Directed by DUP Artistic Director Alexander Cortez, Noli Me Tangere brings the audience the exciting world of the opera with two pianos, the songs, and the powerful voices and acting of the artists. This production promises to be a feast for the senses in-spite of its modest scale.

Young opera singers from various music conservatories collaborate and dominate Noli Me Tangere: An Opera. Under the watchful tutelage of vocal coach and music director Camille Molina, promising opera singers Myramae Meneses, Antonio Ferrer, Kuya Manzano, Elainne Vibal, interpret anew memorable songs from the opera together with established opera singers Jonathan Velasco, Cynthia Guico, Rica Nepomuceno and Joy Abalon Tamayo. Among the songs included are Maria Clara’s Kay Tamis ng Buhay, Maria Clara and Ibarra’s duet Sa Lupang Pinangako, Sisa’s haunting Awit ng Gabi, and Ibarra’s Aking Isinangguni to name but a few.

Production Designer Gino Gonzales creates an all-Filipino ambience fitting for the production. Jon Jon Villareal tackles the lighting design, choreography by Dexter Santos, video by Winter David, special props by John Gaerlan, photography by Jojit Lorenzo and Dino Dimar, and Technical Director Ohm David.

Noli Me Tangere: The Opera is supported by the UP Office of the President, UP Diliman Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Dean College of Arts and Letters, UP Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, Day by Day Christian Ministries, Ms. Irene M. Araneta, Dr. Joven Cuanang and NCCA Chairman Jun de Leon.

Noli Me Tangere: The Opera runs from November 16 to December 4, 2011 (Wednesday to Friday, 7pm; Saturday and Sunday, 10 am and 3pm) at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, Palma Hall, University of the Philippines Diliman. For sponsorship and ticket inquiries, please contact Cherry Bong Edralin at 09177500107, or the Dulaang UP Office at 926-1349, 981-8500 local 2449 or 433-7840

By Rody Vera

I was asked to write a paper about Playwriting during Martial Law. And since I’m not an academician, I’ve decided to write about my own story instead. So this paper is more of a personal account of what I went through as a young impressionable, idealistic playwright during the years of the dictatorship, in my case, specifically around 1977 through 1985. I will also talk about my friends, my colleagues, my mentors during this time.

Though my first exposure to theater was way back when I was in Grade 2 — appearing in a Fr. Reuter production (Francis of Navarre) — I must say my first real encounter with the theater was when I was freshman in high school. The first full-length production I have seen at the U.P. Abelardo Hall. It was a U.P. Samaskom production written and directed by Reijoo de la Cruz entitled “Programang Putol Putol.” I was so taken by the play, I watched it a second time. That play stuck in my mind for quite a long time. I thought all plays were like that—structured in an “absurdist” style, cloaked in so many symbols and deceptive devices. My introduction to theater, therefore was through this route, which led me to read up on so-called absurdist dramatists like Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Edward Albee—all of whom I read in my second year in high school. These plays I read and kept only to myself.

It was before my third year in high school that I enrolled in a summer workshop for teenagers in PETA. In that workshop, I learned the value of theater not only as a medium of self-expression, but as a medium of advocacy. Of course at that time, we didn’t call it advocacy. We called it, social relevance.
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By Marili F. Ilagan

Yupanaw yang kanak lumon nga usog ngadi sangaon. Laong niya way kausbawan ngadi sa taas. Laong niya tukay sang baba yang kausbawan. Laong ko daw mali siya. Laong ko daw di paras ngadi sa taas yang baba… Iibanan ko yang kanak ama pati ina ngadi hangtud yukani yang mga yaka-unipormeng usog. Yagda silan ngadi sang kagubot. Gikan silan ngadto sang baba. Laong nilan silan yang mga tig-da sang kausbawan… Isa ka gabi sangaon, baynti dos kanilan. Madaig pa sang bilang ko sang kanak mga alima pati siki. Isunog nilan yang kanami baryo. Ipuwersa nilan kami nga laongon nami kanilan kung hain da yang mga rebelde. Tapos, isunog nilang sang tabako yang kanak likod… Yagkalantaon da lang ako. Ini na kanta yang yakahatag kanako sang paglaum para mabuhi. Katigam ako, mokani pag-isab yang kanak lumon. Tapos, dua da kaming magtukod pag-isab sang kanami i-puy-an.

That was my first writing in my mother and grandmother’s language. That was part of a monologue piece.

Since childhood, I have listened to my mother talk with her parents and tell stories to her siblings in that language—a strange one that she didn’t speak with my father and with us, her own children. I never understood it, never dared ask what it was. Years passed, and like magic, the language began to unravel, though I never got to speak it. I kept the unraveling to myself until I learned about the “culture of silence and assertion” in the early 1980s. In 1986, in one of our regular theater productions for nationalist advocacy, I spoke the language and even performed it.

I am part Mandaya, one of the ethnolinguistic societies in this country. I come from Davao, in the island of Mindanao, the southern Philippines. In terms of land area, it is the largest city in the world.

The cultural heritage of Davao is all about its being a melting pot of different peoples. In the early 1900, the government brought in the Northern and Central peoples of our country to occupy Mindanao’s vast lands. These increased the then 4.5 million original inhabitants—the talainged (now called lumad) and the Moro—of the island. By the middle of the century, these migrant settlers had established their supremacy in Mindanao, at the expense of the indigenous population.

My father was a later generation of these migrant settlers, though his coming to Mindanao was purely on account of his courtship and marriage with my mother.

With the waves of migration to Mindanao, intermarriages occurred. Major strains developed. One of these manifested in language. Davaoeño came into being, the language my great grandmother’s tribe created from infusing other migrant languages into their own Mandaya language. Davaoeño is a language that seems to be confined to being spoken and not written. Today, it remains oral, and is shunned in formal situations. It is the language that I used in introducing this presentation.

The piece comes from a vignette of Kaliwat theater Collective’s production titled Nag-alintabong Kabilin (Burning Legacy). It involves a girl who narrates the story of her village. Her brother left their mountain village for the lowlands in search of progress. Their old parents were left in her care. Shortly after, soldiers descended upon them, claiming that they were bringing progress to the mountain folk, but were actually in hot pursuit of some rebels. The girl tells us how the soldiers set fire to their village and forced them to give information regarding the rebels. She laments how the soldiers burned her body with cigarettes. She tells us her wish to survive. She tells us her hope that her brother would return soon so that they could rebuild their home and village.
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“Uyayi sa Digmaan,” as “play within a play,” is an interchange of the scenes of the drama Norhaina, which Teatro Pagariya rehearses, and the off-scene moments between Raizza and Kurt who are the lead actors in the play. The dramatic and real life, as it were, dialectics on stage is what provides momentum in the action and development of “Uyayi sa Digmaan.”

Norhaina, the play within, depicts the long trek of the Moro evacuees of mostly women and children in the wake of the war that breaks out at the Liguasan Marsh between the government troops and the Moro rebels. Raizza, a young Moro member of Pagariya, plays the central character Norhaina. Kurt, a Christian, plays Norhaina’s rebel- leader husband Hassan. Kuya Margo directs the play.

The rendition of the story of Norhaina offers a kind of heroic relief against a backdrop of war. Her heroism is marked from the moment she assumes leadership of the women and the barrio folk of Shariff-Aguak as they all flee across the waters of the Liguasan marsh until they reach the distant banks of Pagalungan. This she does as she carries her infant child. Her will and an abiding faith in Allah and the cause of the Bangsamoro struggle sustain her through the endless nights of their exodus, even as her heart sings constantly the uyayi.
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By Josefina Pedroza

“WE did not expect it to be a huge production,” said Nikki Torrres of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Performing Arts Department who spoke in the forum following the 45-minute production of “Uyayi sa Digmaan” at the Tanghalang Huseng Batute on December 4, 2008.

And huge it appeared indeed. There was the 18-member troupe that played Moro music on the palabunyibunyian, providing an ominous introduction to a somber unraveling of the Moro war, circa 2008. Recently formed out of a foundation that goes by the uncanny name Serve the Children and Older Persons, its members looked like authentic Moro, which they were not. Fact is, the play itself, written by a non-Moro, was mounted by non-Moros.

In any case, “Uyayi sa Digmaan” at the CCP presented before a limited audience a human dimension of a war that has raged in Mindanao for ages. (See play synopsis.) The war has been there for so long that it no longer offers excitement to newsreaders, except when the body count rises to hundreds and whole villages are plundered.

The play’s CCP outing was made possible by the Tag-ani Performing Arts Society, in cooperation with the CCP, as part of its Waiting in the Wings program. The program features plays that are “works in progress,” meaning unfinished. Nikki Torres noted that oftentimes, the performances were simply dramatic readings sans a directorial concept or production design. But Tag-ani did excerpts of “Uyayi” with lights and sound and all that. Director Marili Fernandez-Ilagan even made sure that the playwright’s lyrics were set to music and arranged for the CCP performance, and by noted artists such as Cynthia Alexander and Malu Matute. The cast and crew, composed of students from Miriam College, the University of the Philippines and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, were admirable.
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Kaalam sa Dramaturgong Kaliwatan:

Post-modern Philosophical Roots, Underpinnings, and Perspectives of the Mindanawon Theatre Movement1

by Karl M. Gaspar, CSsR

Maayong buntag!

INTRODUCTION

First of all, I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for the distinct privilege of addressing all of you this morning. When Waldolito Nestor Horfilla, Mindulani’s shaman, initially asked me to be one of the speakers of Mindulani sa Milenyo Dos and informed me that my topic was – THE MINDANAO THEATRE: PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS AND POST-MODERN PERSPECTIVES – I was taken aback. The dramaturgo in me went into an instant monologue and I heard myself asking these questions in the privacy of my theatrical space:

Philosophical roots?

Post-modern perspectives?

Mindanawon post-modern theatre?

Nakahuna-huna ko: unsa may nahuna-hunaan ni Nestor Horfilla nga morag natakdan man siya aning mga nagpaka-aron-ingon nga mga post-modernists? Gani, una natong problema – nagkasinabot ba ta unsa ning post-modern? Unsaon ba pagBinisaya ani nga termino? Post-modern? Despues sa moderno? Lampas/pag-agi sa moderno? Nahuman na ba diay ang moderno?

Then in the deep recesses in my mind I recalled one particular event as I sat at CCP’s Little Theatre when – if my memory serves me right – UP’s Repertory Theatre mounted Noli (or was it Fili?): Isang Dekonstruksyon. As the voice announcing the title of the play faded, I heard a voice at my back declaring loud and clear these words: Ano ba iyan? Ano ba ‘yang dekonstruksyon?

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Ang “Pagsambang Bayan,” klasikong dulang kontra-batas militar ni Bonifacio P. Ilagan, sa direksyon ni Behn Cervantes, ay itinanghal ng Tag-ani Performing Arts Society kaugnay ng February Arts Month, sa pagtataguyod ng National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

Ipinalabas ito sa Tanghalang Batute ng Cultural Center of the Philippines at sa Bantayog ng mga Bayani noong Pebrero 2009.

Ang national tournito ay sinimulan ng dalawang palabas sa Ang Bahay ng Alumni, University of the Philippines sa Diliman, Quezon City, >sa ganap na 7 PM, 25-26 Pebrero, 2009.

Ang unang pagtatanghal sa probinsya ay sa pagtataguyod ng Workers’ Assistance Center. Ang palabas ay ginanap sa 4 PM sa Emilio Aguinaldo College Auditorium sa Dasmariñas, Cavite.

Para sa bookings, mangyaring kontakin ang Tag-ani Performing Arts Society, Inc.:
● Mobile: 09209461975 / 09228010792
● E-mail: tag_ani@yahoo.com

Orosman at Zafira
by Francisco Baltazar
Direction: Dexter M. Santos
Play date: August 11-29, 2010
Venue: Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater

Shock Value… Take 2
By: Floy Quintos
Direction: Alexander C. Cortez
Playdate: September 8-26, 2010
Venue: Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater

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BANAAG AT SIKAT: ISANG ROCK MUSICAL
National Artist Projects: Bienvenido Lumbera & Salvador Bernal
in cooperation with the NCCA & CCP

In an unprecedented move, National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Salvador Bernal collaborate on an exciting new musical based on Lope K. Santos’ groundbreaking novel about the breakup of the Filipino family and the rise of socialism in the country.

It is Maytime, 1906, in the pilgrimage town of Antipolo. In this rustic setting, a clash is about to unfold on a problem of urbanization. Don Ramon Miranda and Don Felimon, capitalist owners of El Progreso, a cigar factory in Manila, argue with Delfin, a progressive journalist who is also a suitor of Meni, Don Ramon’s daughter, about the labor problem in the factory. This clash of ideas becomes all too personal when Delfin, later supported by Felipe, Don Ramon’s ahijado (godson), defends the workers on their struggle for their rights.

This incident sparks a chain of complicated events – a daughter’s banishment and disinheritance, illicit affairs, a mysterious murder, ideological clashes – that reflect only too well the shifting forces in Philippine society.

Libretto: Bienvenido Lumbera
Music: Lucien Letaba
Production Design: Salvador Bernal, Jr.
Direction: José Estrella
August 06 – 08, 13 – 15, 20 – 22, 27 – 29 CCP Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino

AMERICAN HWANGAP
By Lloyd Suh (Filipino translation by Joi Barrios)
in cooperation with the Lark Play Development Center (USA)

Min Suk Chun is turning 60, and he’s back in West Texas after leaving his family almost 15 years ago. As his ex-wife and three adult children wrestle with their broken past in preparing this American Hwangap (a 60th birthday ritual celebrating the completion of the Eastern zodiac), an aging Korean would-be cowboy is back at the head of the table. But before the end of the night, he’ll probably end up sitting in a tree without his pants on.

Playwright : Lloyd Suh
Filipino translation: Joi Barrios
Direction : Chris Millado
September 10 – 12, 17 – 19, 24 – 26, October 01 – 03 CCP — Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino
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