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The week before last my wife and I attended two
significant theater events of Tanghalang Filipino at the Cultural
Center of the Philippines. The first was the launching of Savage
Beast edited by Joi Barrios and published by Ma-Yi, an
Asian-American theater company based in New York City. Later we saw
the tail-end of the Virgin Labfest 4, three one- act plays staged
for the first time – the highlight of which must be the Ilocano
funeral play, Dong-ao, of National Artist for Literature F. Sionil
Jose.
There were many notable theater
people in these events; I can cite two involved dramatists, Joi
Barrios and Chris Millado. They belonged to that generation that
protested the Education Act of 1980, seen as the source of problems
(tuition hikes and commercialization) plaguing schools today.
The protests then in the early
80s revived the student movement in the midst of repression. Joi and
Chris, both theater majors in UP Diliman, founded along with others
Tropang Bodabil which presented Ilocula (Ilocano Dracula) in street
demonstrations. Tropang Bodabil evolved into Peryante , and it is in
one of its shows in 1982 that I first saw Joi as a performer. She
would become a committed dramatist, poet, and Ph.D. credited with
many scholarly and creative works.
I saw Chris Millado’s first
play Buwan at Baril in Eb Major at the Faculty Center in 1985. His
Panata sa Kalayaan (Ode to Freedom) in 1986 presented worldwide by
PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association) and other groups
like Patatag would mark the celebration of people power after
toppling the dictatorship. Chris directed Dong-Ao, (translated by
Rody Vera), an Ilocano wake play where Pepe Samson, the activist
character of Jose’s novel Mass, is mourned. Here type characters
of the novel come alive and give comments on the life of Pepe.
Two other plays, Pamantasang
Hirang (Sa Dilim Man) written by Tim Dacanay and directed by Hazel
Gutierrez, a satire on fraternities and politicians, and Masaganang
Ekonomiya written by Allan Lopez and directed by J.Victor Villareal,
an expressionist and absurd rendering of state torture of insurgents
against the backdrop of government claims of economic prosperity,
constitute the political drama of that evening.
The launching of Savage Beast was
preceded by a reading of excerpts from plays presented over the
years by the Ma-yi Theater Company– plays included in the volume
edited with a well-researched introduction and three more essays by
Joi.
Joi says that the “naming” of
Ma-yi (a precolonial term) theater company (founded in 1989 by
Filipino-Americans in New York City) was an act of decolonization.
Choosing not to take part in “the assimilationist discourse that
dwells on Accept us, America!’, Ma-Yi, (says Joi) has concerned
itself with the struggles of sovereignty in the homeland, the class
struggles articulated by Carlos Bulosan, and the continuing tensions
brought about by the global war on terror and neocolonial
globalization.
She points out that the concept
of pagdamay or empathy in the pasyon has led Ma-yi to transform
itself into an Asian-American company. So far, my wife and I have
watched only one full performance The Romance of Magno Rubio based
on Bulosan’s writings, and the dramatic readings of three other
plays included in Savage Beast. The book (available in Solidaridad,
Fully Booked, Power Books, and A Different Bookstore) deserves a
full treatment next time.
On the other, Jose’s Dong-ao
seems to put a closure on the fate of Pepe Samson who in Mass is
last seen saying good-bye to Tia Nena and Fr.Jess as he joins the
NPA. There is a reference to Pepe in Jose’s later novel Viajero—a
meditation on revolution.
I had wished for Frankie Jose to
write a sequel to Mass (excerpted in Kamao, post-EDSA CCP’s
anthology of protest literature) and was surprised that he had
already written the play. Here Jose resorts to his device of getting
different perspectives as in Vibora, a novel about Artemio Ricarte.
In Dong-ao the other characters of Mass take turns remembering,
eulogizing, and also chiding Pepe for living the life of an
insurgent.
Inevitably speakers tell the
audience more about themselves. The colonel (then the lieutenant who
arrested Pepe) and Senator Reyes represent the views of
opportunistic/corrupt members of society. Dr. Hortenso (said to be
modeled after a marxist U.P. professor) comes off as an ineffectual
revolutionary in his “I told you ” manner of addressing the bier
of Pepe Samson. Fr. Jess is ever the sacrificing priest doing
apostolate work in a poor parish in Tondo. It is the old woman in
black (“the chieftest mourner”) who grips the audience as she
wails with an exhortation that moves the youth among the mourners to
rise and carry on the struggle of Pepe Samson –a denouement worthy
of activist drama. Isang bagsak!
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