Mario O'Hara has the Last Clap

We saw Mario O'Hara in Tanghalang Pilipino's The Whore of Ohio and Orpheus Descending. On front row seats, his voice was booming with cuss words. His saliva rainbowed with the halogen lights. He fleshed out his characters and they became larger than life. That's how I remember him. Mario O'Hara succumbed to complications of lukemia and passed away week ago.

I start to discover who he really was. How grand he is in real life as a film maker, actor and director who evaded fame and wrapped himself in a truly humble mystique. He won awards that he didn't accept himself, and opened the gates for Filipinos to the Cannes Film Festival. More importantly, he was a genuine advocate of social change and uncompromised, uncommercialized art while remaining among the ranks of artists/directors/filmmakers recognized only by a more enlightened, more tasteful few, myself excluded.

In the same way he declined interviews and accepting awards, maybe he would have frowned upon it now. How all the phonies, hipsters, and all the people like me who never really knew him would sympathize and pay him tribute.

But he has to understand, we are bound to give him this honor.

Days after his death, and I've been thirsting for information on what he was like in real life. I searh the net, and the accolades kept on running but never got anything he said himself. It is as though in real life, he is as plain or as unrecognized as all of us.

I wish he was on stage again, and I can be that usher who walks to him to give him flowers after curtain call. How I wish, I could recognize.