I was looking for my Maid In Manhattan DVD earlier among my brother's messy pile of DVDs and VCDs when I saw these 2 CDs, just marked "Disc 1" and "Disc 2" in Tinay's familiar handwriting.

It was the video from Playshop 2002.

Man, I remember that year, when I first got a job as Myles' assistant teacher. I was supposed to be Ria's assistant for her class, but when I got to talk to Tita Luna, she told me I was to be under Myles instead, for the basic musical theater class. And to keep me in shape, I enrolled in the more advanced class under Tito Audie.

The class I taught did selected scenes from Godspell. I looked up my entry from back on this day that year, and we were doing casting auditions then. I was so darn proud of how we finally got Nicole to sing, though it was all thanks to Rony for shutting her up, though, hahaha. Then I realized that one of my other students who thinks she's in the A-crowd was becoming such a bitch-in-the-making. It really disappoints me when there are kids like that who enroll in the classes just because their parents want them out of the way, or just to keep them occupied in the summer. Sophie was making no effort at all during the entire duration of Playshop.

As for our own class, Tito Audie initially proposed we do something like "The 12 Dancing Princesses". But even though our class was really huge, we didn't have much guys in it. So we ended up doing a musical revue called You've Got a Friend. It's composed of scenes about friendship, ranging from kids just playing around, teenagers giddy over boys, guys making bets over a girl, best friends making up and prepping each other up for a wedding, and of course, in true Trumpets tradition, the friendship with God. Some of us were grouped together and wrote our own scripts, while the rest were given scenes made by Tito Audie and Tita Luna to work with. I got grouped with Kathy, Lawyn, Moira and Leah, and we did this "Pre-Prom Night" vignette. We had a blast and a barrel of laughs writing the entire scene while sitting on the floor with Tita Luna. But then when I realized that our scene comes right after the "Pick-Up" scene that Jamie made with Karl, Doods, Jun and Dari, I knew that we can't top the laughs that other scene made. But hey, we pulled it off great, even though we had to sing a pop song ("Points of View").

I miss that year.
Different lines of different songs from that show is playing in my head right now. "Self-Portrait", "Clouds", "Alone in the Universe", "Telephone Hour" (which led to the full-scale production of last year's Bye Bye Birdie, "Unexpected Song", "Come In From The Rain", "Old Friend", and "Side by Side".

Maybe I'll watch the video later, plus the videos I made during our rehearsals. I can't seem to count how many times I enjoyed listening to "Clouds" or how many times I rolled on the floor laughing at "Pick-Up".