criticism

Trends in Contemporary Philippine Drama and Theater
by Rustica C. Carpio

The Philippines has an old theater tradition.  Ma. Teresa Muñoz, in a comprehensive study of theater in pre-Hispanic Philippines based on anthropological findings, attests to the fact that even if it is difficult to ascertain the theatrical forms of the early Filipinos, much of it being “lost on contact with the new and more aggressive culture,”[1] the early Philippine drama stemmed more from historical sources, since “that theater which had its roots in religion and religious practice was barely at the threshold of the structure that constitutes that art.”[2]

If, in essence, drama is the imitation of an action in the form of action[3] as Aristotle had prescribed it, then we had drama even many centuries before the Spaniards set foot on Philippine shores in 1521.  The many external manifestations of this imitation of action—dance, pantomime, acting, song, chant, recitation—be they performed solely on in combination, were found in the numerous rituals observed by the early Filipinos.

There, in the theater are brought to life and reenacted humanity’s tensions, conflicts, crises.  Men assemble now as their forefathers did to discover themselves and feel their pulse as they experience life’s processes, what August Strindberg terms “life’s two poles, life and death, the act of birth and the act of death, the fight for the spouse, for the means of subsistence, for honor, all these struggles—with their battlefields, cries of woe, wounded and dead.”[4]

Imitation and impersonation of these life processes were evident in the drama of the early Filipinos.  Life, death, fishing, hunting, weaving, wars, not to mention the elements of nature like birds, snakes, wind, waves of the sea, the swaying of the branches of trees—these all offered content and meaning to the performances of the past.

This love for drama has been part of the Filipino cultural traditions.  When the Spaniards came, they found the people as lovers of the arts, already endowed with the power to produce the imitation of action in an artistic pattern and to enjoy such imitation.

It is said that Ferdinand Magellan himself was treated to a very rare presentation of a native play “to celebrate the fact that the Filipinos and Spaniards were now brothers.”[5]  Father Gaspar de San Agustin also mentioned that the early Filipinos were “especially fond of comedies and farces, and therefore, there is no feast of consequence unless there is a comedy.”[6]

Through the years, the drama has marched on, with new trends and techniques seeping in mostly as rebellion against old methods and practices.  Fundamentally, however, drama has remained the same.  It is still the same work of art, its mission being to move and excite people, at the same time entertaining and even educating them with works that appeal to the senses, especially to the eye and the ears.  It has touched the spirit, too.

The audience makes believe in permeating a world as conceived by the playwright.  What is true to the audience, but it must seem true and real and approximate the audience’s truth.

The Filipino audience is an artistic lot.  In the past, it enjoyed dramatic performances of both Filipino and foreign troupes.  Be it young or old, it was attracted to the world of make-believe, of half-belief, that is the drama.  In many schools, colleges, and universities, dramatic productions are part of the cultural activities.

Lucila Hosillos, in her treaties on the motive power for Philippine identity and greatness, states:  “Nationalism has helped create the literature of the Filipinos, and in the country’s search for national identity today, literature has assumed significance in the definition of the Filipino personality towards the creation of a national image.”[7]  She further asserts that the Filipino writer who is himself the “bearer and heirs of this cultural dialectics, has committed himself to reconcile traditionalism and modernism for national growth and progress, and to create a Filipino image more authentic and enduring, because personal and intimate, than the changes in national personality political independence, economic growth, and social transfigurations create.”[8]

We Filipinos are still searching for our identity, an identity which asserts the individuality of people, that which makes them different from other peoples of the world.  In terms of life and experience, this identity is the uniqueness that gives a people the collective humaneness and personality which distinguish them from other members of the human race.

And this national identity that we look for can be found with the help of a “national literature.”  What, then, is “national literature”?

In the words of Hosillos, the term “national literature” is

descriptive of the specific form of interpretations and revelations of the character and individuality of the literature of a nation regardless of the language medium, the geographical and political affiliation, and the citizenship of its writers.  For a national literature is about a people…[9]

In drama and the theater, this national literature is even more imperative.  This is because, of all the arts, drama is the most immediate.  The flesh-and-blood presence of the actors and spectators not found in the other arts.  The theater being a democratic institution, it exists for and because of an audience which can criticize as severely as it may if it is dissatisfied with a show. 

The theater must "make its appeal to the audience rather than to the individual,”[10] opines Edward A. Wright.  Without an audience there is no theater, and the symbolic affinity interplay and affinity between the two prevail.  A bifurcation between them would write the total failure of drama and the theater.  Wright even insists that the theater artist” must never forget that he is the servant of the crowd.”[11]

Because the story of the theater is the history of human destiny, never should the theater be divorced from human action, for if it is, then it ceases to mirror life.  The present flux of thought and action in our national life is attuned to a national awakening and a cultural renaissance.  One is reminded of the contention of Madame Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay of India about her country’s theatrical experience:

. just as the awakening of national consciousness acts as a lever to cultural expansion, in time of special upheaval, when vast energies are released from ancient bondage, drama may gather these energies into fruitful channels.  For the magic wand of aesthetics composes harmony out of disorder and weaves the myriad strands of human aspiration into a creative pattern.  It is the spiral means of which man may climb above his intellectual interrogations into the sphere of direct experience.[12]

What well-known Filipino drama director and poet Rolando Tinio[13]  expounds in his “Theater and Its Sense of Nationality” cannot be ignored, especially in these times of reassessment of the Filipino sensibilities in relation to the context of his environment and his being Filipino.  “It is perhaps the theater,” he stresses, “which is the most national of all the arts in the sense that it is the most revelatory of the specific quality of civilization of its audience.”

While it is true that "the public can be taught,"[14] as Federico Garcia Lorca contends it, it cannot be gainsaid that the public cannot teach the theater in turn.  This is because the theater being the most intimate of all the arts, the feeling of reciprocity  between artist and audience is primordial.  There are not enough people of cultivated sensibilities and the financial and technical means to gratify themselves with, not enough of those who, having enjoyed the rare capacity of appreciating art forms, history of the arts, and aesthetics, are now ready to respond to drama and the theater, be they unintelligible or not, abstract or not.  Their competence having been geared more along the resources of tradition, their formal inclination is likely to insulate them from life and the contemporaneity of the experiences concomitant with such life.

Response to human experience is, indeed, immediate, the way responses, are generated in the theater.  Neither premeditated nor studied, these responses are as fresh as the performance on the stage, vibrant with every delineation of human emotions the actor communicates to the audience in understandable, decipherable terms.  The drama of human life is the drama of the audience that sees it.  And it is the audience that ultimately determines the temperament of the theater.

Never was there more rapport which is ideally and practically needed between theater and audience as in the presentation of zarzuela.  That is why the age of the zarzuelas is considered the “Golden Age of Philippine Drama,” as many theater authorities have pronounced.  I commend with an almost panegyric feeling the zarzuela playwrights.  For, they have succeeded in creating dramas which served as potent mediums of conveying our national personality while at the same time giving enjoyment and instruction.  As Tinio puts it:

. The Playwright of Tomorrow has not yet established a new aesthetic for drama so that he can transcend rather than merely revolt against the past the way Moliére and Shakespeare transcended Sophocles and Aristophanes, and Ibsen and Shaw transcended Shakespeare and Moliére.  In the Philippines, we may not even speak of the Playwright of Today with sufficient cogency.  The playwright of the Golden Age of Zarzuelas seems to be the last of our national spokesmen.[15]

Lately, however, there have been much discussion and activity on Philippine drama and theater preeminently inspired by the incentives and encouragement given by the public and the government.  The Filipino, as a creative, thinking, feeling member of his society, searches for forms and meaning that will help him establish his identity as a Filipino.  The drama as the most immediate of all the arts is a force that assists him establish such identity.

How far has the Filipino dramatist gone in making his literary expression vital and meaningful?  How securely has he moored his plays as to give them cogency?  Has today’s playwright transcended the past as to qualify him to be a national spokesman?  What are his innovations that his drama may hold fixed their contemporaneity even as it entertains and informs its audience?

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to do some assessment of drama in the Philippine contemporary scene.  There is a grain of truth – in fact, many truths – to be recorded by the playwright of today.  But a sorry truth is that there are still not enough playwrights to record and relay the numerous and variegated strands of human experiences.  Sometimes, it is rather perplexing to note that while there are many poets, fictionists, essayists, and literary critics in our midst, there are fewer playwrights to speak about the many changes and occurrences in our surroundings.

However, the way drama is shaping now portends a good sign for its tomorrow.  Change, indeed, is ineluctable.  Facts change; people change; motives change; the materials and plots for drama change.  And, while human nature is still basically unchanged, there should be more playwrights to depict the developments in their time – the values which have been contested and challenged, the moral and social ambiguities, the uncertainties and doubts that besiege the human being, and the changes, be they cataclysmic or taciturn – all inextricably linked with the breathing fibers of an organic community which grows and pulsates with life.

Though basically tradition-oriented, we Filipinos, I believe, are flexible, ever pliant.  It is very apparent that drama is very much part, an integument really, of the social, cultural, and moral aspects of our lives.  Why is this so? ”Drama has always been one of the most vital forms of literary expression because its medium is the dialogue and action of living people on a stage,”[16]  maintain Maurice B. McNamee, James E. Cronin, and Joseph A. Rogers.  In the history of human affairs, drama has been a cogent vehicle of expression and communication of values.  While it is not the domain of drama to impose certain dictums and morals, while it should not insist on didacticism, it has, as years reel in and reel out, proved that entertainment is not its sole province.  Is it not that drama has been sustained by values the totality of which comprise civilization?  The moral with that of the audience has made it weather and surface above all intimidations of incoherence, of catastrophes, the tempting lures of commonplace.

In the process of understanding and being understood which comprise communication’s main springboard, man seeks and listens to many messages – of daily realities, observations, and truths.  The picture man sees, though sometimes blurred by inanities, is a picture of himself and his social structure agreeing and disagreeing on certain qualities worthy of esteem.  Almost everything in our society and culture is transplanted in the drama, which, on the other hand, transmits the message to the audience for appreciation and dissemination.

The theater, affirms David Berlo, is –

a distinguished vehicle of communication, with a considerable tradition and heritage.  Many people would classify the theater as an ‘entertainment’ vehicle.  Yet countless examples could be given of plays that were intended to have, and did have, significant effects on an audience, other than entertainment.[17]

Recent trends and developments on the Philippine dramatic and theatrical fronts include 1) historical drama and folklore, 2) the increase in nationalistic and Filipinistic plays staged in and outside theater halls, 3) the increment in drama seminars and workshops, scholarships, and playwriting contests to help discover and cultivate new talents, 4) the encouragement of professionalism through the affording of better opportunities to theater artists, 5) the continued outpouring of translations and adaptations of foreign plays, 6) the emergence of bolder themes considered taboo in the past, 7) the youth organizations’ deep involvement in drama, 8) the support and recognition given to artists including playwrights, directors, and performing artists by government and private entities, 9) the occasional veering away of the dramatic action from stage to the auditorium very near the audience, and 10) the revivals of traditional dramas; namely, moro-moro, a play with stylized movements and semi-chanted tone dealing on the clash between Christians and Muslims; zarzuela, a musical melodramatic play; and cenaculo or sinakulo, the passion play on the life and death of Jesus Christ.

Social conditions like poverty in the slums, capital-labor relations, marital infidelity and other domestic problems, political developments, fashions and ideas about different aspects of living, man’s idealization of woman and vice versa, dissimilarity of religions – these and many more subjects have given substance to the plays being written and staged.

More and more plays of this nature are produced, and they try to grasp the social reality.  Perhaps Filipino drama may approximate the greatness and stature it reached during its “Golden Era” in the early part of the 20^th century.  For it no longer serves as mere entertainment; it is now as relevant as it was in the remote past.  Great literature, says Lucien Goldmann,[18] tackles major problems as the writer identifies with the fundamental social tendencies of his time, communicating the realities, the human condition with an awareness.

Philippine writing of dramas now tends to pursue this path.  It endeavors to relate to a critical, realistic, and coherent vision of contemporary society and not generally to a private, individual, subjective world.  Its present view is total; seldom is it partial.

By a truly relevant theater, I do not mean that drama should preach or be hortatory in essence.  Neither do I assert that drama should always serve as a means to an end, outside theatrical ends.  Nor do I advocate that drama should be an instrument to effect change, be it social or political.  What I am stressing is that drama should not lose its contemporaneity, its timelessness and timeliness.

There may be a social distance between the dramatist and his society, as in instances of alienation, the isolation of some modern writers from their community.  This alienation develops, according to Georgi Plekhanov, and precipitates the adherence to “art for art’s sake” especially when artists “feel a hopeless contradiction between their arms and the aims of the society to which they belong.  Artists must be very hostile to their society and they must see no hope to changing it.”[19]  However, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, in their fiction, caution against alienation.  To them, “modern man who would isolate himself from society is not only psychologically alienated but potentially capable of denying his moral responsibility.”[20]  But this situation of alienation is not the rule.  It is rather an exception to the rule.  As René Wellek and Austin Warren put it, “the writer is not only influenced by society:  he influences it.  Art not merely reproduces life but also shapes it.  People may model their lives upon the patterns of fictional heroes and heroines.”[21]

I agree with Norris Houghton when he says that drama should participate in the “real”[22] action - that it should express faithfully in the theater the artist's conception of reality.  The playwright must translate his vision into highly theatrical terms and thus make the reader or audience feel the unique experience he participates in, not through stage directions, but through the establishment of rapport, a sense of "communion" in the tradition of the Russian Okhlopkov, a common sharing of experience between performers and spectators.

Okhlopkov's thinking that the theater "must do everything to make the spectator believe in what goes on in the play"[23] is tenable and practicable.  Disregarding the proscenium and moving the action in the auditorium like Meyerhold and Ereinov did, Okhlopkov allowed action to transpire around the audience, sometimes in the center, even projected stages above the spectators.  Through multiplicity of stages, montage in the theater was initiated by him.  And, by means of this device, it was not necessary to have logical sequence in the presentation of scenes, but rather a cut from scene to scene.  In fact, action could be frozen in the middle of one scene, then cut to another one followed by a return to the preceding scene.

In the Philippine setting, this proximity between players and audience is also effectuated.  Sometimes, action is consummated right in front of the spectators, below the stage, disregarding the imaginary fourth wall; at other times, in the same production, action is rendered around the audience or between the two sides of the audience, at the center aisle.  Also, it is not an uncommon occurrence when films and film slides are used to convey locale or intensify atmosphere.

Many centuries of foreign domination had relegated the Filipino identity to the background because the colonizers—Spain, the United States, even Japan transitorily – thrust the patterns of their own groundwork.  A common or collective consciousness among the Filipinos is reaching a new height now that government, private organizations, and individuals have joined hands in support of common goals.  The Filipinos are now more aware of the group they belong to.  Linked together by common needs, common problems, common dreams, the present Filipinos devote much of their thought and energy towards the building of a more homologous existence—an endless searching for that elusive Filipino identity.  The Filipinos now – ever innovative, and without dread of permutation – are more assertive, too, in their being Asians.  In the drama, the same directions are pursued.

Playwright Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio observes that what have been true to drama in the different Asian countries are also true to Philippine drama, namely:[24]

1.                To the Asian whom the community rather than the individual is central, the important role of the theater is to enhance community;

2.                To the Asian whom the community rather than the individual is central, the important role of the theater is one that is directed toward community welfare;

3.                To the Asian whom the community rather than the individual is central, the community is also central in the plots of most dramas;

4.                To the Asian whom the community rather than the individual is central, the Playwright assumes the important social role of Critic and Teacher.

E. San Juan decries in his A Preface to Filipino Literature that Tagalog has remained the “language of hearth.”[25]  Congruent with this is the lamentation about the “inadequate development of a common language”[26] and that "Tagalog literature, loyal both to its tradition and to the movement of history which the language itself registers, awaits a rebirth."[27]  This rebirth San Juan had envisioned is now at hand.  A resurgence now undulates with no little amount of exhilaration in Filipino literature in general and in drama in particular.  Lately, the writing and staging of plays are predominantly in Filipino.  Filipino is the present national language based mostly on Tagalog with the addition of words coined by combining syllables from words in the different vernaculars.  Worth recalling at this point is Epifanio de los Santos’ prediction of the Filipino theater at the turn of the 20^th century:

Then the Tagalog theater went forth in quest of new worlds to conquer.  Its plays now were based on contemporaneous history and thus not being of an established order, they reflect the changes.  They showed also a tendency toward symbolism and to a certain degree, toward the restoration of everything purely national.[28]

Presently, many plays are written for the popular audience, both in Filipino and in the languages and dialects of the various regions of the country.  Bilingualism which uses Filipino and English has permeated education, business and industry, and government, but there are areas which strictly adhere to their native languages.  In the street dramas particularly, English is already out of use.  This is palpably experienced during the Lent season, especially Holy Week.  Both rural places and metropolis witness the passion play (cenaculo or sinakulo) depicting the life and sufferings of Jesus Christ.  Usually staged on platforms, the passion play now unfolds along the streets.

"No literary form has more historical importance than drama,"[29] affirms Seymour Reiter.  Interesting to note is the mounting of historical, folkloric, nationalistic, and Filipinistic works—many times in Pilipino.  Indeed, the actual environs give the dramatist ample motifs for him to transform into an imaginative piece of work.

* * * * *

A look at some representative works would afford an insight into the Philippine setting.  It will at the same time manifest certain trends and developments in the horizon of drama and theater.

A certain period in Philippine history is echoed in Hulyo 4, 1954 A.D. (July 4, 1954 A.D.) by Dionisio Salazar when the remnants of Hukbo ng Bayan laban Sa Hapon (Army of the People Against the Japanese), or HMB for short, were ardently in pursuit of liquidating some government officials, preeminently the president of the Republic, with a view to toppling down the established form of government.  Four conspirators – Pablo and his sweetheart Loida, the commander Kintin, and the teenager Islaw – plot to liquidate the president for a prize.  They pose as balut (cooked fertilized eggs) vendors at the Luneta Park, now called Rizal Park, in Manila.

The action of the play is set on a spot near the monument of Dr. Jose Rizal, the national hero.  Using verbal wit through epigrams, the playwright shows the evil designs of corrosive minds.  From the conversation between Pablo and Loida, it is gathered that the two are confused.  They have pledged to help in the activities of the organization, but they are tortured between the thought of keeping a promise and that of being apprehended by the arms of the authorities.  The conflict between the practical and the moral surfaces with the cropping up of a new plan to return to a normal, peaceful life.  The contrast between idealism and realism is at play.  In the interchange between the couple are resounded their fears and anxieties.  Should they heed the advice of Loida’s uncle, the senator, and leave Manila to work in a homestead in Mindanao?  And how will they break the news to the two men?  In a fatalistic vein, Pablo assures Loida, “May awa ang Diyos." (God has pity on us.)

As the two try to make a choice between a quiet life and one enmeshed in chaos, a policeman so unceremoniously and rudely approaches them and accuses them of engaging in lewd actions in a public place.  He arrests the pair for questioning in the police headquarters.  Thus, Pablo and Loida’s romantic view of life and love is counterpoised by the policeman’s antiromantic attitude about things.  It is evident that the playwright intends to show Pablo and Loida as prospective instruments of goodness and the policeman who is imbued with the duty to preserve peace and order as a person motivated by love for power.  When the policeman speaks and acts, he is determined to use both the weapon of arms and the cloak of authority.

When Kintin and Islaw enter the scene, they cannot find Pablo and Loida.  They argue on the indecency of some lovers who stray in the park, on the evil of too much imitation from foreign customs, on certain aspects of living.  Finally freed by the police, Pablo and Loida come to announce their change of heart.  The confrontation between the four is crucial.  They are on the verge of killing each other.  The play ends with an optimistic note as Koronel Santos (Col. Santos) and some men approach the group.  With their baskets of balut which conceal time bombs, Kintin and Islaw are whisked to the National Bureau of Investigation office for proper action.

At some points in Hulyo 4, 1954 A.D. the playwright depicts people from varied walks of life in the park as if to show highlight and contrast in their mien.  A drunk American sailor with a girl, then a pair of homosexuals, and so on.  The Luneta Park is a microcosm of a bigger realm that is Manila, which in turn is situated in a more vast expanse which is the Philippines.  Through stage directions and dialogues, the reader, the audience is afforded a looking glass through which to reflect the reeling of scene after scene where the paradox of the man being taunted by his own evil schemes for want of a better life is equaled by the paradox of the man being reformed to respectability.  This antithetical relation between Kintin and Islaw, the bad men, on the one side and Pablo and Loida who decided to change for the good on the other brings us to the theme of the play which is:  deceit, destruction and loss of self-respect unhallow one’s life.  The only salvation is a good deed, a return to proper human conduct.

The crux of the play, which is the confrontation between these two opposing viewpoints, seems to show the métier of the playwright.  He definitely dishes out sharp social criticisms, and examination of facts perhaps to set the reader, the spectator to think and consider why man has to undergo torture of beliefs before he could ever face the force of truth, come to terms with life, and reorganize his life pattern to suit good human contact.

A significant play with mixed English and Tagalog dialogues is The New Yorker in Tondo by Marcelino Agana, Jr.  Through the laughter it evokes, it weaves a serious note.  Kikay, the protagonist, goes abroad for a few months’ study of beauty culture in New York.  There, she falls in love with the New York ways, its lifestyles and skylines, and gets acclimatized to everything New Yorkish.  She becomes the archetype of many Filipinos who temporarily forget their native land for a more luscious environment.  She changes her name to Francesca in keeping with her new personality.

In the dialogue between Kikay and Tony, we can see that Kikay is decided to break their engagement, for the gap between them has only widened.  Out to prove that she is too good for Tony, Kikay romanticizes the beautiful days she spent in New York.  She is all-woman eager to abandon old friends and vows.  This triggers Tony off into a flow of outbursts.  He is a man, after all, ready to defend his rights.  The foundation of the relationship between man and woman is now about to collapse.

Before this scene, Kikay is the sweet type.  “My spirit aches for its true home across the sea… ah!  New York, New York, New York, my own dear New York!” she exclaims as she romanticizes about her past in the United States.  And, as her words reverberate, her listeners, most especially Nena and Totoy, get irritated, except her mother, of course, who is charmed by her daughter’s newly-acquired manners.  Carried away by Kikay’s sophistication, Aling Atang or Mrs. Mendoza, tries to converse in smattering English interspersed with Tagalog words and phrases pronounced with wrong affectation.

From Nena, Kikay discovers that her sweetheart had shifted attention to her.  Verbal fireworks ensue between Kikay and Tony.  But this situation does not last long for Tony confesses his fault.  He admits that he really loves Kikay, but since she stops writing to him, he finds Nena not an unsatisfactory substitute.  Kikay accosts Nena, and when two women fight physically and verbally, male intervention is a catalytic factor.  And this happens only after Nena, the stronger female, has succeeded in hitting Kikay and causing her to fall unconscious.  Tony rushes to Kikay, and this further enrages Nena.  But Totoy appeases Nena and divulges his secret admiration for her.

Whereas earlier in the play Tony is the pursuer, there is a slight reversal of roles when in the end Kikay becomes a subtle pursuer who pursues Tony by way of promising to forget New York and her sophisticated ways.  Happily for all, love wins.  Country wins, too, for there is no place like home.  The plot of The New Yorker in Tondo is certainly propelled by the theme which endows it with just the right amount of dramatic conflict.  The playwright sends his message across:  if man must change for a more fashionable life, he cannot escape from and displace those things that are his own; there is no place like home.

The point where the play falters, is at its occasionally lengthy lines, but this is more than compensated for by the amusing and wholesome mood of the comedy.  And in the playwright’s weaving of a comedy, he achieves a seriousness of purpose:  to show all that love for things attractive may not be as enduring as one’s cherished traditions.  By making Kikay wake up to reality which is her Manila environs, Agana strikes a merry note of reconciliation.  And with this is a happy blending of realism and romanticism in play.

The New Yorker in Tondo contains a great variety of moods – joy, excitement, nostalgic longing for things gone by, sadness, indignation, hate, optimism.  Hence, there is no dull moment.  Instead of the spectators’ condemning Kikay, they are led away by her into her transitory world.  She even wins the audience’s sympathy for her courage to admit her fault.  She is interesting, if flighty, not of the stock type for she has a more rounded character.  At the beginning of the play, for instance, she is a strong woman, but near the end she weakens to give way to love and logic.

Historicity and a sense of sociology and culture are lucidly communicated in A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino by Nick Joaquin.  The full-length play which the author calls “an elegy in three scenes” bring the reader, the audience, to the past when Manila, “the noble and loyal city,” was not yet ravaged by World War II.  Also afforded is a feel of the city during the war.  Considered an important milestone in Philippine drama, this play of ideas, when mounted on stage, gives a penetrating exploration into the middle-class and upper middle-class strata of the Philippine ethos. 

Among the merits attributed to the play is Joaquin’s deft handling of mythology in presenting the fabric of the story.  The playwright uses the Aeneas-Anchises myth to provide images replete with philosophical meaning.  The first scene opens with Bitoy Camacho, narrator-actor –in fact, the playwright’s spokesman – reciting eloquently a paean to Old Manila, now still called Intramuros, and its role in Philippine history.  Then the focus transfers to the living room of Don Lorenzo Marasigan’s house to show the painting called “A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino,” supposed to hang between stage and audience, at the center of the invisible fourth wall.  Around this portrait the play’s story revolves.

Through Bitoy's words the exposition unfolds.  It is afternoon, in October 1941.  The Philippines, like other parts of the world, is in a state of chaos.  The confusion of the impending war takes grip of the populace except Bitoy and the young ones.  To them it offers excitement.  The assignment from the newspaper office for Bitoy to visit the Marasigan home, which he had known as a young boy, is much cause for jubilation.  This time he is going there as a reporter.  Bitoy is received by two spinsters, Candida and Paula, daughters of Don Lorenzo.  In the device of a play-within-a-play, the three reconstruct the past.  Don Lorenzo does not appear; instead his self-portrait comes into view, and Bitoy, Candida, and Paula stare at it.

Candida tells Bitoy that their father painted the picture for them a year ago and that it has attracted people from far and near.  In the painting depicting young Aeneas carrying his old father Anchises on his back as they flee from the burning Troy, Aeneas’ face is that of the young Don Lorenzo and Anchises' face is that of the old Don Lorenzo.  Varied attributes are expressed towards the Portrait.  Bitoy is frightened by it, while Candida looks at it as a two-headed monster.  To Don Perico, the poet-turned-politician, the portrait symbolizes a past now dead; it also symbolizes the Filipino as artist.  Like an emblem, the picture seems to castigate the younger generation for its lack, and sometimes loss, of respect for the traditions and heritage of the past and a proclivity to the new and sometimes unceremonious culture associated with the impact of American influences.  The very puzzling effect of the portrait is taken as a broad symbolization of the gap between the Filipinos’ past as influenced by Spain and his present.[30]  Instead of serving as a nexus between two generations, the portrait provides the core of conflicts between them.  Its role becomes both concrete and symbolic not only through the employment of dialogues and events, but through the isolation it creates by its very presence.

Scene I also introduces another important character – Tony Javier, piano player and former law student.  He and Bitoy had worked together at the piers some time.  When the two sisters momentarily leave the scene, Tony tells Bitoy of the sisters’ penury.  For support, they depend on elder brother Manolo and elder  sister Pepang, and to augment their meager allowance, they have Tony as boarder.  As regards Manolo and Pepang’s intentions, the house must be sold so that their father could be put in a hospital, and the two of them could divide the pieces of furniture between themselves.  Tony informs Bitoy that he hates the portrait.  To him, it is a source of malefaction.  Is Tony an outsider assessing the picture?  He is – and is the very first outsider to give his impression of it.  Candida, Paula and Bitoy are insiders.  In ruthless terms, Tony reveals his hatred for both painting and painter.

"The damn thing's always looking down at me.  Every time I come into his house; every time I come up these stairs.  Looking at me, looking down at me.  And if I turn around and face it - then it smiles, darn it.  And if I go into my room and close the door, I can still feel it through the walls - looking at me, smiling at me!  Oh, I hate those eyes, I hate that smile, I hate the whole damn thing!"

From Tony's outbursts is gathered the first conflict in the play - the conflict between him and Don Lorenzo.  Very obviously, Tony resents the old man's refusal to sell the picture.  Don Lorenzo's pride is Tony's downfall, the crushing of his dream to sell the portrait for a big commission.  Two cultures are at bay against each other, and in this cross-cultural encounter between young and old generations,[31] the values of each generation are brought to the fore, interacting with one another, contrasting, spelling the divisiveness between sociological forces.

Tension mounts, but comic relief presents itself.  Paula returns and tells Bitoy and Tony that Candida has succeeded in rat-catching, a talent the elder sister plans to exploit for a livelihood.  This light moment shows the pathos in the lives of the two spinsters.  For, while they have become poor, they refuse to sell the painting.  They would not be swallowed by the crass materialism of the young.  When Bitoy’s reporter friends arrive, all the more the sisters remain firm in their decision to keep the painting.  Two vaudeville dancers, friends of Tony, appear and give the group a sampling of their vulgarity.

Bitoy finally makes a stand-he likes the picture.  Then bids good-bye after saying his piece:  "Art is not magic.  Its purpose is not to enchant but to disenchant."  After all guests have gone, the two sisters want to dismiss their boarder for entertaining women in the house, but they have a change of heart after hearing the sad story of Tony's life.  Meanwhile, to solve their present financial setback, Candida and Paula make plans to work - Candida as rat catcher at the Bureau of Health and Science and Paula to give Spanish and piano lessons.  Later the two sisters make-believe about their beautiful past, but a sudden blackout sends Candida to a paroxysmal fit - laughter, then tears, then curses for the portrait for their ill fate.  Paula, formerly the weaker one, consoles her elder sister.  Candida's weakening and her looking at the blackout as caused by their inability to settle the electric bills foreshadow the coming blackout in her mind when later she will desert the values the portrait represents.  The truth is that there is a blackout because of an air raid.

Scene II is again set in the Marasigan house.  Bitoy recites the agony of his life and the beauty of its past when he was a child and his father was alive.  Only in this very house, a week before, did he rekindle his faith in the future.  Aeneas-like, he is  committed to carry his Anchises out of the devastated city to a bright future.  Suddenly, Pepang and Manolo come, decided to wreck whatever is left the old man’s house.  They have invited Don Perico to help them convince Candida and Paula to sell the picture and leave the house.  He tries to influence the two women only to be reproached by them for being forgetful of his past.  Don Perico’s wife and her “society” friends arrive creating a commotion, exposing their vacuous minds when they evaluate the painting.

A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino reaches its climax when Candida declares to Manolo and Pepang that their father had attempted suicide by jumping off the balcony because she and Paula had accused him as being responsible for their miserable lives.  With so much bitterness among themselves, how could the three keep on staying together?  The only recourse is separation, and this Manolo stresses.  Tony rushes in to tell about his buyer for the picture.  It is already too late when Candida realizes that Paula has eloped with Tony.

In Scene III, Paula releases herself from the fetters of her surroundings.  Deserted by Candida and exposed to Tony’s opportunism, she garners a new strength, returns to the house and destroys the portrait.  She frees herself from the past, from the cash value of the painting, from the taunting remarks of people.  A new birth is at hand with the celebration of the feast of the Virgin of La Naval.  Now, they – Don Lorenzo, Candida, and Paula – are together contra mundum, against the world.  Here, another play-within-a-play is put by the playwright to show the Marasigans welcoming friends who join them to honor the Virgin.

Sometimes the play suffers from lengthy dialogues, but this is compensated for by Nick Joaquin’s etching on the rocks of Philippine literature a play which throbs with the fibers of a writer’s commitment to the diverse cultural streams that permeate the Filipino soul with a historical perspective.  In echoing and reechoing his theme which clearly runs like this:  “man cannot escape from his past but he needs identification with it,” Joaquin presents a drama that is realistic, symbolic, sometimes bordering on the naturalistic, romantic, and expressionistic.  He heightens conflict through irony and contrast in characterization, situation, and setting.  If he calls his play an elegy, it is because he laments the death of an era in the ever-loyal city of Manila.  The playwright complies with Fr. Horacio de la Costa’s dictum that –

It is the function of the writer as artist to provide his community with a special kind of pleasure through the medium of speech.  This pleasure consists in the sharing of remembered experience, and through that sharing an increased awareness of what we are and should be, both individually and together.  Here in the Philippines the very richness of our social experience, the diversity of our cultural traditions, creates a problem of synthesis.  This synthesis can be achieved, but only if our writers will enlarge our consciousness and refine our sensibility so as to embrace and apprehend not only our present but all our past.  Only thus, by discovering what we have been, will we arrive at some measure of understanding of what we are and what yet may be.[32]

The play's title is a derivative of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce to show the parallelism between two artists – Stephen Dedalus and Don Lorenzo – both akin to the idealist who looks at life as a wasteland.  Stephen is an exile from his own land to perfect his art; Don Lorenzo is an exile from his own past.  As regards Candida and Paula, they are two souls confused and lost in the vortex of a seething fire between two opposing generations.  Ironically, the life they outwardly represent is the life they hate.  However, despite all odds, they attain moral victory.

A certain kind of play-making emerged during the present decade which may be perceived as a kind of protest.  In fact, Norris Houghton looks at the theater as a metaphor of all our protests today.[33]   And what do the modern-day crowds protest against?  As Houghton has mentioned, they raise their voices against the forms and content of established (or Establishment?) theater and the barriers that isolate the audience from what should be a communally shared experience.

A play of this nature is Hanggang Dito na Lamang at Maraming Salamat (Till Then and Thanks a Lot) by Orlando Nadres.  This one-act seriocomic work in many scenes probes deep into the psychological depths in the life of a homosexual.  Earlier plays of this genre were derided, and when this first went on the boards in 1975, the conservative audience was shocked.  But it proved, with its candidness and truthfulness, to be an irresistible piece, enjoyed by many.

The play concentrates on its message:  that the life of a homosexual is replete with misunderstandings and lack of sympathy.  It gives a close look at Fidel, the covert homo who spends for the studies of Efren, introduced as his nephew, but actually the object of his affection.  Julius, the beautician who does not conceal his being a flaming fairy, cautions Fidel, but the latter would not listen.  Truth dawns on Fidel that he cannot have Efren for long, for the young man would end up marrying a woman of his love.

Fidel's is a voice hankering to be heard:  homosexuals like him need compassion, not scorn.  His speech and actions build up to a climactic point with interposing wit, humor, and pathos.  The frankness of Fidel's words betray the irony of his life:  that he did not ask to be born a homosexual, but here he is, in this world beset by problems.

In contemporary Philippine drama, plot and character are not demolished as in modern drama elsewhere.  It may not coalesce with nihilism, or even constructivism, but on this plot and character hinges much of its potency and convincing power.  And, despite several strivings at the staging of plays along the absurd and the avant-garde, Philippine drama has embraced more the realistic, the naturalistic, and sometimes the symbolic.  Language is an important ingredient, and annihilation of it is allowed only sparingly.  In the traditional dramas, the vehicle for expression and communication is verse, but the modern dramas are more at home in prose, with but a few exceptions.

There are plays which exhibit the playwrights’ verbal skills while others are more prone to the projection of moods.  To many a dramatist, the drama will not only be a representation of life, but rather a commentary about life.  Some playwrights use the prologue for exposition; others have an introductory character talk to the audience to drop hints that aid in the appreciation of the plays.  Time and again, flashbacks are employed in the further elucidation of themes.  Or, films and film strips are employed.

More serious dramas  are written and staged, with a lesser number of comedy trailing behind.  Perhaps, this is due to the great number of people who patronize plays that make them cry.  For is it not that to many drama is a form of escape from the humdrum of daily life?  Victor Hugo, way ahead of our times, classified the theater-goers he knew into “the main body of spectators who demand action; women, who seek emotion; thinkers, who look for character.”[34]  Without inviting the ire of women who would classify themselves as thinkers, it is a truism that in Philippine drama, more women comprise the audience, perhaps to seek emotion.  Really, many of them go for the melodramatic.

Indeed, resurgence in drama and theater is felt.  Already, dramatic productions sometimes do not keep limits to the picture-frame, proscenium convention.  The arena stating is as much a part of the scene, but drama these days is staged anywhere – in the streets, in cafeterias, in lobbies of school buildings where greater intimacy between performers and spectators is achieved.  Drama may not evade the encounter with illusion and reality, and the need for participation, for togetherness, for congeniality is part of the enjoyment of a common experience.  And the young have their share in creating such a climate conducive to drama and theater.

The writer, the dramatist, addresses his audience in the context of his own social milieu, transcending the barriers of time and space, understanding and translating human life in the perspective of the roots of sociology, culture, and tradition, relating as he does the image of truth and experience and his own conception of life.  What better verisimilitude and close affinity to life than what Arthur Hopkins, one of America’s first pioneers in modern drama, says that the theater can “ultimately reach a place where it helps mankind to a better human understanding, to a deeper social pity, and to a wider tolerance of all that is life.”[35]

As drama is in the best Filipino pulse, it will not be difficult to break down the walls that stultified it in the past.