Award-winning actress, author, director, playwright, scholar, literary critic, and book editor Dr. Rustica Carpio passed away last February 1, 2022, in Imus, Cavite, at 91.
Dr. Carpio received numerous local and international awards and recognitions throughout her career, including the Best Actress in the 33rd Gawad Urian in 2010 for Brillante Mendoza’s Lola, which was screened in the FEU Auditorium in 2019. Dr. Rusty, as her friends would call her, is known in the halls of Far Eastern University as a professor, a former head of the Department of Communication, and the former Executive Director of the FEU President’s Committee on Culture (PCC), now called the FEU Center for the Arts.
FEU Center for the Arts held an online requiem mass for the late Dr. Carpio last February 9, 2022, via FEU’s official Facebook Page. The online mass was attended by families, friends, and former colleagues of Dr. Carpio. According to Ms. Edwina Lema-Beech, a former member of the FEU Performing Arts group and one of Dr. Carpio’s students and mentees, “I owe a lot to Ms. Rusty. It is not only me that you have raised well but a lot of people. Dr. Carpio became an instrument in the success of the group, making them well-known in the country.”
Moreover, Dr. Lydia A. Palaypay, a former officer of FEU, shared how she and Dr. Carpio became friends and described her friend as one of the nation’s national treasures. She also said that “Her legacy will live in her works in literature and films. Rest in peace, my dear friend, Rusty.”
Dr. Caprio was and will always be an inspiration to many FEU alumni artists. Our sincerest condolences to the bereaved family and friends of the legendary, Dr. Rustica Carpio on behalf of the whole FEU alumni community.
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