It wasn’t easy deciding on the three best posts on the “PETA Party of 10” (although we ended up with 17) that Inquirer’s lifestyle editor and theater critic Gibbs Cadiz organized for the Philippine Educational Theater Association and PinoyCentric.

Foot-in-mouth incidents aside, we had a lot of fun reading the entries. (Are there any embarrassing videos on YouTube yet?)

Here are the three posts we loved the most, as unanimously agreed on by the judges (PinoyCentric’s Chicago-based editorial director Armand Frasco, Gibbs, and me):

1. Vlogger Coy Caballes writes: “You can be Juliet, Plato, or even Rizal if you only internalize the character–which requires not only knowledge of material but also the passion to believe you can be.”

Read his post and watch his slideshow here.

2. Martin Malabanan thought the tour wasn’t what he was expecting, “but it turned out to be more interesting and actually more fun.”

The prospect of spending an afternoon singing, dancing and playing dress-up with a bunch of strangers would have scared the hell out of me. It still scared me a bit, but like the other bloggers, I just threw myself into the tour activities which had us learning a song, doing movement exercises, wearing weird costumes (I got a bonnet with dreadlocks), and forming tableaus in a couple of different venues in the theater center, after which, they had us showcase everything we learned on the actual PETA stage.

Read his full-length entry here.

3. Carla Mejia admits to being scared at the prospect of being asked to act, she writes.

We were introduced to the lovely Cecilia B. Garrucho, PETA President and our tour guide as well. When she told us that the tour needed our “cooperation,” the first thing that came to my mind was: Oh. My. Goodness… they’re gonna make us act! What’m I gonna do? The inner actress and scaredy-cat in me warred in my guts but of course I am not out there to be a wet blanket so my inner actress won over.

Carla realizes one thing, however: “I think I wanna be an actress now!”
Read her entry here.

You can read the entries of the other participants here:

• Kai Nicolas: “My PETA Theater Experience“
• Jun Somoza: “Rizal Before the Myth“
• Diego Maranan: “PETA Tour: The Walkthrough and Batang Rizal”
• Arpee Lazaro: “All the World’s a PETA Stage“
• Cielo: “A Different Theater Experience“
• Benj Espina: “I Got Duped by Gibbs”
• Jeff Villafranca: “Pepe Does Back to the Future“
• Faith: “Breaking out at New Manila”
• Joseph Datingguinoo: “Dude, Astig si Jose Rizal”