It was also through Bernal that Gonzales got what he considers his first real breakthrough. Nonon Padilla, the founding artistic director of Tangahalang Pilipino, was looking to hire a production designer for the play Three Judgements. Glowing recommendation in hand, Bernal suggested he take a chance on Gonzales. The young designer’s output was worth the gamble; audiences loved Gonzales’ set, which was composed of a lift, a garotte, a trap door, and an old cabinet that opened in several directions to reveal an assortment of tarot cards. This became the catalyst for Padilla to assign Gonzales to handle larger scale productions at the CCP. When the opportunity to secure a Fullbright Scholarship for a three-year Masters course in theatre design at New York University (NYU) came up, Gonzales packed his bags and set off for the Big Apple. There he was mentored by Eduardo Sicangco, who, he fondly recalls, is his polar opposite in terms of design style. The two had met earlier on when Sicangco was on holiday in Manila. “I brought up my hopes of studying design at NYU; he told me I was still too green and advised me to hold off applying until I built a more substantial portfolio,” adds Gonzales.

He later encountered the term ‘scenographer,’ one commonly used in Europe, and defined as the art of creating performance environments. The term does not strictly apply to matters involving the stage; but in such a context, it encompasses not only traditional scene elements such as walls and drapes, but also light, sound, clothing, movement, and space. “We are storytellers that work with all the devices that can transmit the narrative to the audience,” he says. He cites Gold In Our Veins as a good example. Though it is not set for the stage, it is an environment complete with aromas, sounds, objects, and ambient light that elicits a collective response. 

Scenographers are sought out for their Midas touch, and Gonzales feels it is inevitable for each one of his ilk to have a distinct creative process. He is wary of developing and sticking to one style, emphasising the need for a flexible range and an adaptive eye. “Predictability is not always a good thing,” he cautions. “First, it closes you off from learning how to tackle a wider variety of productions. Second, unlike interior designers and architects who are hired for the signature look they espouse, theatre designers are chosen because they have the ability to become chameleons.” 

Over the years, Gonzales has grown increasingly careful in taking on projects. Whether it be a play, exhibition, or event, he scrutinizes the composition of the production team and its capacity to implement design decisions before pledging his own time, effort, and resources. “I make it a point to listen before I speak at meetings,” he says. “I also do as much research as I can on the subject using obscure sources, if I can find them. If we all hopped on the same Google search train, we’d end up with the same results. Commonplace sources can often lead to commonplace outputs.” And if it does not sit right with him when all is said and done, he will graciously turn it down for the sake of his own sanity. 

Despite his passion for production design, Gonzales acknowledges that it can sometimes be a thankless job. “I’ve been burnt before,” he says bluntly. “This is why I make sure I like not just the material that I am working with, but the environment.” Collaborating with people he looks up to makes any project worth his while. On several occasions, he has accepted a project immediately after seeing the name of an admired colleague among the cast or crew. Artist Mark Lewis Lim Higgins, whose works line the halls of Gold In Our Veins, is one of his frequent team-ups. He had tapped Gonzales to mount his mum’s (Salvacion Lim Higgins) clothing exhibition at the National Museum; they’d also worked together on the book Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the National Dress in Photographs 1860-1960 for two years. “Filipiniana is one of my favourite themes; I derive great satisfaction from working with period pieces and I relish in the challenge of making Filipino material relevant for a contemporary audience,” he adds. This was evident in TERNOCON, a terno-making convention for regional designers staged in collaboration with Bench and the CCP.  

Gonzales attacks live productions and static exhibitions in a similar manner—except that for live shows, he must deal with a space that evolves and shifts over time. He enjoys both, but admits to having less dilemmas to sort out for static installations, as objects do not move, and there is greater control over the whole picture. He lauds technology as a helpful tool to the profession but is no fan of growing too reliant on it. “If your LED screen becomes your solution, then there is no need to see the live show,” he says. “For Ang Huling El Bimbo, we exerted an effort to fully integrate the videos with the 3D scenery because having those videos as a separate entity would divide the audience attention. A Japanese friend once told me that she saw the end of traditional set design after watching a demo of computer-generated scenery in Tokyo. I then told her that there must be a creative mind involved to design the 3D space and to determine the proper content of those screens. The true test of effective video use is when your audience is lost in the performance rather than engrossed by a screen.”

He is of the mind that no idea is truly original—everything has been done before. If a client prompts him to copy, he either ignores the directive or politely declines the project. “I’m not a fan of the term ‘peg,’” he admits. “It pigeonholes a creative mind and does no justice to one’s ability to come up with a more unique statement. I started in university theatre productions where we hardly had budgets to mount sets. This is what equipped me to have the mindset to develop interesting solutions to help drive stories forward. To be honest, I don’t know for certain what drives me to keep creating, but what I do know is that I find joy in being able to take people to a different dimension.”