Scheduled for October 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, and 25, 2026, the production will run at Teatro Marco in Maginhawa, Quezon City, with performances at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Written and directed by Mark Ghosn, the play explores what happens when the carefully managed identities people present online collide with the complications of real life.
Its title offers an immediate clue to the kind of humor audiences can expect. “Tententenen” evokes the dramatic sound effect frequently imitated in Filipino online videos to introduce a surprise, a sudden revelation, or an exaggerated moment of suspense. The expression has become recognizable within the country’s social media culture, where creators often use timing, reactions, and unexpected turns to make ordinary situations entertaining.
Teatro Marco brings that familiar comic device into live theater, using it as a reference point for a story shaped by internet trends and the behavior they encourage. The production draws on the gap between what people show online and what happens behind the scenes, examining how the desire to maintain an appealing public image can lead to increasingly absurd situations.
Rather than treating meme culture simply as a collection of jokes, Tententenen uses it to explore the ways online habits influence everyday relationships, personal expectations, and the identities people construct for others to see.
The production’s premise reflects a recognizable part of contemporary Filipino life. Social media has become a space where people share experiences, cultivate public personas, follow viral trends, and engage with content designed to attract attention. What begins as entertainment can also influence how people communicate, make decisions, and present themselves to their families, friends, and wider communities.
In Tententenen, those familiar behaviors become material for comedy. Viral trends, shock-value reveals, and the absurdity of online interactions provide the foundation for situations that move beyond the screen and into the characters’ everyday lives.
One of the play’s central ideas is the difficulty of maintaining a carefully curated identity when reality refuses to cooperate. Online, people can select what to share and how to frame it. In person, unexpected developments and the reactions of others can quickly undermine that control.
Ghosn described the concept through the contrast between a polished online identity and the panic that can emerge when real-life circumstances take over.
“The show explores what happens when your carefully curated online empire meets total offline panic. We took elements that every Filipino sees on their feeds daily, and put them under a theatrical magnifying glass,” the writer and director said.
The statement captures the production’s approach to contemporary comedy: taking familiar online behavior and examining it more closely through a live narrative. The humor comes from situations that audiences may recognize from their own feeds, but the theatrical format allows those situations to develop through characters and their interactions.
The result is a comedy built around the tension between appearance and reality, with internet culture serving as both a source of jokes and a way to examine how people navigate social expectations.
The cast has described Tententenen as “Magulo, chaotic,” signaling a production that embraces disorder and unexpected developments as part of its comedic approach.
The performers also indicated that the play would explore the darker side of the online world. Their comments suggest that the production will look beyond the entertaining surface of internet trends to consider the less comfortable behaviors that can accompany them.
Among the topics the cast mentions is the popularity of livestream selling. Livestreams have become a familiar feature of online commerce, combining product promotion with real-time interaction and personality-driven entertainment. For viewers, these broadcasts can make shopping feel like an ongoing conversation rather than a conventional transaction.
The cast joked that audiences would also be “bubudulin” at Teatro Marco, bringing the language of persuasion and online selling into the play’s promotional description.
The reference provides a glimpse into the kind of contemporary experiences informing the production. By drawing from recognizable online activities, Tententenen connects its humor to situations that audiences may encounter in their daily digital routines.
Its interest in the darker side of online culture also points to the contradictions that can emerge when attention becomes a priority. A persona designed to attract viewers may not reflect a person’s private circumstances, while the pursuit of engagement can turn ordinary experiences into performances for an audience.
The play approaches these contradictions through comedy, using exaggeration and chaotic situations to explore the distance between the image people project and the reality they must eventually confront.
Teatro Marco’s Maginhawa venue provides an intimate setting for the production, which places its emphasis on character-driven comedy rather than elaborate spectacle.
In a black box theater, the relationship between performers and audience becomes an important part of the experience. The smaller, more immediate environment can bring attention to an actor’s timing, delivery, expression, and reaction. These details are particularly relevant to comedy, where the effectiveness of a scene may depend on a well-timed pause or the gradual escalation of an awkward exchange.
For a play inspired by internet humor, the live setting also creates a contrast with the way memes and viral videos are usually consumed. Online content is often encountered in short clips, with the next post only a swipe away. A theatrical production asks audiences to follow a story as it unfolds, allowing the characters and their situations to develop beyond the brief moment that might otherwise become a meme.
That difference offers Teatro Marco an opportunity to translate digital references into a sustained stage narrative. Familiar expressions and online behaviors can serve as entry points, while the characters’ responses give the comedy its direction.
The production’s focus on character-driven storytelling also places the performers at the center of the experience. Rather than depending primarily on spectacle, the play draws on the situations they inhabit and the way those situations develop into increasingly complicated encounters.
The themes explored in Tententenen extend beyond the internet itself. Beneath the viral references and comedic chaos lies an examination of public image, private reality, and the pressure to meet the expectations of other people.
These concerns can be particularly visible online, where individuals often feel encouraged to present a version of themselves that appears successful, entertaining, or worthy of attention. The same pressure can also be felt in family relationships and everyday social interactions, where people may struggle to reconcile what others expect from them with what they actually experience.
By bringing these tensions into a comedy play, Teatro Marco offers audiences a way to recognize the absurdity of such situations without approaching them solely as serious social commentary.
The Filipino context is central to the production’s appeal. Its title references a familiar online expression, while the cast’s mention of livestream selling connects the play to a recognizable part of the local digital landscape. These details give the comedy a contemporary point of reference without requiring audiences to be theater specialists to understand its premise.
For younger theatergoers, the use of meme culture may provide an accessible introduction to independent Philippine theater. Meanwhile, the play’s broader themes can resonate with audiences who have experienced the difference between how people appear in public and how they behave in private.
The production’s challenge is to make those familiar references work within the rhythm of live performance, where humor must develop through the actors, the writing, and the unfolding situations rather than through a quick edit or a caption on a screen.
As writer and director, Ghosn shapes the production’s central concept around the collision of online performance and offline reality. His description of the play emphasizes the transformation of everyday digital experiences into material for the stage.
That approach places the writing at the intersection of contemporary observation and comedy. The online world supplies recognizable behaviors and situations, while the theatrical format creates space to examine what happens when those behaviors are carried into real-life encounters.
The cast’s comments reinforce the production’s emphasis on chaos and the less polished side of internet culture. However, beyond the information provided by the creative team, specific plot details and individual character storylines have not been disclosed.
What is clear is that Tententenen intends to use comedy to examine a world in which people can become performers of their own lives, managing the impressions they make while dealing with circumstances that cannot always be controlled.
The title’s dramatic sound effect becomes a fitting reference for that premise. It suggests the anticipation of a reveal, but the play’s broader focus is on what happens when the reveal exposes the difference between the version of events presented to others and the reality underneath.
With its combination of internet references, character-driven comedy, and an intimate theatrical setting, Tententenen brings a distinctly contemporary subject into independent Philippine theater.
The production will run at Teatro Marco in Maginhawa, Quezon City, on October 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, and 25, 2026. Shows are scheduled at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
You can buy tickets through Teatro Marco’s official website and Ticket2Me.
For audiences accustomed to seeing dramatic reveals and absurd online encounters unfold on their screens, Teatro Marco’s latest comedy offers a chance to experience similar themes in a live setting. Through Ghosn’s writing and direction, the production turns the familiar language of Filipino meme culture into a theatrical exploration of online identities, everyday expectations, and the chaos that follows when a carefully maintained image meets reality. (with reports from Lexi Mercader)