music and entertainment at an early age. “My father had a wall-to-wall collection of all the club acts of comedians. We had no TV then. We used to listen to all the records. I thought it was normal to have the kind of humor (they did), although I didn’t use it then.”

Her father was a singer and when he found work in Japan, the entire family went with him. “He used to bring me to his night club acts in Japan, with all those naked people walking. I had open eyes that early. (That’s why) You could not easily shock me,” shares Valdes who says she was still a bit shy and introverted as a grade schooler in Japan.

“When I came home and I was a new student at St. Scholastica’s, with the German nuns in school, that shocked me!” she laughs. “I was still English-speaking then, a bit ‘warsh-warsh’. Nobody liked me. Today, everybody is trying to be slang. Everybody wants to sound like Kim Kardashian.”

Valdes found theater as early as high school when she was made to join declamation contests. “I wrote plays, I directed them. I staged productions and that was where I started to be accepted.”

Her mother wanted her to take up Business in college, but she only got to first year. An alternate path opened when Valdes came to Repertory Philippines in 1968. She started with production work. “They don’t put you in a play right away,” she recalls. “With Bibot Amador and Baby Barredo, you will sweep the floor first. But I grew with Repertory.”

Then Valdes also discovered PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association), with the likes of the late director (eventually named National Artist for Film) Lino Brocka handled Filipino adaptations. Valdes also got to work with esteemed actor Mario O’Hara.

“It was very rich,” Valdes beams. “On one hand, you had British-American theater with Rep and on the other hand, you stage a play with PETA. We performed at Fort Santiago for PETA, but we had to stop every time there’s a barge passing and everybody would hear the loud horn.”

When author Cristine Bellen-Ang shared with her husband Peter Ang that it was Valdes portraying Lola Basyang for Ballet Manila, he supposedly reacted, “Ah, si Maya Valdes!”

Told this anecdote, Valdes immediately remarks, “Seventies ’yun pag ganu’n ang tawag sa akin. I was in the gag show, Super Laff-In. Coming from a convent school, all of a sudden, my barkada was Balot, Tange, Apeng Daldal, Chichay, Aruray, Metring David… They were all obscene!” chuckles the comedienne who most likely inherited extra humor and wit from those veteran stars.

She also started singing with a band at night, but soon got a dose of harsh reality.

“I was told, ‘You cannot become a singer.’ It was short of saying, ‘You do not look good.’ ‘The singers, Maya, look good.’ The likes of Pilita [Corrales] who wore fully beaded gowns with a 24-inch waistline... I was told, singing for a comedienne is not really done because the audience might just laugh at me. That was very, very painful. I was miserable when I heard that throughout the ’70s until I quit TV. Can you imagine? Nobody does that in midstream.”

In the ’80s, Valdes changed her name from Maya to Mitch. After performing in a concert, Girlie Rodis asked her if she wanted to be managed to which she said yes. “She made me wear an Inno Sotto. She turned me into a girl. Then, we did all the lounge acts and concerts. The repackaging worked. I could sing a couple of bluesy songs. I could sing a couple of comic songs. So people realized I could also sing.” 

She also became part of the gag show, Champoy, where she joined the likes of Subas Herrero, Noel Trinidad, Tessie Tomas, Gary Lising and Cherie Gil from 1980 to 1985 on RPN 9. It was Champoy, she says, that started guesting major stars who did comedy and cracked jokes on the show.

In 1989, she took on the title role in Katy, a musical on the life of the acclaimed Queen of Philippine vaudeville and jazz Katy de la Cruz. Valdes describes Katy as a “lifesaver,” where she got to sing compositions by Ryan Cayabyab (later awarded National Artist for Music) that brought to the fore the power and unique qualities of her voice.

In the late ’90s, Valdes took on a role in Nick Joaquin’s Pinoy Agonistes, a play about Martial Law. “While we were rehearsing, we got messages on our beeper that Edsa Dos was happening. Can you imagine?” (Nick Joaquin, by the way, was another National Artist – for Literature – that Valdes had gotten to work with.)

Valdes considers herself fortunate that she has been in all mediums. “I have done everything. I have a very rich experience that I didn’t realize I have. You can put me anywhere. And I will swim, hopefully.”

 In recent years, she played a steady role in the popular teleserye, Ang Probinsiyano, as the brash Kapitana. And now, she has become the revered Lola Basyang – in a ballet production! – ready to put a fresh stamp on a character known to generations of Filipinos.

For Valdes, the secret to longevity in the entertainment industry is clear. “The reason I’m still here is, I love the process more than the performance. Even if you’ve been performing with friends for 20 years, they still come up with something new… Every time I get bored, something happens,” she says. “Somebody up there must really be looking out for me.”

So, will there be a retirement for Mitch Valdes?

“No!” she instantly fires back, as she of the storied life heads back to the studio to transform into Lola Basyang the storyteller once more.