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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