directorial concept paper

A DIRECTORIAL CONCEPT PAPER FOR

NICK JOAQUIN’S

PORTRAIT OF THE FILIPINO AS AN ARTIST

Theater 231

Marilie Fernandez-Ilagan

Prof. Tony Mabesa

There were two dialogue lines that made me cry as I read Nic Joaquin’s Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. I was surprised at my own reaction because I was not moved that way when I watched the play in Butuan in the late 80s and in Manila a decade after. Could be that I didn’t get the lines or else was distracted at the precise moment when Don Lorenzo and Don Perico told Candida:

PERICO: ”…I do not resent your father, I admire him. He is a very happy man.” (Hindi, Candida - Wala akong sama ng loob sa Papa ninyo, humahanga ako sa kanya. Maligaya siyang tao.)

CANDIDA: “Because he did what he has done?” (Dahil kaya ginawa niya ang kanyang ginawa?)

PERICO: “Because he always knew what he was doing.” (Dahil alam niya lagi ang kanyang ginagawa.)

I felt Don Perico’s lament for the passing away of the artists of his time, whose art died with them for lack of Aeneases to carry it forward. I became conscious of Don Lorenzo’s failure to reconcile his present with his past, a failure as an artist, despite his moral triumph.

The second instance that set me to tears was Pepang’s, addressing Manolo:

MANOLO (sobbing into his hands): Oh father! Oh, poor, poor father! ((Humihikbi sa kanyang palad.) Ay, Papa! Kawawang Papa namin!

PEPANG: “…Oh, how we worshipped him when we were children! We were so proud of him because he was a genius, because he was different from all other fathers. We always took his side against mother – remember? Poor mother, with her eternal worrying and her eternal complains – poor mother did not understand him, of course. Only we, his children, understood him. And we defended him, we justified him, we were willing to be poor, to go without the things other children had, so that our father could go on being just an artist. Oh, we were happy enough, I know – though, even then, I promised myself that my children should never suffer what we had to suffer. And when we grew up, Manolo – then what did we do? When he could not give us the things the young people of our age all had – what did you and I do? Did we not face him also and accuse him of cowardice and selfishness? Did we not blame him also for the humiliations of our youth? Did we not berate him also for having squandered mother’s property? And did we not also tell him that he could have been a rich man if he had only used his talents to advance himself in the world? Yes, we did, Manolo – you and I! We faced him and we accused him and we rejected him! And how can we blame Candida and Paula now?” (Lumaki tayo at nagkagulang, Manolo. Noong musmos pa tayo lubos-lubusang sinamba natin siya! Ipinagmalaki natin siya dahil isang henyo siya, dahil iba siya sa ama ng mga kababata natin. Lagi tayong nasa kanyang panig laban kay Mama - natatandaan mo? Ang kawawang Mama natin, hindi niya nauunawaan si Papa. Tayong mga anak lamang ang nakakaunawa sa kanya. Ipinagtanggol natin siya, binigyang-matwid, handa tayong maging mahirap, basta makapagpatuloy sa pagiging artista ang ama natin. Pero nang lumaki tayo, ano ang ginawa nating dalawa? Nang hindi niya maibigay ang mga biyenes na dulot ng mga magulang ng kababata natin, hindi ba hinarap natin siya at binintangang duwag at makasarili? Hindi ba't isinisi natin sa kanya ang mga kahihiyang dinanas natin? Hindi ba't inalimura natin siya dahil winaldas niya ang naiwang pag-aari ni Mama? Hindi ba't sinabihan natin na dapat ay naging mayaman siya kung ginamit lamang niya ang kanyang mga talino upang mapaunlad ang kanyang kabuhayan. Ganyan ang ginawa natin, Manolo. Hinarap natin siya, inakusahan at tinalikdan. Paano natin masisisi ngayon sina Candida at Paula?)

It was a feeling of outrage that made me cry because, ironically, Pepang’s and Manolo’s acceptance/acknowledgment about the past that their father made them to go through failed to produce a change of heart.

ANALYSIS

The play intends to dramatize the difference between the Filipino’s Spanish past and his American present. It says that the writer is Aeneas, for he carried all time -- past, present and future -- on his back.

The play is an elegy for lost virtues, underscoring the need for knowledge of our past and for identification with it.

The play allows its audience to travel through the past and on to the future by making them experience the present. “For we are what our past has made us; we must know it to know ourselves.”

The play employs dramatic devices and techniques that are both realistic and expressionistic.

1. The choice of the Aeneas myth as the basis of the Portrait and its new

significance – by transforming the faces of the father and son into those of the old

and younger Lorenzo – seems to be the most significant.

2. Similarly important is the location of the Portrait, the imaginary fourth wall.

This special device begins to have an impact on the viewer as the play starts

staring through the blankness of the fourth wall.

3. Then there is the demonstration of Joaquin’s familiarity with dramatists and their

style – such as Yeats (his writing drawn from Irish mythology and folklore,

passion for nationalist politics, pessimism about political situations, interest in

mysticism); Lorca (who balanced his drama and poetry between the traditional

and the modern, between mythology and contemporary cultural trends to express

his tragic vision of life); Sophocles (his introduction of the third actor as the

narrator-actor-chorus, his technical innovations like the use of scene painting);

Williams (his autobiographical play The Glass Menagerie and its character-

narrator device); Wilde (who played upon the controversy swirling around art's

proper function in his The Picture of Dorian Gray); Joyce (his interest in

priesthood, and the political and religious influences in his A Portrait of an Artist

as a Young Man); and Calderon (a priest who developed a series of plays with

mythological themes).

4. To keep the theme in focus, the play employs a character-narrator-chorus, an

expressionistic technique. Bitoy is also a one-man chorus. Complete with light

effects, transparent curtain, narrator’s voice, and the audience’s view of shifting

time, this attempt at flashback is a device to connect the space between present

and past.

5. The ageing of Paula -- Tony’s object of temptation -- sensuality is reduced. If

she were younger, the temptation might have been overwhelming.

6. In Scene 1, an imaginative device (a play within a play) is utilized to evoke the

life in Intramuros of the lead characters (Bitoy, Candida and Paula) in their

youth. This intensifies the impact of the past. The characters indulge in some

make-believe.

7. To slacken the tension in the first indication of the conflict in the play between

two generations and their values (when Tony has his outburst), a brief comic

interlude is introduced. Paula tells Bitoy and Tony that Candida has caught the

rat she set out to catch. Joaquin stresses the irony of the sisters’ dilemma when

the refined and well-mannered Candida says she is willing to expose herself to

mockery by making an honest living -- catching rats.

8. A babelization device is employed at the end of Scenes 1 and 2 to highlight the

shocking quality of contemporary life and of intensifying the contrast between

this life and that as lived by the Marasigans. Its purpose is more symbolical than

theatrical.

9. In these scenes, too, as Don Perico declaims “Dies irae, dies illa,” an air raid

siren begins to blast (but, to me, is damaging), just as Pepang tells Paula

and Candida about the rumor that they have been flirting with Tony. Because of

the siren blast, the characters need to shout at each other, intensifying tension to

a high point. (The siren actually saved this scene from becoming melodramatic.)

10. In the first two scenes, it must be noted that the people who are enthusiastic

and vocal about their views, the young journalists Pete, Eddie, Cora, as well as

the old politician Don Perico, are the characters Joaquin uses to engage in a

discussion.

11. To save the scenes from becoming too discursive, Joaquin uses irony in so that

his characters could reject the past. He lets the vaudeville performers intrude when the journalists analyze the relevance of the painting to contemporary conditions (the first discussion). The society matrons also intrude when Senator Perico reminisces about the past and reviews his decision to abandon poetry for politics (the second discussion).

12. To transform the image of Don Lorenzo as father, protector and patriarch and

enhance excitement, the playwright employ the La Naval de Manila procession.

13. The tertulia at the end of the play shows the influence of realism a la Chekhov

for whom the ceremonious social occasion is the best means of revealing

individuals at moments when they are at least engrossed in private rationalization

and most open to disinterested insights.

ATTITUDE AND APPROACH (ON THE CONCEPT)

The Acting Style

One must first understand the principles of realism and expressionism in order to gauge how an actor must perform in a production of Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, how the artist revolts after soul-searching, and how he finds the solution in isolation.

I see that Portrait has the trademarks of Chekhov – populated by the disappointed gentry, by those who could not adjust to the new, repressive form of life. The lead characters tend to be alienated in their isolated grandeur and to be pessimistic about a future they may have dreamed about, but which now seems hopelessly unattainable.

The play gains its dramatic tension from the subtexts of people dispossessed of home, ideals, vigor and love. Similarly, the "action scenes" tend to take the form of arrivals and departures. The bustling arrivals provide a perfect dramatic means for bringing all the characters together and filling in the details of their lives. The characters talk more at, than to, each other so that we have conversations where no one seems to be listening to but him/herself.

As a director, I would apply Chekhov’s realism with a mix of Sophoclean and Brechtian expressionist techniques.

Chekhov wished the audience to feel that they are eavesdropping on very private conversations. This sort of realism demands intense attention from an audience, while creating an intimacy within which the audience can become deeply involved with the characters. As a director, I would consider the use of acting, not simply the text, to establish their developing rapport. I would instruct my actors to strictly control the expression of overt dramatic action by expressing deep feeling through subtle nuances, gestures, glances, vocal tones, and the shared understandings and sympathetic rhythms that distinguish siblings everywhere (for Candida, Paula, Pepang and Manolo). This technique, developed by Chekhov, is called “indirect action.” It concentrates on subtleties of characterization and interaction between characters.

Brechtian actors utilize a minimum of gesture and underplay their roles to augment the tragedy – in the case of Bitoy, of losing his childhood. I would apply this theory of minimalism and underplaying in his character. This acting style would require the audience to change their perspective, and thus cause critical analysis of characters.

Brecht established the exchange of roles and the encouragement of actors to directly speak to the audience, so that an audience may remain emotionally detached and not emphatic – in fact, directly opposing Aristotelian theatre. I would insist consistency as to the acting style of Bitoy in his particular role as Narrator and One-Man Chorus. I would tell the actor to make obvious his assigned characters (having actually dual roles) and to merge himself with the characters rather than to ‘become them’. Constant critical judgment of himself, I feel, would also contribute to the actor’s detachment and perhaps ‘downplaying’ of his roles.

The other personas of Bitoy would demand other techniques of acting, not only using storytelling, but also as a character interacting with other characters. He must be charming and enchanting to convince the audience to imagine that the Manila of the past is ever-present. He is both a participant in, and a narrator of the struggle in whose outcome the protagonists have an important stake. Though he seems to play a peripheral role -- often serving only as a sounding board for the ideas of the other characters, he sets the tone of the play. It is also necessary that he marks the stages of the action, maintaining the theme and leading the audience to a new perspective as he does so. As a one-man chorus, I would want him to present the point of view and the faith of the Filipino people.

To represent his life story up to the time of his latest visit to the Marasigan home, I would employ five actors portraying him during Scene 2, in which he drifts from one job to another – bootblack, newsboy, baker’s apprentice, waiter, pier-laborer. I feel that this would underline how life has changed completely for him – gone are the blissful days of his privileged childhood because the harsh reality is that he has to make a living. His autobiography is important in terms of the theme of the play. His story serves a dramatic function. I would like to stress his life story as quite the opposite of what life has done to Don Lorenzo’s older children, Manolo and Pepang.

When he gives the epilogue, he has to move the audience.

As a director, I would advise the actors portraying Candida and Paula to keenly show their shabbiness despite their being genteel and brought up well. In Scene 1, I would want a distressed Paula and a hysterical Candida. In Scene II, I feel Candida should be useless towards Paula. Internal rebellion should be subtly expressed by Candida and Paula at the end of this scene. Likewise, Candida and Paula should subtly show their danger of extinction everytime they leave the sala when outsiders take possession of it and they come running back to it when its sanctity is endangered.

The Design

The given theatre space is a proscenium that lends itself to the theatre of the “fourth wall,” that is, the audience eavesdropping on the stage action, which is assumed to occur in private. The stage measurement is 10 by 11.02 meters.

The play is not naturalistic, employing stage conventions and making use of special effects like music and video projections.

The first scene opens with Mozart’s Requiem Dies Irae, a famous Medieval Latin hymn on the Day of Judgment which is often used in the liturgy for the dead, as the video zooms in to the ruins of Intramuros.

As Bitoy begins to speak, the video dissolves to a travelogue of the different churches (as if making the rounds of churches like what Joaquin used to do when he had nothing to do) in Intramuros). Intense downlighting – to keep our attention to the subjects – fades in on a number of actors (missionaries, merchants, harlots, pirates, sultans, etc.) do their respective businesses in the moving space on center stage (a mechanical device that is only moved during the prologue of each scene. The moving spave is the performance space provided to depict exterior units and scenes; it encircles the sala of the Marasigan house (still in the dark).

As lights fade out on the moving space, the video shows Calle Real leading to the house.

Then as the lights slowly fade in the sala of the house, Merry Widow Waltz is softly played until lights are set full to reveal the set. I would like to include an art deco painted ceiling.

The second scene would show Bitoy’s life through the five actors on the moving space until he speaks about working at the piers. This time, focus would be on the video of the Manila piers in the 40s. Then lights slowly fade in to the sala.

The third scene would use more of the sound effects. The moving space would be used by busy people – women running errands, a trike driver transporting a passenger, the young decorating arches and paper lanters, men tapping canes.

The epilogue would start off with the sound of bells and the Merry Widow Waltz with the moving space filled up with vendors and their stuff – sweets, fruits, etc. As lights fades out, the video of the ruins is shown.

For sound effects, symbolic sounds are heard offstage (a la Chekhov). For example, the distant sounds of the wind against the trees and iron sheets to indicate the typhoon month, the air raid sirens to denote the oncoming war, etc., faint sound of bells and band-music to specify a feast. The floor of the stage must produce a squeaking sound to imply age. It must sound as it is stepped on.

For additional lighting: the blinking lights for the procession, the searching followspot for the sirens, individual pools of light to illuminate and to isolate Bitoy the narrator always, and the five actors playing Bitoy. Visibility and focus are the primary considerations of lighting design for Portrait. Realistic lighting must be created to appear as if emanating from the sun through the balcony in one scene, and from moonlight in the prologue and epilogue. General lighting is atmospheric to evoke the mood appropriate to the action: gloomy, oppressive, austere, funereal, or regal. Lighting beneath the stage to the balconies is to be designed for the procession scene.

Regarding costumes, I feel that the best approach is to use old Manila fashion in the 1940s. My initial concept for the women costuming involves printed blouse in puffed sleeves, black or checkered skirt, black or white heeled shoes, bangles, pearl necklace, hair clips, round shaped neckline, wide belts but everything dull (to avoid any distraction to the audience), except those of Susan, Violet, Doña Loleng and Elsa Montes. The four would be dressed in V-necklines with pendant necklaces and bracelets. Makeup for the lips would be red and eyeliners would be dark. Doña Loleng, in one scene, would be dressed with long sleeved gown. In another scene, she would be in a printed terno with black shoes. Elsa’s Carmen Miranda costume would include a fruit hat, ruffled blouse and Capri pants – the Latina look. However, I would opt that Paula wear pendant necklace and bracelet as well as makeup for Scene 3 where which she comes back radiant.

I would suggest that the sailor suit of Bitoy be in white with blue cord, instead of the traditional blue suit with white cord, to give him more visual focus in the prologues of each scene. He would wear a blue undershirt and cap with black shoes.

The other younger men would be in plain polo tucked, or shirt or Hawaiian shirt untucked and uninhibited, in high cut boots and cap. The older men would be in Americana.

A Turning Point in the History of Philippine Theater

A TURNING POINT IN THE HISTORY OF PHILIPPINE THEATER

by Marilie Fernandez-Ilagan

Tony sat on a chair blindfolded and handcuffed. He screamed in pain, his face wrought in terror as his body convulsed.

The scene welcomed me in one of my visits to the rehearsals of Sining Malay Ensemble’s “Bombita ug Ako sa Tralala,” mounted by Alan Glinoga. Designed as a comedy, it became wicked towards the end. If I recall it right, the play was Davao City’s version of Tony Perez’ “Bombita,” which was about a soldier who discovered the absurdity of his life and decided to be human.

Then there was “Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio” of Paul Dumol, which revolved around a syndicate composed of beggars. I could still remember Bobby Cielo giving last minute instructions to his cast. They won the grand prize in an interschool theater festival in Butuan City.

“El Fili,” Davao’s version of Paul Dumol’s “Kabesang Tales,” is another play etched in my mind. There was Romy, bathed in light as he delivered his lines to a mesmerized audience. Directed by Nestor Horfilla, the play about the travails of a peasant family brought to life a recurring theme in our society.

Finally, there is this play I remember only through word of mouth and some
photos that its director, Betbet Palo, kept in his old wooden house. He was the theater desk coordinator of Mindanao Development Center when he directed Bonifacio P. Ilagan’s “Pagsambang Bayan” in Zamboanga. In one of the pictures, the priest, garbed in colorful indigenous fabric, was celebrating mass with peasants and workers as the audience in the semi-arena watched intently, some sitting in the bamboo bleachers. Betbet told me the play was forthright in telling of the human rights violations and the impoverishment of the people because of the greed of those who ruled them. There was really not much surprise to it – except that it was performed during the height of the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos, and that the message was conveyed through the oldest of all traditional dramas, the mass.

Bombita, Mang Serapio, Kabesang Tales and the Priest are figures of the absurd and nonconformist whose stories underscore the oppressive structures of authoritarianism in which they – and we – lived. They symbolize the Filipino asserting his rights as a human being and citizen. Finding themselves in conflict with a society that threatened to overwhelm them, they had to cling to a faith in their humanity, in their identity and in a cause they felt they could die for.

Their coming into being on Philippine stage brought alive not only the language of the Pinoy – Bisaya in Mindanao – but also the Pinoy’s worth in terms of the theater. The daring commitment of the Filipino theater artists who produced these plays were happily reciprocated by an appreciative audience that delighted in a fledgling genre of the performing arts.

Except for “Pagsambang Bayan,” I had either watched or been involved in various roles in the plays that I mentioned – which all had their run in Mindanao in the 1980s. Except for “Bombita,” these plays were originally performed in the late 1960s and the 1970s. How fared Philippine theater before the advent of these plays?

Historians say that this period was a turning point in the saga of the Filipino people. It was brief as brief could be – only a matter of years, but its impact was enormous because it dwelt on the consciousness of the people. It was a period when society’s rules, long held sacred and inviolable, were questioned; power relations that defined progress, peace and order were defied; suppressed ideas sprung up like thinking out of the box. The process was started by the intellectuals and the youth and quickly engulfed the rest of society.

The turbulent period told on theater as well. Western hegemony of what was legitimate and presentable began to crack when even West-trained playwrights and directors made contrary assertions in their works. As the 1960s ended, a new breed of theater artists experimented on activist themes and conflicts, making heroes out of the kargador and the sakada, and villains out of the honorable politico, propitario and members of the alta de sociedad. The new consciousness had to be performed onstage.

Fired up with an urgent sense of the theater, groups multiplied from Manila to the rest of Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. The theater scene – though not the kind that landed in the reviews of the papers, bustled with energy and productions -- from agitprop presentations in parks and streets to one-act and full-length plays in theaters with paying audience. The other outstanding feature of the period was that theater came to the people. It happened where the people lived or worked.

In particular, a theater of liberation engulfed Mindanao, abetted no less by the progressive section of the Catholic Church. In the late 1960s, its parishes and social action programs utilized theater for social change. When liberation theology found its way to Mindanao’s seminaries, theater-of-liberation activists employed theater to facilitate the formation of the so-called Basic Christian Communities. They propounded on local and national issues through the legends of the indigenous peoples. In one province, peasants who were in the midst of a big conflict with the landlord wrote their own script and perform it as well. Muslim farmers eventually joined them.

So here was theater returning to its roots. It could not have happened had there not been a turning point in its history.

Why My Passion for This Theater

Why My Passion for This Theater

by Marilie Fernandez-Ilagan

One afternoon, on my way home from school, I was attracted by the noise coming from the church by the sea. I went in and saw David, a well-liked gay church worker in our small town of Mati in Davao Oriental. l. He was talking and moving about like a real male. I realized that he and the rest were doing drama. I took note of the one who was directing, who, I would know very much later as Karl Gaspar. It was 1972. At seven, it was my first theater exposure.

It took all of seven years before I found myself performing onstage – in high school dramatics. In college at the Ateneo de Davao, I was expectedly also active in theater. Later, I joined a theater group of a social development agency. It seemed like there was no turning back.

Then one day, in 1982, I learned a man was arrested by the police. He was unlike most captives. He stood proud. It was Karl Gaspar becoming a political prisoner.

In the 1980s in Mindanao, community theater was already thriving, thanks to artists like Karl Gaspar. The Mindanao community theater was the great drama school where I honed my artistry. There could not have been a better one, because here, theory and practice merged, instilling in me a commitment to the arts that was rooted in the social value of theater.

Instead of running away from theater on account of Karl’s arrest, I kept my faith. At that time, I was already active in Kulturang Atin Foundation, Inc. (Kafi), a big name in the mass-based cultural work in Mindanao in the 1980s. Kafi then was a well-run cultural institution that put a premium on theater in community education and development work. It had a regular theater season and summer workshops.

I also became active in the Mindanao Community Theater Network (MCTN), an impressive theater coalition in the island, whose cultural workers and popular educators had a favorite slogan: “Magkoryo tayo kung paano mag-akyo” (Let’s do plays, songs and dances the way we use acupuncture),” in the sense of “healing our social ills.” MCTN explored and mastered cultural action programs in the communities, combining education processes with advocacy work through theater. My work in these organizations taught me theater’s relevance to the day-to-day life of the people to survive and find meaning in their poverty and misery.

This is not to say that my college learning of Western classical theater did not amount to something. In fact, I was glad that I had a taste of the West End before I did agitprop. Now my vision had become broader because I went surrealist and expressionist to realist; my experiences ran the range of “My Fair Lady” to “Nukleyar” to “Pilipinas Circa 1907” to “El Fili” to “Sinalimba (Airboat)” to “Nag-alintabong Kabilin (Burning Legacy)” to “Road to Mindanao” to “Siak sa Duha ka Damgo (Crack in Two Dreams)” to “Oya! Arakan” to “Ang Babae sa Ating Panahon” to “Langaw sa Isang Basong Gatas.”

My theater since the 1980s, however, concentrated on folk traditions -- particularly on indigenous forms, and women’s issues. I chose to focus on these because I wanted to catch up with my appreciation of my indigenous roots at the same time that I was being stirred up by the women’s liberation movement.

My passion for this kind of theater was all the more encouraged when in 1990, my colleagues and I in the Kaliwat Theater Collective interacted with Dr. Julie Holledge, chair of the drama center of Flinders University in Australia. She took the occasion to encourage us to do theatre about and for the women, a kind of theater that was then novel to us. I realized for the first time the extent of retrogressive teaching about women and saw the connection between past and continuing attitudes toward women.

My interactions and immersions with the virtuosos of the indigenous communities of Mindanao afforded me a new high on indigenous forms. In my first visit to a B’laan village in Sultan Kudarat, an elder woman told me and my group, “You’ll never know how we write our own epics, songs and riddles, and how we move in our own dances until you come here and live with us . . . until you settle down with our Mother, the Earth.” Not even my experiences in doing theater overseas – a different high altogether -- could negate the wisdom of these words.

All told, I found challenge and freedom as I grew up in the Mindanaoan theater. Perhaps because theatre -- the way we define it in Mindanao, like oral traditions, didn’t impose rigid standards even as it required one to hew close to the heritage and not stray away from Mother Earth and all that it meant through the generations.

When some say that theater using indigenous forms and tackling women’s issues has remained largely on the fringe, I become impassioned about my desire for this kind of theater to break through the barrier of the experimental. Also, I wish to show that theater could both be art form and platform. Politics needs the theater as much as the theater needs politics. As long as I live it, as long as I am clear about my development as a theater artist through reflection, self-discovery and assertion, I’d be impassioned about this kind of theater that serves beyond the entertainment.

Island Vignettes

"Barter Faith" is about Meda, a nongovernment development worker in a Moslem area. The piece expresses Meda’s frustration as she works with people who carry an agenda of religious conversion.

"Barter Faith" is the second part of Island Vignettes.

Threat to Bai Bibyaon

By Marili Fernandez-Ilagan

(A Monologue of an Indigenous Ata-Manobo in a Time of Repression

Based on a true story, August 2002, Bukidnon)

“Banta kay Bai Bibyaon (Threat to Bai Bibyaon)” is about a woman leader of an indigenous tribe in Mindanao, Philippines, who finds herself in the wanted list of the military (known as the OB or Order of Battle), the reason being that she stood up for her tribe against the forces that has long exploited, suppressed and dehumanized the people. In this piece, Bai Bibyaon dramatizes the stirring character that has made her an exemplar among her tribe and womanhood in a country in turmoil.

Performed as first part of Island Vignettes by Marili Fernandez-Ilagan & Dessa Quesada-Palm on November 2006 at Teater Studio Taman Isamil Marzuki, Jakarta, Indonesia for the 7th International Women Playwrights Conference

Theater for Change

Philippines Theatre for Change Marili Fernandez-Ilagan Theatre groups are striving to change the way Filipino women address themselves and society - whether it is the portrayal of women caught between tradition and modernity or defying cultural norms to cast men and women in roles that display intimacy. Odiata, led by its playwright-director, works to give young women in the community a voice. And members of Sigay, formed by women from the Kagan community, found that working on the play, 'Pasaya', changed their entire outlook towards sexuality. "And what, in God's name, is that you're wearing?" / "This is the trend, Mother." / "It looks like a rag. Honey, you can't look like a rag. What will people think?"
	WFS Ref: PHIF920	735 words

Theater & Reality

THEATER AND REALITY, DEFIANCE AND CONFIDENCE

By Marili Fernandez-Ilagan

Tkaw a miakasold si Potri sa tulang oanda matatago si ina iyan a bae a Rimparac akatataboan na ptinda sa ingabai. Si Potri na mataid a 16 i-idad a bago-a-raga. Si

Rimparac na 72 i-idad, mao pembongawen. (Potri bursts into the kitchen where her grandmother Rimparac is preparing dinner. Potri is an athletic and attractive 16 year-

old incoming college freshman. Rimparac is a senile 72 year- old woman.)

POTRI

Kaoto ba! Ptiaro akn den ba! Imanto na langon siran mabababaya Pakipangaroma

ako iran siiko sadn sa pakalotang sa btang rakn. Bai, ogapi akong ka! Di ako makipangaroma. (That’s it! Just as I thought! Now, all of them are happy. They want

me to marry anybody who can afford my dowry. Grandmother, you must help me! I

don’t want to get married.)

Thus goes the opening scene of the play “Kiatukuwan (Revealed),” performed by the all-Maranao theater group Odiata, which means “dialogue” or “deep discussion.” Odiata was organized by Sittie Jehanne Mutin-Mapupuno, who also wrote and directed the play. Together with the Tag-ani Performing Arts Society, Inc. and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Odiata co-produced the premiere show of “Kiatukawan” at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City last December.

“Kiatukawan” is a story of three Maranao women of different generations struggling to make sense of their lives, and trying to hit a balance between culture and religion in their present situation. One of them is the defiant Potri, who sees herself as the contemporary woman all set to conquer the world. Elite Maranao women were once kept in special chambers or “lamin” preceding marriage, and royally presented at their weddings. Potri’s family belongs to the elite and her being kept in the “lamin” may have contributed to her rebellious nature. She rebels at the thought of being clothed and donned with jewelry to magnify her beauty and nobility and, therefore, her marketability as a bride. Boxed in by such rules, Potri is now pushed by her unwanted marriage to put up her own rules against the dowry.

Potri’s impending marriage prompts her grandmother Rimparac to confess about her own forced marriage, to which, in order to save her family, she agreed. The marriage eventually failed. The confession encourages Potri to counteract her mother Bolawan’s pretenses that peace and wealth reigned in the family.

BOLAWAN

Astagfirullah! Na antonaa pen anan a sosoluten ka? (And what, in God’s name, is

that you’re wearing?)

POTRI

Bangkala? Giya I petalowan a uso Ina. (Clothes? This is the trend, Mother.)

BOLAWAN

Mommy. Soden so trapo. Watako, di ka pesayansa orobarang. Antonaa den a

pikiren a manga tao? A daden a pirak tano? A di tano pakalotang sa manga

bago a ditaren? (Mommy. It looks like a rag. Honey, you can’t look like a rag.

What will people think? That we don’t have money? That we can’t afford to

buy you new clothes?)

The confrontation involving Potri, Bolawan and Rimparac during Potri’s marriage proposal triggers not only revelations but also a funny mix of conflicts and crises.

RIMPARAC

So dingka di taroon. Ago angkaya a preparasyon. Baa den a pakaradiyaan?

(The yelling! And all these preparations. Are you having a party?)

BOLAWAN

(Pakabaya-baya). Inipangingisa i Mayor siPotri. Di manokaw-tokaw o aden a

migagaray den ki Potri. [(Excited). The Mayor has asked about Potri. He wants

to know if Potri is still available and not engaged to anybody.]

RIMPARAC

Na pkandorii ka? (So you are throwing a party?)

BOLAWAN

Kabaya iyan na makapangaromo kon den sa magaan angkoto a wata iyana si

Kamal. Di niyan di pangatod-atod. (He wants his son, Kamal, to marry soon.

He is looking for a suitable bride.)

RIMPARAC

Na inoka pekandori? (So why would you throw a party?)

BOLAWAN

Aykah dingkaden! Maratai- paras omakatalingoma saya angkoto a pagawid na

amai kakowan na taroon niyan a dato tano siran slaslaa, odi na marsik a walay

tano, o antonaon san pen. (Just because! I don’t want the negotiator to come here

and report back that we are not hospitable, or that our house is not clean, or

whatever.)

As a story of a Maranao family in dispute, “Kiatukawan” is so true-to-life, mixing humor and misfortune as these actually happen. In the end, the three women learn that life is what we make of it, and that the family is more important than one’s ambition.

“Kiatukawan” challenges two assumptions about Maranao women: one, that women can only marry those who can afford their dowries; and two, that women are protected even as they are marketed as brides.

In “Kiatukawan,” the playwright-director dramatizes her understanding of the nature of the oppression which permeates the innermost being of a woman, as well as the time-honored conventions, such as the dowry. The play risks abetting a great controversy, especially among the conservatives. But controversies have always been a vital element in the process of change, including in the arena of women’s rights.

“Kiatukawan” illustrates the link between the development of the individual and her political self-determination. There seems to be no aspect in the realm of the “personal” that which cannot be analyzed, understood and, if need be, changed, even if the process proves to be slow and painful. The play also somehow reaffirms that “the personal is also political.” In this connection, it is interesting to note how the playwright-director summed up her experiences in the mounting of “Kiatukawan” while addressing the issues in the home and family (where the struggle takes place in private, behind closed doors). As the play of defiance unfolded in its premiere showing – it could very well be the first to be both written and directed by a Maranao woman in the Maranao language, one woman -- at the very least, gained confidence in being what she is.

But since Sittie Jehanne Mutin-Mapupuno happens to be a playwright-director, the contagion may be difficult to contain. ###

Theater & Reality

Theater and Reality: A Kagan Event

By Marili Fernandez-Ilagan

When I was first told about it, I thought it was strange.

“Casil, the husband, will be played by a woman dressed as a man,” Normaida Mamukid and the Kagan[1] women told me during the casting of the play “Pasaya (Beloved).” Collectively, they call themselves Sigay, which means rays of the sun. What an apt name for a theater group such as theirs.

But of course, theater has done cross-sexual representation as a matter of illusion. During the seventeenth century in the West, before women were totally admitted to the stage as actors, female roles were played by men who dressed as women. Later on in the century, in fact, the more daring among the women could only play a role in theater if they disguised as a man to trick the director.

As I was writing this piece, my daughter Wiccie, who happened to be the writer-director of a class play in Miriam Grade School, peeped in. “Hey, Mom, we are doing just that in ‘Aladdin.’ [2] Ellis is Aladdin, Willo is Genie, and Denise is Abu.” Miriam, being a girls’ school, didn’t have boys to play the male roles.

So here we have two interesting cultural items. On one hand, the Kagan women observe a particularly complex indigenous tradition in the practice of their religion, which could not be divorced from their other practices. “Pasaya” raised a concern: It is not Islamic for a man and a woman who are not real husband and wife to play such roles. Therefore, the actors had to be real husband and wife. The Miriam pupils, on the other hand, could not avail themselves of boy talents, though they are allowed to import from the neighboring Ateneo Grade School, which has remained to date as exclusively for boys. My daughter and her classmates decided in favour of cross-sexual representation because most girls in Miriam become shy in the company of boys.

At some point in the rehearsal of “Pasaya,” however, an interesting development occurred. The Kagan women decided that Casil would be played by a man. And so, during the premiere performance of the play last December in a fishing farm in the tiny village of Piso in Banaybanay, Davao Oriental’s rice granary, a man it was who played Casil. It happened that they found a Muslim male who agreed to play the role, in spite of the religious prohibition. The play had begun to alter the Kagan women’s consciousness, a process that would go on in the making of the play. For one thing, the play dared to comment on domestic violence that was being perpetrated by the men in their society. Such incidents came as ordinary occurrences around them.

The Kagan women, in a matter of one month of rehearsals, changed their view of sexuality. For instance, religion prescribes that there should be no public show of intimacy between the sexes. But “Pasaya” required that a man and a woman be intimate because they played the roles of husband and wife. Theater represented a changing reality vis-à-vis religion. In their emerging theater, they strove to maintain their religious tradition – a norm, but ended up finding ways and means to break away from it. Theater thus became a duality of one.

Religious precepts in the Moro cultural and social system, to which the Kagan belong, clearly created the apprehension in the mounting of the play. The Kagan women hurdled it by casting a male as the husband. However, they made it a point that “husband” and “wife” would not as much as touch one another in the duration of the play. And so, there was never an instance when they disobeyed the Islamic value. This is a challenge for further study on the linkage of ethnicity and gender in Islamic society.

All told, the emerging theater of the Kagan women offered itself as a breakthrough in the struggle of ideas in an arena where women have hitherto played a submissive role. While my daughter and her Miriam classmates could undoubtedly outgrow their timidity towards boys in due time, would the outcome of the Kagan women’s theatre change their real-life stereotyped roles? Abangan.

---

[1] The Kagan are among the original inhabitants of the Davao Gulf area; in the 14th century, they were Islamized by one Shariff Makdum and later by Rajah Baguinda; Kagan is an indigenous term derived from Caraga which means "disciplined tribe."

[2] Aladdin is a Disney production about a commoner named Aladdin and his monkey Abu. Aladdin’s life changes with one rub of a magi lamp, releasing the Genie.

Artists' Rights & Welfare

A PRIMER ON THE

ARTISTS’ RIGHTS AND WELFARE

for the

Caucus of Music Theater Directors and Choreographers

IKATLONG TAGPO: The 2004 National Theater Festival

Cultural Center of the Philippines

November 7 - 20, 2004

INTRODUCTION

This project is being undertaken in conjunction with the 2004 National Theater Festival (NTF 2004) of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

One of the envisioned key result areas of NTF 2004 is the “active participation of key players in the local music theater in the formulation of guidelines and standards of employment.”

To come a step nearer this aim, NTF 2004 has included as a festival activity a Caucus on Artists’ Rights and Welfare, with a view towards forming an organization.

This Primer is the reference material for that caucus to be held on November 13, 2004, at the 4^th floor, Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino, CCP.

In coming up with this Primer, this project conducted two Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) attended by directors and choreographers of music theater. It became inevitable that other theater artists and workers also joined in. In the FGDs, the major issues confronting artists were surfaced.

The project initiated a written survey among music theater artists.

The project also held consultations with experts in order to solicit their opinions. These included lawyers on labor and taxation and other legal counsels, officials of government agencies involved with labor relations, social security and copyrighting. They explained the legal and institutional policies and premises – or the lack of these -- relating to artists’ rights and welfare.

Early on, the project made known its intention to convene a Caucus on Artists’ Rights and Welfare focusing on music theater directors and choreographers. The underlying reason is to make the project manageable given the limited time and resource. Focusing on the directors and choreographers will also mobilize a sector that might be influential in replicating the effort in the other sectors of the performing arts community.

CHRIS B. MILLADO

Festival Director

2004 National Theater Festival

Associate Artistic Director

Performing Arts Department

Cultural Center of the Philippines

MARILIE FERNANDEZ-ILAGAN

Project Director

Caucus on Artists’ Rights and Welfare

2004 National Theater Festival

Cultural Center of the Philippines

November 2004

PART 1

Situation of Artists and their Rights and Welfare:

Major Points Raised in the FGDs and

Consultations with Experts on Labor, Taxation, Copyright and Social Security

The situation as described here is based on the two Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) participated in by artists and the series of consultations with the experts on labor, taxation, social security, copyright and other legal counsels held last October and early November.

Historically, artists have always been marginalized in terms of government support and other institutional assistance. They are overworked and underpaid. Their rights and welfare are nonexistent.

Since no employee-employer relationship exists for theater artists at work, they could not avail themselves of the benefits that are otherwise available to regular workers under the Labor Code. Artists are considered seasonal employees or contractual workers. When they work in a production, what they enter into is a private contract between two parties. It is governed by the Civil Code -- a generic law that does not address the specific demands of artists as one type of worker.

Under this setup, artists do not have the power to bargain collectively. Therefore, it is difficult to set standard compensation for their services as one type of workers or employees. Their employers are also not bound by law to provide them with the welfare benefits that are offered to regular workers under the Labor Code.

In this situation, artists:

• have difficulty setting their rates or pay scale;
• undervalue their works or services;
• work overtime without any corresponding compensation;
• are overworked;
• cannot demand for increased rates especially when companies claim that they couldn’t afford it;
• are unable to address medical and retirement needs;
• find it more difficult to sustain their theater groups;
• have to find other work to support the practice of their art and craft.

Compounding the situation are the following facts:

• Only .28% of the total government appropriation is allotted as budget for culture and the arts (based on the Philippine Medium Term Plan for Culture and the Arts assessment, 1992/2000 Report); this, despite a UNESCO resolution that “in every country, every year, at least 1% of the total public funds should be allocated to artistic activities of creation, expression and dissemination” (Final Declaration of the World Congress on the Status of the Artist, June 1997).

• Most artists’ organizations operate below subsistence, in spite of the government’s policy to encourage and support the arts.

• Government will not lift a finger for artists unless artists cause government to do so.

Artists are immensely distressed by economics and social welfare insecurity – rate of fees, working conditions, medical expenses, housing, retirement insurance, etc. Among these concerns, standardization of rates seems to be the most urgent.

But even as this situation prevails, there is a consensus that artists are barely aware of what ails them and their working environment, and what courses of action they may take. Considering that some 2.5 million compose the artists’ sector in the country, there is a great need for:

• education among the artists in the matter of their rights and welfare;
• organizing within the sector;
• advocacy work -- artists conducting a campaign so that the public and the concerned institutions may better appreciate their worth in terms of economic figures and social values;
• lobbying and legislation regarding artists’ rights and welfare.

There are initial indications that in Philippine theater, it is music theater that appears to have the potentials to becoming an industry. And it is in this regard that the issue of compensation and conditions of employment could be standardized sooner than in the other types of theater and fields of art.

PART 2

In the Know: Terms Defined and Questions Answered

1. Why organize artists for their rights and welfare?

Artists deserve an enlivening working environment, just compensation and a secure future.

2. What are rights and welfare?

‘Rights’ refers to anything that may be claimed on righteous and proper grounds, which may be just, moral, legal or customary. As expressed in laws or statutes, these may be constitutional, civil, humanitarian, etc.

‘Welfare’ refers to social and economic well-being, as in food, health, clothing.

There are economic and political factors involved in ‘rights and welfare.’ The right to just compensation is fundamentally economic. The right to free speech is basically political.

‘Rights and welfare’ is used here in conjunction with our role and work in society as practitioners of the arts.

3. What is the government pronouncement on artists’ rights and welfare?

Government ensures “the protection of rights and welfare of artists and cultural workers.” It declares that “(v)ital to the interest of (its) cultural agencies, organizations and artist’s community is the protection of their rights and welfare. Since culture and arts activities are basically service oriented rather than financially beneficial, it is important that the government provides the legislative support for the necessary protection.”

4. What is there in the law that affects the rights and welfare of artists?

First of all, the Constitution provides for the recognition of culture and the arts, that culture and the arts have evolved to define our identity, that culture and the arts have to be promoted by the State.

The Constitution also provides for the freedom of speech which bars, in theory, censorship. Another is the charter of the NCCA which is mandated by Republic Act 7356. There is also the Intellectual Property Code that includes the law on copyright. We have the tax code that includes the VAT law and the local tax laws.

5. Is there any law or regulation that provides for a standard or scheme for the payment of talent fees or

service fees of artists?

There is none. Work contracts of artists are governed by the law on contracts, which is a private agreement between two parties. In effect, compensation is always negotiated between two contracting parties. There is neither a set minimum wage nor a tripartite wage board.

6. Is there anything under the law that artists may avail of to secure their rights and welfare in

connection with their work?

There is, again, the NCCA law. We need to be more aware of the NCCA and the law that created it. For instance, the NCCA has an artists’ legal services section that was set up for mediation purposes.

It is observed, however, that the NCCA law does not provide for specific mechanisms.

7. Is there any tax exemption or special tax provision for artists?

If one is looking for a comprehensive tax law for artists, there is none. But there is one or two little-known tax

privileges for artists. For instance, artists returning from abroad could be exempted from paying tax on the

musical instruments that they bought, provided, however, that it is not in commercial volume.

8. Is it advisable for artists to form a union for collective bargaining or any association for the

purpose of collective action to safeguard and promote their rights and welfare?

If artists in a company are also regular employees, yes. If not, they have to fulfill first the requirement on

employee-employer relationship. It has been stated that a union may only be organized where there exists an

employee-employer relationship.

But in any case, it is always advisable to form a collective group to set standards and pursue artists’ rights and

welfare. Such a group may serve as a pressure or negotiating entity in behalf of its members. It may also lobby

or petition for laws, tax laws even, that are advantageous for their kind.

For instance, the officers of the Social Security System whom this Project consulted expressed a willingness to

coordinate with the group we are forming for the purpose of formulating a policy regarding artists’ social

security.

9. What is the course of action that artists in general, and directors and choreographers in music theater

in particular, may undertake to pursue the agenda of our rights and welfare?

Get organized.

“Under modern economic (and political) conditions, an individual unorganized worker (in our case, artist) is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty, so that a worker (artist) must be free to organize collectively.”

Artists possess the right to self-organization; to form or join organizations that aim to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing; and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid or protection.

11. What is a cooperative?

A cooperative is an organization carrying on any of the various economic activities for the mutual benefit of its members.

12. What is a guild?

A guild could be any one of various types of associations, whether commercial, professional, social or religious, formed to promote the common interests of the members. It is an organization for the mutual protection of its members.

13. What is an artists’ equity organization?

In many countries, especially in the West, a popular label for the artists’ trade union organization is Equity. In the US, the objectives of the Actors’ Equity Association are: (a) to protect the interests of its members through establishing standard conditions of employment in the standard contracts for each kind of work carried out by the performers; and (b) to promote the welfare of the theater as a cultural and recreational institution. The essential condition for membership in Equity is a contract of employment with a theatrical producer.

14. What is a union?

A union is an organization of co-workers for the joint and mutual protection of their common interests.

15. What is a trade union?

A trade union is an organized association of workers formed for the promotion and protection of their common interests, especially with regard to wages, hours and working conditions. A trade union has the power to undertake collective bargaining.

16. What is collective bargaining?

Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between an employer and a group of employees so as to determine the conditions of employment. The result of collective bargaining procedures is a collective bargaining agreement or CBA. Employees are often represented in bargaining by a trade union or some kind of a labor organization. Collective bargaining is governed by labor laws.

17. How do the directors and choreographers in the NTF get organized for the purpose of promoting

their rights and welfare?

This Caucus has a three-fold assignment. One, unite on the need to get organized by making a declaration to this effect. Two, outline a guideline and standard of employment by identifying the concerns that have to be included in such a document. Three, form an ad hoc/working committee that is mandated to create a mechanism and design a time-bound and resource-bound program of action so that the task could be pursued right after the NTF.

It is suggested that the declaration take into account a general situationer and the prevailing conditions of employment of music theater directors and choreographers. This may be summarily outlined in the Caucus.

It is likewise recommended that the outline of the guideline and standard of employment be as general as possible to serve as a basis for its formulation.

The task of the ad hoc/working committee is to prepare the ground for a general assembly of directors and choreographers in the local music theater. It includes drafting the basic papers for the assembly, setting in motion a network of people and prospective participants and getting in place the technical and physical requirements for the assembly.

APPENDIX

PROJECT: Artists’ Rights and Welfare

Performing Arts Department

Cultural Center of the Philippines

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

NAME POSITION COMPANY/GROUP/PROJECT

Glecy Atienza Chairperson Alyansa, Inc.

Head Dramatic Arts, NCCA

Danny Bonuan Marketing Manager Bulwagang Gantimpala

Cristy de Castro Production Manager Tanghalang Pilipino

Marili Fernandez-Ilagan Project Director Artists’ Rights & Welfare Project

Artistic Director Tag-ani Performing Arts Society

Boni Ilagan Project Consultant Artists’ Rights & Welfare Project

Writer-Director Tag-ani Performing Arts Society

Elmar Ingles Executive Director Philstage

Coordinator Performers’ Rights Society Phils

Cora Inigo Artistic Director UP Filipiniana Alumni Dance Gr

Rolando Inocencio Artistic Director Dulaang Talyer

Nanding Josef Artistic Director Cultural Center of the Phils

Clottie Gealogo-Lucero Organizer National Theater Festival

Music theater artist Tanghalang Pilipino

Dennis Marasigan Marketing Director Cultural Center of the Phils. Director, librettist, playwright

Jun Pablo Director, Designer Bulwagang Gantimpala

Roberto Mendoza Former Head Teatro Pabrika

Joseph Ranes Project Assistant National Theater Festival

Boy Sanchez Project Assistant Artists’ Rights & Welfare Project

Nikki Garde-Torres Administration Coordinator National Theater Festival

Ana Valdes-Lim Artistic Director Philippine Playhouse

Edna Vida Member NCCA Dance Committee

Choreographer

Joy Virata Actor Repertory Philippines

LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

NAME POSITION AGENCY/OFFICE

Atty. Trixi Angeles Legal Consultant National Museum

Mr. Virginio Arriero Copyright Office Chief National Library

Atty. Gwendolyn Barrios Legal Consultant Social Security System

Atty. Emmanuel Jabla Labor Lawyer Jabla Damian & Associates

Mr. Enrique Nalus Labor Relations Div. Chief DOLE

Atty. Wylie Paler Tax Lawyer Department of Finance

Atty. Nicolas Pichay Legal Consultant NCCA

Atty. Felix Segayo Legal Consultant Cultural Center of the Phils.

Atty. Joselito Vivit Office-in-Charge Social Security System