From war dance to theater of war moro moro performances in the philippines 3

More importantly, we must remember that it is a performing art and we must have a firm grasp of the dynamics of performance, of how the different parts of the moro-moro come together, o

make moro-moro plays invariably long, lasting from as "short" as five hours, to as

long as nine nights of performance, or even more

Scholars have often commented upon the repetitiousness of the moro-moro,

seeing this as a negative feature or weakness of the genre Yet these repetitions do not exist by accident, nor are they just random and mindless insertions They fulfill practical functions Both in form and content, repetition was an important literary

device wielded by the moro-moro playwright, which enabled him to cater to the needs

and tastes of his audience This chapter examines how the repetitiousness of the

moro-moro is pleasurable and useful for authors, actors and audiences alike I will

highlight here the traditional mode of consumption of performing arts, one that is founded on native habits of gathering as well as local aesthetic sensibilities My aim

here is to describe and understand the moro-moro audience's distinct ways of sensing,

hearing and feeling the performance The playwright's decisions on how to craft a performance make sense when seen from the standpoint of his audience's particular mode of consumption It may not be immediately apparent to a modern observer (and one much influenced by Western notions of art) how an overwhelmingly repetitious performance could be enjoyed as such In many ways, modes of consumption of the past have all but become incomprehensible to the present Today, the question still

begs to be asked: have we fully understood the appeal of the moro-moro for the

audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?

To make sense of the moro-moro 's form and content, we cannot simply rely

on the extant scripts and outsider accounts and confine our analysis to these documents Rather, we must be sensitive to the socio-literary context in which the

moro-moro thrived More importantly, we must remember that it is a performing art

and we must have a firm grasp of the dynamics of performance, of how the different

parts of the moro-moro come together, of what is entailed in the presentation and

consumption, as well as the composition of the plays Fortunately for us, there are still

some villages today where moro-moro performances can be observed True, many

changes have taken place in how it is presented and consumed, but still, we can get a better sense, a better inkling of performances of the past by observing what remains in the present This practical knowledge of performance dynamics can fruitfully be used

in the reading of extant scripts and outsider accounts and help us make sense of the

moro-moro then and now

Repetition as Distribution: Consumption in Bits and Pieces

As far as we can tell from available documents, the way the moro-moro was

consumed in the past was very different from the theatergoing experience in any modern venue or concert hall where one is ushered to a numbered seat and is expected

to observe proper etiquette In a modern theater, one has to keep quiet and refrain from standing up, not even to visit the restroom, unless it is at the designated time In

contrast, the situation of audiences at traditional moro-moro performances, may be

described as very informal, regardless of whether the venue is an urban theater house

in nineteenth-century Manila or on a makeshift outdoor stage on the village green

during the town fiesta The moro-moro was consumed in a very relaxed manner, with

people freely moving about, and with a lot of background noise In the past, the

prominent members of the community had specially constructed sheds or palcos that

were either located near the stage or elevated in some strategic vantage point In their

palcos they entertained guests, ate, and even slept as the play progressed.1 The rest of the villagers brought their own benches from their homes, while spectators who had come from far away also brought their own food provisions and fruit.2 The gathered crowd continuously ate, drank, and chatted, or even left for a few hours, and returned later in the day, or even the next day, for performances could last for several days or nights From certain vantage points, the dialogue may be partially or even completely inaudible, but the audience would not mind, for if one felt like listening to the words, one could simply come closer to the stage, or even sit on the stage itself

The consumption of a moro-moro performance can be likened to eating lechon served at fiesta time The lechon is a whole roasted pig that is the celebrated highlight

at the fiesta buffet table It is displayed prominently and everyone eagerly awaits the

1 Resil Mojares 1985 Theater in Society, Society in Theater Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press p

91

2 Isabelo de los Reyes 1906 Ang Comediang Tagalog

moment when the pig is chopped up and all can line up to take a few bits and pieces, walk away, return for a bit more, and leave again The roasted pig will stay on the buffet table the whole day ready for waves of visitors that come at will, and at various moments it will either be mobbed, or abandoned, only to be mobbed again when a new group arrives And even when it is already half eaten, with the crispy skin gone, the bones showing, and only a few fleshy sections left, visitors who come to the feast

at a later hour will still find it impressive that there's a lechon, and will approach the

mangled remains with gusto because they have in their heads the image of the whole roasted pig in its glorious, shiny entirety

Just as everyone wants to have a piece of lechon so, too, do villagers want their piece of moro-moro action at fiesta time In the nineteenth century, the folk who

lived in the outskirts of town and in the mountains would go to great lengths to come

to the town center during the fiesta, to participate in Catholic rites, visit family and

friends, partake of the feasting, and watch the moro-moro Director-playwrights who crafted moro-moro plays employed repetition, both in form and content, in order to

"distribute" the story in a somewhat equitable manner so that at any given time, a viewer may enjoy the "bits and pieces" of performance that will give him a taste for the whole After all, a playwright would have used plot structures that the audience was familiar with, so that even if a play was viewed in a discontinuous manner like

the partially-eaten lechon it could still be imagined as a whole, and the bits and

pieces would still be delicious

By considering "distribution" of the story as germane to the playwright's

purpose, the repetitiousness of a moro-moro play can be understood in a new light

Repetition has, unfortunately, been viewed negatively as something of a weakness Quite understandably, since to the modern observer the repetition of a single idea in a

dozen stanzas of verse, and the repetition of the same sub-plots over and over throughout the play, may seem superfluous, and tedious to watch For the native playwright and his intended audience, however, repetition played an important distributive function

To illustrate this notion of repetition-as-distribution let us examine a lament

from the play entitled Abdal y Miserena written by Balagtas Labindalawang Sugat ng Puso (Twelve Wounds of the Heart), enumerates a dozen "wounds" that love has

inflicted upon a suffering lover:

Hirap, Kalungkutan, Dalita't Hinagpis Pighati at Dusa, Dalamhati't Sakit Panibugho't Sindak, Bagabag, Ligalig, Umiiwang lahat sa aba kong dibdib

(Weariness, Melancholy, Suffering, and Dejection, Grief and Sorrow, Depression and Affliction, Jealousy and Fear, Worry and Axiety,

All these stab my miserable heart.)

In the next twelve stanzas, each of the twelve wounds enumerated above, which are practically synonymous to each other, are elaborated upon one by one This strategy

of "repetition of a single idea into many verses" abounds in moro-moro plays

Bienvenido Lumbera, who has analyzed this play, interprets the lament as a manifestation of "intoxication with language" That Balagtas interrupted the narrative line of his play to make room for a speech like this is read by Lumbera as an indication of the growing sophistication of his audience who had outgrown the

"primitive interest in narrative as a series of incidents, each one of which whets curiosity for the final outcome of the plot" Lumbera sees this as a positive development in that it "confronted the poet with the fact of language" and led him to

the "exploration of the expressive possibilities of language", but he lamented that "this was not necessarily conducive to the production of better drama".3

If we factored in the audience conditions and the mode of consumption of the

moro-moro in our analysis of Balagtas, we may arrive at an alternative reading, and

we could see the practical necessity for his repeated quatrains Our reading does not necessarily negate Lumbera's explanation but adds another dimension to it Imagine

the moro-moro stage, a makeshift, open-air stage made of bamboo and nipa,

surrounded by an audience on both sides as well as front and center In the following photo is shown (Illustration 3) a typical nineteenth-century outdoor stage made of nipa and bamboo erected on a open field

3 Bienvenido Lumbera 1986 Tagalog Poetry 1570-1898: Tradition and Influences in Its Development Ateneo de

Manila University Press pp 110-111

Illustration 3 A Moro-Moro performance in Taguig 1899

From the National Library Filipiniana Collection

In this situation, to make themselves audible to the entire audience, actors would deliver their lines at all the four corners of the stage, to equitably distribute access to the unfolding story In between spoken dialogue, dance movements to musical accompaniment would be performed to allow an actor to artfully move from one end

of the stage to the other We can imagine the playwright to have been aware of the choreographic treatment his writings would receive, so that he allows the same idea to

be repeated in a dozen stanzas each of which would be heard by a different segment

of the audience as the actor makes his rounds of the stage The playwright, after all,

was usually also the director-prompter called diktador or apuntador, who was in the

thick of things and thus would have had an intimate knowledge of the space of performance and an intuitive understanding of the needs of his audience within that space

I was alerted to this relationship between audience location and repetition in

composition when I observed a moro-moro performance called Arakyo in the village

of Sinasajan in Neuva Ecija in 2005 That particular performance will be the subject

of analysis in a later chapter in this study, but for our current discussion, suffice it to say that I was quite frustrated at how I could not record the dialogue well because whatever vantage point I chose, and from whatever location I set up my tripod and video camera, actors always alternated between being very audible one moment, then slipping out of hearing range the next Much later, when I was at home trying to watch my inadequate footage and trying to match the script to the action on stage, after watching many replays in a futile attempt to make out words from vaguely recorded sounds, I began to "see" the point of that which I could not hear I began to

consider the possibility that inaudible moments are organic parts of the moro-moro

viewing experience I noticed the orchestration of the dialogue, how the actors moved

in a precise and intricate manner around the stage, and how strategically their blocking was executed; as if on purpose, they meant to turn their backs on certain sections of the crowd as they addressed another section on the opposite side I began

to recognize and appreciate what I describe as the "choreographic logic" of the moro script, that is, the dynamics of performance embedded in the specific

moro-arrangement of dialogue Through the choreographic interplay between repeated verses and rotating blocking, access to dialogue is more or less equitably distributed

to an audience that is conditioned to take turns in hearing parts of the play

Foreign observers accustomed to Western habits of consumption of the

performing arts may have attempted to follow all the speeches delivered in a moro performance in their entirety, and quite predictably, they may have found the experience laborious (since the moro-moro could last for several days) Juan Alvarez

moro-Guerra's account in 1887 of his experiences in a town in the Bicol province illustrates this point quite well Guerra arrived from Manila two months before the town fiesta to

observe the community process of producing a comedia He rented a house next door

to the town’s gobernadorcillo, so he could closely watch the village leader spearhead

the preparations for the 10-day long performance An entire chapter of his book is

dedicated to sharing anecdotes on the townspeople and their comedia, and his account

culminates in this description of the final day of the long fiesta:

The next night, which was the last, I attended the spectacle, just as I

have done the previous nine nights, and being tired…[from] too much

pasa doble, too much martial music, too much moro-moro, and too

much monotonous and nasal declamation, without much variations, I

listened to the final loa.4

It is not surprising that Guerra found himself tired after watching the whole

show Just as no one is supposed to consume an entire lechon for to do so would

simply be crazy a traditional audience was not expected to watch everything, but

4 Don Juan Alvarez Guerra Viajes por Filipinas De Manila a Albay Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1887 p 175

only to enjoy it in bits and pieces Their style of watching alternated between moments of intense concentration at the actors' performance, and moments of complete disengagement from the proceedings on stage, moments that are devoted to other pursuits such as conversing or eating We must not dismiss this behavior as irreverence, or lack of "theater etiquette" but rather, consider it as a different mode of consumption of performing arts, a mode which could also be seen elsewhere in

Southeast Asia Writing about the way a Sumatran audience listens to a hikayat

recital, James Siegel notes: "During the recitation, which can take a whole night and sometimes two or even three nights, people wander in and out, chat quietly, and then

at certain times, not necessarily when the action is most exciting, listen intently."5Likewise, in his study of audiences at traditional professional storytelling and literary recitals in Kelantan, Patani, Trengganu, Pahang and Kedah, Amin Sweeney explains how "the listeners would be seated or reclining on mats, and one might expect to hear

a whole range of background noises, from babies screaming to old men pounding their betel chew Consequently, the audience was not likely to catch every word, nor would it expect to do so."6

The informal and relaxed atmosphere, and the consumption of the play in bits

and pieces, was not limited to outdoor moro-moro performances in the village setting,

but was also experienced in permanent theater houses in Manila's port district, where

moro-moro performances were available commercially One might think that a

"theater house" would offer a more formal viewing experience, but whether held

indoors or outdoors moro-moro performances were characterized by informality,

casualness, and the din of background noises

5 James Siegel 1979 Shadow and Sound: The Historical Thought of a Sumatran People p 205

6 Amin Sweeney 1980 Authors and Audiences in Traditional Malay Literature Center for Southeast Asian

Studies University of California

A few words are in order here about the nature of the theater houses in which

the moro-moro was shown During the nineteenth century, many theater houses

sprouted in the port area, catering to different audiences Quite a contrast existed

between comedia español or Spanish plays, and comedia tagala or the moro-moro

The former, which was patronized by the elite and upper social classes were staged in the better theaters, which were constructed of strong materials and more opulently

decorated One such building, the Teatro de Binondo, was described as "magnificent"

It had a vestibule crowned by a high gallery, and two wings with two rooms below,

which housed two cafes Comedia tagala, of which the moro-moro is a sub-species, in contrast tended to be staged in theaters made of flimsier materials such as nipa and

bamboo where, as Retana put it, "natives raised a platform wherever they could."7One such native theater house was set up in the owner's backyard, while another

called Teatro Guiñol, was a roofless structure, six by fourteen meters in size, which

was frequently dismantled, transported, and re-assembled at the sites of fiestas.8

An American observer, John Foreman, who saw comedia tagala theaters in

the suburbs of Manila and described their condition as being the type of theaters

"none of which a dramatic company of any note would consent to perform",

complained that in one theater called Teatro Filipino, the performance could be partly seen from the street The Teatro de Tondo, meanwhile, was situated in a dirty thoroughfare in a low quarter Yet another theater house called Teatro Zorilla "was

built without any regard to its acoustic properties such that only a third of the audience could hear the dialogue."9 Foreman, of course, was unaware of the

traditional mode of consumption of the moro-moro, of consumption in bits and

7 See Retana, Noticias, p, 71

8 Christina Laconico Buenaventura 1994 The Theaters of Manila 1846-1946 DLSU Press p 24

9 John Foreman The Philippine Islands 1906 1980 reprint by the Filipiniana Book Guild p 349

pieces, which allowed audiences to enjoy performances despite their having many moments of inaudible dialogue

The physical arrangement inside a moro-moro theater house bore semblances

to the village open-air set-up In his recollection of a 19th century native theater, Atayde describes a structure made of nipa and bamboo with a huge theater barn composed of two parts: a stage and a patio where the audience gathered Hanging coconut oil lamps provided lighting under which the audience either sat or stood in the patio where unnumbered long benches accommodated as many people as could be squeezed in A fee was paid at the entrance, and once inside, the audience was free to choose from which vantage point to watch the show This was similar to the situation out on the village green where spectators brought their own benches

In Manila theaters, access to a performance was not limited to paying patrons,

as there was a practice of giving those who could not pay a chance to see part of the

show for free Just before the last act, the management would shout, a la verde!, and

those waiting outside for this go-signal would rush in.10 The late entry of spectators is not a hindrance to their enjoyment of the performance, accustomed as they are to

consuming the moro-moro in bits and pieces just like at a fiesta And the paying

patrons are not likely to cry foul, either, when the non-paying patrons arrive because

by then, they would have firmly established themselves at the more advantageous viewing points and the latecomers would have to settle for less favorable locations

In both the indoor setting in Manila or the outdoor setting at a village fiesta, an infinite number of people turn up at a performance, and questions about "seating capacity" (or standing capacity for that matter) are not asked, for as long as there is room, spectators are accommodated, and even when there seems to be no space left,

10 Buenaventura p 4

somehow, more room is created in unorthodox ways by the resourceful spectators In the village of San Dionisio in Manila, young boys were known to climb on top of the

church roof to have a bird's eye view of the moro-moro stage erected on the plaza

below Another favorite habit is the encroachment of the audience on the stage itself Avid listeners would seize the opportunity to be within hearing distance and would climb up the elevated stage and sit on the floor, or stand at the sides, or even next to the musicians and prompter A modern playgoer who is accustomed to a comfortable aesthetic and physical distance between actor and spectator may find this encroachment peculiar and somewhat disconcerting This was not limited to nineteenth and early twentieth century audience, however In the performance pictured below, which took place in 2003 in a village in Gapan, Nueva Ecija, we can identify the same practice of the audience occupying the stage.11

We can see here that the stage is already made of concrete, with a permanent roof made of corrugated iron sheets For the performance, a platform made of wood was attached to extend the playing space In the past, however, the stages were made of

11 Photo Credits: Ramon Valmonte 2003 Taken from the Nueva Ecija Journal “Arraquio” Net:

http://www2.mozcom.com/~mic55/arraquio/index.html

Illustration 4: The audience sitting on the stage at a

moro-moro performance in Gapan City 2005

flimsier materials: a wooden frame and base; roof and walls made of bamboo and nipa

The common practice of audiences perching on the stage posed a serious threat to the safety of performers and audiences alike as makeshift stages were not designed to carry too much weight and were likely to collapse This was recognized in

1920 by a certain Francisco Labrador, who headed the committee responsible for the

stage on which the play Eureana would be performed during the fiesta of San Nicolas

in Cebu As the anecdote goes, Labrador attempted to order the audience to get off the stage, but was repeatedly ignored In frustration, he put a stop to the performance and ordered policemen to remove stubborn spectators from the stage One man resisted vigorously and was taken to the police station As it turns out, he was the uncle of the lead actress playing the role of Princess Eureana, who subsequently walked out of the play in protest The remaining actors had to proceed without her, as it was the sixth night of the scheduled seven-night run What Labrador feared, but successfully prevented, did happen at the nearby locality of Pasil where, in May of the same year,

at the height of the estocada or sword fight, the stage went crashing down taking

actors and audience with it.12

This habit of unorthodox maximization of space reminds one of another

Filipino cultural icon the jeepney or local mini-bus and how it is made to carry

far more people than it should Passengers are squeezed onto two, long, built-in benches, then more passengers are plunked on their laps, while others "stand" hanging onto rails outside the vehicle Even more passengers can be accommodated on the jeepney’s rooftop Such a packed jeepney would stop frequently to pick up and drop off a passenger anywhere along its route, making for a very long and uncomfortable

12 Wilhelmina Q Ramas 1982 Sugbuanon Theater From Sotto to Rodriguez and Kabahar: An Introduction to Pre-war Sugbuanon Drama Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press p 19

ride For frequent jeepney users, however, the flexibility of the "seating arrangements" means that they are guaranteed a ride and everyone gets to enjoy the convenience of being dropped off where they need to be, rather than at designated stops There is a casual nonchalance over safety, and rarely are there signs of impatience about keeping to a schedule in order to arrive on time at a destination The

audience of the moro-moro can be likened to jeepney passengers who can get on and

off the vehicle as they please, and can occupy whatever space they find, in contrast to the modern theater where the audience is expected to take the whole journey from start to finish as if strapped to their designated seats

Like a jeepney ride, a moro-moro performance would also have many "stops"

along the way, and there was a great deal of flexibility in its "schedule" Consider the following observations by Edith Eberle, an American teacher, at a fiesta in 1927: Eberle noted that an open-air theater was erected in the public square where programs were rendered throughout the several days of the fiesta There were oratorical contests, school programs, patriotic speeches, plays sponsored by different groups,

and "always the moro-moro" which may "run for a couple of hours, then give way to

some other program only to later continue its performance So at various times

throughout the two- or three-day festival, the moro-moro occupied the stage."13

From Eberle’s account we get the sense that the space of performance is

shared, and not dedicated exclusively to the moro-moro The performance is delivered

in installments, with long intervals, such that a continuous flow was not to be expected Decades later, in the 1960's, another American researcher, Richard Soller, observed that the incremental mode of presentation continued to be the practice He reported how in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, the performance "began on Sunday evening, did

13 Edith Eberle 1927 Palm Tree and Pine; Stories of the Philippine Islands Cincinatti Ohio:Powell & White p

132

not play at all on Monday, resumed performance on Tuesday afternoon, and played again Tuesday evening After Wednesday the play continued for the next four evenings "14

From the conditions discussed above the noisy and crowded venues, partially audible dialogue, flexible nature of the audience's attendance; and the

irregular schedule of the performance one may wonder how the moro-moro stories

were intelligible at all The repetition of ideas is a means of distributing the story more or less equitably so that a spectator who watches the show only at a certain point

in the story would have a more or less similar experience to another spectator who

gets to watch another part of the performance at another time moro-moro stories tend

to have similar plot structures and every playwright's "new" composition was likely to

be familiar moro-moro plays constantly repeat the same themes, and follow expected

formulae The playwright draws from a standard set of stock situations and stereotyped characters, such that a viewer would have a conceptual map of the proceedings and would be able to anticipate events even if the dialogue is partially inaudible and the performance is periodically interrupted This situation can similarly

be seen in classical Javanese theater where, as one scholar points out "typology serves

as the backbone of theatrical performances as it helps the audience to understand what

is happening on the stage even if the spoken word is not clearly understood".15

Repetitious Plots: moro-moro Malleability and Elasticity

Each moro-moro play involves standard scenes that occur repeatedly, namely:

there is the typical palace scene where kings discuss with their councilors the subject

of war with other kingdoms; the embahada or scene depicting an ambassadorial

14 Robert Soller Moro-Moro Sunday Times Magazine May 22, 1960 p 19

15 Clara Brakel-Papenhuyzen 1995 Classical Javanese Dance Leiden: KITLV Press p 51

mission to a foreign kingdom where haughty verbal exchanges take place; the courtship scene where a prince and princess meet by chance and immediately fall in

love, usually in a forest or a garden (called palahardinan or palasintahan); and the torneo or tournament scene where knights battle for the hand of a princess Other

stock scenes include abductions, ambushes by bandits, fighting off wild beasts, rescues, and miracles Nothing, however, rivaled in popularity the battle scenes between Christians and Muslims, where Christian kingdoms invariably emerged victorious over Muslim kingdoms; and the romantic encounters between Christian and Muslim lovers, princes and princesses that usually culminated in marriage after the Muslim had converted to Christianity

The repetition of these standard scenes over and over again throughout the course of a lengthy performance plays an important function It allows the playwright elbow room to contract and expand the story as the situation dictates, thus giving the

moro-moro a great deal of malleability and elasticity A town that has a huge budget for the moro-moro may want the show to last for nine nights to coincide with the

nine-day novena in honor of the town's patron saint To accommodate such a schedule, several kingdoms may be included in the story, in which case the palace scenes, battles, speeches, tournaments to win the hand of each princess, and so on, will be repeated in each of the kingdoms A playwright may add or decrease the number of kings, princes, and princesses in the story, depending on what the fiesta committee requests On a particularly prosperous year with abundant harvest, there

may be more characters or personajes included in the story since there are funds to provide for the costumes The more personajes added, the more repetition of scenes is

required, as each pair of lovers would be given its mandatory set of scenes

A town with a lesser budget might be able to stage a play for only two nights, and the budget might provide for only a few costumes for a few characters The playwright commissioned to write a play for such an occasion would likely shorten the story by including only a few kingdoms, which would then lead to fewer repetitions of the standard scenes A cruder method for shortening plays would involve recycling an existing script and simply cutting out sections As we can see, the repetition of scenes was hardly considered boring or redundant More repetition would have been a sign of prestige, reflecting an abundance of wealth and resources while, conversely, a shorter performance involving less repetition would have signaled hard times and belt-tightening in the municipality

The elasticity of performances is not unique to the moro-moro, but can also be

seen in other forms of theater of an episodic nature Take for example an operatic folk

theater called mendu found in the Riau district of Sumatra It also has an episodic structure, with each lakon or story being elastic or stretchable, such that performances

can be as short as one night, or as long as forty-four nights The flexibility applies to the whole play as well as individual episodes and scenes For example, a scene showing the heroine, Siti Mahadewi, relaxing in her garden can be shown briefly or developed into a half-hour sequence with the inclusion of songs and dances by her companions and attendants, and to lengthen the episode even further, comedy can be introduced.16

A fiesta committee would usually demand that an "original" play be composed specifically for their fiesta To create an "original" play, a playwright would flesh out stock situations in different ways, such that an audience will see something new each

time they watch the familiar scenarios The moro-moro had an enormous, practically

16 Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof 1994 Dictionary of Traditional South-east Asian Theatre Kuala Lumpur: Oxford

University Press p, 176

inexhaustible, capacity to incorporate diverse elements and accommodate insertions

A playwright may draw inspiration from various sources, such as romances, folk tales, or biblical stories, and inject them into his play Let us take for example the standard scene where the hero "encounters a beast", which may be performed in many

unique ways In the play Prinsipe Reynaldo (Prince Reynaldo) the protagonist would

wrestle with lions, perhaps inspired by the biblical story of Daniel who was thrown in

a pit full of lions, or even Samson who was mentioned in the bible as having killed a lion with his bare hands Later in the play, the "encounter with beasts" scene is repeated, but the "beast" this time is a giant, perhaps inspired by the bible story of

David and Goliath In another play, Haring Villarba (King Villarba), the hero is

swallowed by a whale, just as Jonah was in the bible

Despite the infinite number of ways in which innovations are introduced,

moro-moro plays are firmly anchored in a particular theater tradition and practice As theater historian Doreen Fernandez puts it, every element in the moro-moro is

"standard and expected", and since scripts have been played and replayed, "the playwright simply fleshes out, rearranges, and bridges them differently".17 In this

respect the moro-moro playwright had much in common with his theater counterparts

in the rest of Southeast Asia In her study of the shaping of Javanese plays, Bosnak

reports how the playwright-directors of kethoprak, loddrok, and topeng pajegan

prepare their performance by combining and recombining different elements of their repertory This structured process of improvisation results in a “play schemata” that is unique in form and content, but at the same time resembles its predecessors.18 Theater anthropologist John Emigh calls this manner of script-building "an act of bricolage",

17 Doreen Fernandez <Princesa Miramar and Principe Leandro: Text and Context in a Philippine Komedya>

Philippinr Studies 39 (1991): 418

18 Judy Bosnak 2006 Shaping the Javanese Play: Improvisation of the Script in Theater Performance

Netherlands: Universiteit Leiden p 39-40