“Every time I set foot onstage for a performance, I become a new person,” says Pinoy West End star Joanna Ampil, who has recently come home to do a two-night Valentine show—her first solo concert—at the Music Museum.

One of the more successful Pinoy actors in London’s West End, Joanna’s luminous career in theater began when she was chosen to play Kim in Miss Saigon in 1993. The role has since been one of her favorites.

“It was very fulfilling each time I played Kim,” Joanna shares. “I got to apply a lot of my personal hardships and happiness to the role, which made it more real not just for me but for the audience, too. There’s nothing worse than faking your emotions.”

After Miss Saigon, Joanna was handpicked by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber to play the role of Mary Magdalene the prostitute in Jesus Christ Superstar. She also happened to be the first Filipino to be part of the cast.

“The pressure was immense since we were opening the show,” she remembers. “It was a total change of environment for me and it was my first time to work with Lord Webber.” Joanna found the role tough to know, but she regards Mary Magdalene as the ideal female lover. “She had so much love to give [that] it changed her lifestyle and humbled [her] for the man she truly loved.”

Joanna also had the chance to play Eponine, the spoiled daughter who became an accomplice of her father’s crimes in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and later as Fantine, who gets abandoned by her lover after getting her pregnant.

She finds Fantine calm and dignified and Eponine very juvenile.

“It took a while before I could relate to Fantine fully,” Joanna expresses. “I cannot be more different than the character especially with how Hugo described her physically in the book. It was somewhat daunting in a way that the experiences which I eventually used to play the role were too painful to delve into. But eventually, I developed a certain serenity within me during my journey as Fantine.”

Joanna, who had carved a name for herself in West End, had one wish: to finally perform in her home country. This wish came true in 2008, when she was picked by Audie Gemora to play Maria in West Side Story.  Joanna had to adjust her accent to fit the role of the Puerto Rican teenager who falls in love with a New Yorker who belongs to her brother’s rival gang.

All the women characters Joanna has played have back stories of despair and sacrificial love, but all of them were able to transform their misfortunes and emerged as heroines.

“My real-life drama is a mirror of this somehow. But I’m not sure how I’ll manage to become a heroine. I’m still trying to figure that out,” Joanna reveals.

In Joanna’s Valentine concert, however, she won’t be singing in character but as herself. Her repertoire consists of songs that have influenced and inspired her to be what she is today.

Titled “Joanna Ampil, I Love . . . ,” the concert is on February 13 and 14, 8 p.m., at the Music Museum. For tickets, call (02) 721 6726. Ticket prices are P4,400, P3,300, P2,200, and P1,100.

Sponsors include Conzace, Your Body ACEssentialz, Marciano’s Italian New Yorker Cuisine, Gluthathione of Jiao Ming Marketing, the Philippine Star, Business Mirror, Getzmo.Com and 105.1 Crossover.

Related stories:
Joanna Ampil holds Valentine concert in Manila
Pinoy West End star comes home to do us proud
9 reasons to watch West Side Story
Video: West Side Story’s “Tonight”