Just like in the American musical fantasy film “Wicked,” the actors performing in Pepe Diokno’s musical “Isang Himala,” led by Aicelle Santos, each wore in-ear monitors (IEMs), where they all received the music they would be singing to.

This also meant that no music was played on the set while the live vocals were recorded. “We wore lapels, too, so the set had to be really quiet. We would hear the music from the IEMs and what people on the set heard were just our voices,” Santos explained in a recent interview with Lifestyle.

The movie “Himala,” released in 1982, was a collaboration of three National Artists for Film: director Ishmael Bernal, writer Ricky Lee, and actor Nora Aunor. Some years later, Lee turned it into a stage musical with the music of Vince de Jesus. “Himala, Isang Musikal” has been staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines once, and twice in Makati City, featuring Santos and Bituin Escalante. This is the version that Diokno brought to film.