Exit Left Collective presents its inaugural production "Balay Dolor: A Live Draft"

A fearless first look at faith, queerness, and inheritance from Palanca Award-winning playwright Iago Guballa.

This November, Exit Left Collective makes its debut on the Philippine theater scene with Balay Dolor: A Live Draft — raw and experimental stage reading of a full-length play by Iago Guballa, Palanca Award- winning playwright for The Echoist (3rd Prize, Full-Length Play Category, 2024). Directed by Robert Bradly Hao (Loyola Schools Award for the Arts, 2022), the production invites audiences to witness a play in the act of becoming — part reading, part revelation.

Set in a secluded reformatory school for wayward boys, Balay Dolor follows a lone priest and his three remaining students as they are visited by the priest’s prodigal brother — a wanted criminal whose arrival brings with it the ten plagues of Exodus. What unfolds is a haunting confrontation between faith and flesh, discipline and desire, salvation and sin.

The Live Draft is not just a conventional staged reading. It breathes life into a full artistic scripture still in development — a work already rich, provocative, and unafraid to bare itself. Through spoken dialogue and a growing vision of staging, Balay Dolor offers an intimate first look into the making of a future landmark in contemporary Filipino theater.

Balay Dolor: A Live Draft runs from 8, 14, 15, and 16 November 2025 at the Joselito and Olivia Campos Interactive Teaching Lab, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University.

Ticket Prices: Php 1,500 (Gold) | Php 1,000 (Silver)
Early Bird Discount until October 10: Php 1,200 (Gold) | Php 850 (Silver)

For tickets, please visit go.ateneo.edu/balaydolor-tickets

Exit Left Collective is a gathering of artists exploring what it means to make theatre in motion — restless, searching, and alive. We tell stories that are still becoming, and we invite audiences to witness that becoming with us.