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
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?)
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- The ageing of Paula -- Tony’s object of temptation -- sensuality is reduced. If
she were younger, the temptation might have been overwhelming.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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.
- 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
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
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
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
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