From war dance to theater of war moro moro performances in the philippines 6

San Dionisio's educated elite and civic-minded local leaders addressed the situation by embarking on two sorts of projects: one was to safeguard the folk Moro-Moro's survival in its vill

Chapter 6:

Tradition in Motion:

The Moro-Moro in New Performance Spaces

In previous chapters we discussed some salient features of traditional moro performances: The utility and pleasurability of their repetitiveness; the

moro-devotional motivation and the suitability of lengthy dancing as an offering to a patron saint; the complex interaction and integration of component parts such as dialogue,

movement, and music—all held together by the diktador We highlighted the

improvisational quality of performances, characterized by deviations from the script

and flexibility with the ordering and length of scenes as the diktador "plays it by ear"

We saw how the text and the symmetrical unfolding of events in Christian and Moro kingdoms follow a choreographic logic, while the dialogue and dance can be said to follow a distributive logic These are all features of Moro-Moro suited to the context

of the village fiesta

What would happen to the form and content of the moro-moro if it is extracted

from its fiesta context and reformatted for new audiences? As the scholar Resil Mojares asked in his keynote speech delivered at the International Komedya Conference in 2008, “What changes will occur in the nature and function of the form

as we infuse into it new content, styles, technologies, or take it out of the communities that created it into new performance spaces and before new audiences?”

In this chapter we discuss the transformations and processes involved in the

recontextualization of the moro-moro from the village setting into new performance

spaces We identify some significant departures from the meaning and practice of the

moro-moro in the traditional context of a village fiesta Transporting the moro-moro

to new performances spaces, as we shall see, requires that its content and form be

suitably updated to cater to the needs and tastes of new audiences

The Popularization of the Komedya of San Dionisio

In the 1960's and 1970's, a new breed of Moro-Moro enthusiasts emerged in San Dionisio This group was composed of educated professionals who wanted to modernize their Komedya and gain for it a certain degree of respectability The Moro-

Moro was viewed as "low-brow" or bakya, closely associated with the tastes of

provincial folk San Dionisio's educated elite and civic-minded local leaders addressed the situation by embarking on two sorts of projects: one was to safeguard the folk Moro-Moro's survival in its village context, to make sure that traditional artistic skills are not lost; the other was to stage the Moro-Moro's comeback, to popularize it, reclaim its lost viability, and re-introduce modernized versions of it to a wider audience beyond the village While there was an appreciation of its time-honored conventions, there was also an impulse to "improve" it, to rid it of its perceived shortcomings

Illustration 19

Dongalo Elementary School's Prinsipe Rodante 2008

Proponents for change in San Dionisio devised a workable two-pronged strategy For the fiesta performances, they respected tradition and kept intact as much

of the conventions as possible For performances outside the village, including those

staged outside the context of the panata, they experimented with innovations more

freely The result was the elevation of San Dionisio's status to that of the pre-eminent

“Komedya village” in the country It became a place where authentic Moro-Moro could still be enjoyed in its original context, while also being a place where more innovative plays were generated The prominence thus enjoyed by San Dionisio until today is the result of nearly five decades of conscious efforts to revitalize and

popularize their Komedya

It was the San Dionisio Varsitarians, a socio-civic organization in San Dionisio, that initiated the project of producing a new, "improved" and "modern” Moro-Moro in 1962 Former barrio captain Dr Angel Mendoza then headed the

organization He persuaded his good friend, Atty Max Allanigue, a writer of The Philippine Herald, to write a script Allanigue was familiar with the komedya, for he

had watched it a lot, but this was his first time to write a script He started reading up

on old scripts and painstakingly composed verses for his play, even counting the syllables on his fingers to keep the meter intact After one month, he completed

Prinsipe Rodante Allanigue introduced a few innovations To suit the ecumenical

spirit of the times, the conventional theme of Christian superiority over Muslims was re-worked into a theme of brotherhood The role of villain was assigned to a Christian prince who usurped power (a radical shift from the standard practice of assigning the role of villain to a Moro character)

We must be mindful of the fact that although this was an initiative from within

San Dionisio, the modernization of the komedya came from the educated and

professional members of the community—people who loved the komedya for sure but

were not necessarily steeped in tradition, in the way some of the elders were

Allanigue was a neophyte at komedya script building

Dr Angel Mendoza, who initiated this project, brought his daughter Felicidad

on board to direct the play A dentist by profession, Dr Felicidad Mendoza was a theater enthusiast and a drama coach at St Paul College in Parañaque, an exclusive Catholic school in the area She attempted to bring the Komedya to the modern age by changing the mode of delivery of dialogue The performance was significantly shorter, had less repetition, and made use of a more modern mode of delivery: no more of the stilted, nasal, monotone fit for an outdoor stage; in its place was a declamation style closer to natural speech and more suited to an indoor stage with microphones In her published "memoirs of a comedia enthusiast", Mendoza relates

how the landmark Rodante had "grace in diction and easy comprehensibility It is

metrical without being stilted, easy to grasp without being cheap, delivered with sensitivity to poetic content and falls under the naturalistic stance".1

Reaction to the modernized moro-moro was mixed There were those who found the "improved" moro-moro a refreshing change from the repetitive and tedious

performances of old But for many of the village elders, the play did not pass for a

"real" moro-moro Even if the play "Prinsipe Rodante" was a success in many

respects, the performances in San Dionisio's succeeding fiestas still continued to be presented as conventionally as before

Mendoza persisted in her efforts to popularize the moro-moro, and her

modernized versions of the play found warm reception outside the village Through her drama club called Kudyapi, she embarked upon spreading modernized Moro-

1 Mendoza., p 195

Moro to different schools and staging performances at the most important theater venues of the period It was one of the projects she was involved in that drew the ire

of Muslim Senator Mamintal Tamano, who headed the Commission on National Integration One of Mendoza's plays was to be staged as part of the Bureau of Travel and Tourism's celebrations, and, as previously mentioned in Chapter 1, Tamano found

the choice of a moro-moro performance inappropriate because of the genre's

traditional denigration of Muslims In addition to its offensiveness to Muslims,

criticisms were also mounted against the “fantastic” moro-moro's alleged lack of

relevance to the needs of contemporary society Its "antiquated" staging techniques also came into question.2

Dr Mendoza, then deeply involved in popularizing the moro-moro, was well

aware of these criticisms, which she endeavored to address In 1970, she wrote a new Moro-Moro play to be presented at the World Theater Festival sponsored by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) In writing the new play entitled

"Prinsesa Perlita", Mendoza introduced a few "remedies": The plot was re-channeled from the usual Moro-Christian conflict towards a Filipino nationalism In the entire script not even once were the words “Moro” or “Muslim” mentioned The playing time was shortened, made equal to a modern three-act play The delivery of dialogue was changed from the stilted, monotonous sing-song rhythm in a high pitched voice designed for an outdoor performance, to a more "natural" declamatory tone in a modulated voice suitable for a modern indoor theater with microphones The setting

of the play was localized—no longer some far away European medieval kingdoms, but a fictitious island in Southeast Asia The costumes were likewise redesigned to

2 See the commentary mentioned previously on page 11 of Chapter 1

impart a Southeast Asian—mainly Malay—flavor instead of the usual European and Middle Eastern styles

Mendoza claims that the play she wrote is still rightfully a moro-moro In the

published production notes of the play, she mentions that "in this improved version, the salient features have remained virtually unchanged It has to be that way; otherwise we cannot rightfully claim that our version is a comedia" Mendoza made sure that traditional gestures and choreography were still performed and that standard elements like divine intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary, supernatural adversaries and magical weapons all made an appearance Furthermore, careful attention was paid

to producing spectacular stage effects According to Tiongson, however, the old

timers in the village had a hard time accepting Mendoza’s new moro-moro that no

longer featured the European personages, the fight scenes, and the marches.3

Even outsiders who were not from San Dionisio found issue with Mendoza's

Perlita The literary critic Bienvenido Lumbera, for instance, had this to say:

Transported to the bourgeois setting of the Cultural Center stage, Prinsesa

Perlita was not content to be the folk drama that it was: it aspired to

become grandiose bourgeois theater It discarded its traditional style and

affected the bogus sophistication of a spectacular costume drama The

result was dreary Prinsesa Perlita was no longer recognizeable as a

comedia and it was not even satisfying as a bourgeois spectacular The

stately entrances and exits had been reduced to a minimum and the

effectiveness of what remained was blunted by the employment of taped

musical accompaniment rather than a real live band In the interest of

realistic pacing the dance-like battle scenes were shortened, thus blurring

the element of ritual on which the aesthetics of the comedia rests 4

In many ways, Mendoza’s moro-moro version did not look or feel like the

surviving performances in the barrios She was, however, making an effort to revive

the experience of watching a true spectacle, like the commercial moro-moro she saw

as a child, performed by a professional traveling troupe in the cinema house her father

3 Nicanor Tiongson Ang Kasaysayan ng Komedya sa Parañaque (1850-1976) p 22

4 Bienvenido Lumbera 1997 Revaluation 1997: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and Popular Culture

Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House p.177

owned in the pre-war years Unlike the simpler folk moro-moro that survived in the villages, the commercial moro-moro she saw in her youth always incorporated the

newest and latest trends in fashion, music, stage effects and mechanized props This

kind of spectacular moro-moro had died, and Mendoza's version was indeed, in its

own peculiar fashion, a revival of a lost art

In the 1970's, the cultural scene in the Philippines was enjoying what has been commonly described as a "golden age of the arts" because of the attention it enjoyed from then-First Lady Imelda Marcos, whose patronage and love for the arts was translated into mammoth cultural projects and abundant sources of funding The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), then a world-class complex with an impressive state-of-the-art theater stage, became a hub of artistic activity In 1971,

two types of modernized moro-moro were staged at the CCP One was Mendoza's Prinsesa Perlita, which was staged at the CCP's Main Theater The other was an old moro-moro play entitled Principe Baldovino, which was contemporized by theater

stalwart (and National Artist for Literature and Theater) Rolando Tinio and staged as the inaugural performance for the CCP's newly constructed Little Theater

Tinio's objective was to dig into what he called "the repertory of the past" Theater historian Doreen Fernandez describes this period in contemporary theater as being characterized by a "turning back to vernacular theater" in a bid to "rediscover tradition that had been truncated by education in English" Tinio was reviving old

sarswelas and moro-moro plays, researching scripts from the 19th to early 20th

centuries His 1971 Prinsipe Baldovino production was taken from an extant moro script from the province of Palawan A few years later, Tinio tapped into another moro-moro script, entitled "Orosman at Zafira", written by the great Tagalog

moro-poet Francisco Balagtas In staging it, he incorporated a few conventional marches

and music borrowed from traditional Moro-Moro performances.5 Tinio's productions represent a different kind of Moro-Moro "revival"—a contemporary treatment of old scripts centered on capturing the essence of a play as can be gleaned from the performance text

Rolando Tinio was a stranger to the moro-moro performances enjoyed in the

village setting, his only experience with that theater being limited to watching the two

recent "modernized" versions of the moro-moro that were directed by Mendoza In an

interview, Tinio explains:

My experience in the production of the Moro-Moro is vague I saw

"Prinsipe Rodante" and "Prinsesa Perlita" but that is just about all I have

seen The proper attitude is to examine the traditional conventions that can be

retained, to do so in spirit, and then give it modern externals which is what, I

hope, I did with "Prinsipe Baldovino" I gave it Shakespearean externals,

which is what is done to Shakespeare in England They take the essence, they

respect the very psychology, the heart, the soul of the play and whatever

conventions there are, are retained

The same should be done with the Moro-Moro…I am completely against the writing of new Moro-Moro Anymore than an English writer of

the present period writes Shakespeare No one does that But you can

modernize the externals, give modern pacing, give it juxtapositions that are

modern which is what the English do to Shakespeare They do not do

Shakespeeare as it was done in the 16th century, although they have all the

necessary information That is sheer antiquarianism.6

In his review of Tinio's "Prinsipe Baldovino", Alejandro Roces, writing for the

Manila Times, commented that the play was not an "authentic moro-moro" even as he acknowledged that it captured the flavor of the traditional moro-moro, which

entertained "with its opulent costumes and imaginative sets" Roces, who was quite

familiar with traditional moro-moro performances, lamented the loss of a number of

its conventions in the Baldovino production, observing how

The sword fights, very essential characteristic of the Moro-Moro, have

been replaced by "choreography" and so the "arnis" movements and the

"curacha" steps that are delightfully expressive of the Moro-Moro, have

been replaced by simplified if more integrated patterns The characteristic

5 Fernandez., p 117

6 Mendoza., p 95

personal flourish each character executes upon entrance has also been

removed… 7

We can see that Roces' appraisal of Tinio's play is based on the latter’s choreographic treatment of the text; he attacks the "lack of authenticity" because the familiar moves were nowhere to be found It was not Tinio's intention, however, to reproduce the

moro-moro in the way of the folk Tinio was a Western-trained literary critic and

university professor, whose masterful handling of performance texts from the past resulted in intelligent and cogent plays for the present Tinio's revivals of old texts seemed to offer an alternative to, if not an antidote for, the kind of treatment they were getting from village performers, for he was critical of the paralyzed state of theater in the barrios, of what he called its "antiquarianism" We must therefore

distinguish between plays that make use of komedya literary material, and those that simply attempt to popularize the moro-moro Tinio and Mendoza represent two separate (and very contradictory) projects Not all attempts to stage a komedya are aimed at popularizing the moro-moro As initially pointed out in Chapter 2, there are nuances between the two terms: while all moro-moro are komedya, not all komedya are moro-moro Let me explain further below

The EDSA Revolution of 1986 and the ouster of the Marcos dictatorship through “People Power” ushered in a new era for the arts The new leadership at the Cultural Center of the Philippines sought to steer the Center away from an elitist path Nicanor Tiongson became the CCP’s Artistic Director from 1986 to 1994, and within that period a carefully planned effort to revitalize the Moro-Moro was undertaken San Dionisio Parañaque's local actors, both the young and the old, were invited to participate in a series of workshops on play writing and production The CCP's objectives were: to write new plays using aesthetics that conform with the

7 Alfredo Roces, quoted in Mendoza, p 96

community's own standards; to replace the threadbare and culturally offensive theme

of conversion of Muslims to Christianity with themes dealing with relevant issues; to conform to a more modern approach of playwriting by producing tightly-knit plots; and to preserve characteristic features such as its verse, choreography, and conventional romantic, spectacular and epic elements.8

The result of the workshop was the play "Ang Bagong Prinsipe Rodante" (The New Prinsipe Rodante), which was performed both at the CCP stage as well as at San Dionisio village stage, in 1992 A significant feature of this CCP project was the

participation of San Dionisio's moro-moro veterans, such as Atty Max Allanigue,

who wrote the landmark "Prinsipe Rodante" of 1962, and Hermie Hernandez, the actor who played the lead role of Rodante The CCP workshop offered an opportunity for intergenerational dialogue between the old and the young, and also paved the way for dialogue between the academic and professional theater community and representatives of the village practitioners and audience The new play reflected a democratic spirit, with attention given to consultation, dialogue, and arriving at a

group consensus on what the moro-moro should become in contemporary times The

content of the new plays produced during this period, as well as the inclusive and consultative process by which they were written, reflect the political temper of post-EDSA Philippines

In another project, CCP artists collaborated with San Dionisio performers to produce a play, not in San Dionisio but in the neighboring village of Don Galo, where

the moro-moro, once a living tradition, had been abandoned by locals in the previous

decade In 1992, an adaptation of the Balagtas classic "Florante at Laura" was staged

by the school children of Dongalo Elementary School CCP artists like the

8 in Fernandez, p 72

actor Jonas Sebastian wrote the stage adaptation, while ballet dancer-choreographer Nonoy Froilan, in collaboration with San Dionisio local actor Rodante Hernandez

(son of local moro-moro legend Hermie Hernandez), created the dance sequences that

combined conventional and new choreography

For Tiongson, productions like the new "Prinsipe Rodante" and Dongalo's

"Florante at Laura" are examples of how the moro-moro can move forward “The key

to successful re-invention of the form,” he writes, “seems to lie in the creative collaboration between traditional and modern artists.”

Left to themselves, each of these artists are handicapped: the traditional, by

the shackles of custom and convention; and the modern, by their lack of

roots in the country's tradition Together, however, they stimulate each

other's creativity and bring their best to the endeavor, giving birth to a

komedya whose content and form may qualify it to become a pillar of the

Filipino national theater 9

From 2006 to 2008, while gathering data for this study, I witnessed various productions that were continuations of the popularization projects undertaken from the 1960's to the 1990's A group from San Dionisio created an organization in 2006 called Komedya Pilipinas Foundation (KPF) to continue Mendoza's efforts to

popularize the Moro-Moro and staged a revival of Mendoza's Prinsesa Perlita

Another group from San Dionisio called the KSD (Komedya San Dionisio, mentioned

in the previous chapter) re-staged the landmark, “modern” moro-moro, Prinsipe Rodante, as its offering at the Komedya Festival in the University of the Philippines

in 2008 The same play was performed by schoolchildren from the nearby Dongalo Elementary School

At the same festival in the UP, a new rendition of the Francisco Balagtas

classic, Orosman at Zafira was presented, under the direction of Dexter Santos Like

the efforts of Rolando Tinio in the 1970's, Santos offered his interpretation of the

9 Tiongson., Komedya p.39

classic Komedya by Balagtas without intending to popularize the moro-moro or to conform to its folk conventions His Orosman at Zafira was based on a classic

Komedya text, but it was not of the Moro-Moro genre Another interesting revival was undertaken by Jerry Respeto at the Ateneo de Manila University in 2007—the re-

staging of Rene Villanueva's Sang Daang Panaginip, which was mentioned earlier as

a modern moro-moro that satirized the Marcos family

The abovementioned productions by Dexter Santos and Jerry Respeto can be considered as continuations of the revival projects of previous decades However, they were not meant to be translations of folk performances Hence they differ

considerably from the revivals of Rodante and Perlita, which are performances that

trace their roots to the village of San Dionisio The latter will be the focus of the rest

of this chapter since my aim is to show how village performance conventions are revised and re-formatted when reconstructed in new contexts, brought to new venues, and presented to new audiences

Prinsipe Rodante Revisited: Versions from 1962, 1992, and 2008

As a drama coach at St Paul College, Felicidad Mendoza was familiar with the technical direction of modern drama, and she applied this knowledge to her

production of Rodante At the same time, she was a very passionate researcher, traveling all over the Philippines to watch folk moro-moro performances and

interviewing old performers in far flung areas She was very conscious of the ways of the folk and she tapped into both "modern" and "folk" sources of knowledge Upon

reading the script of Prinsipe Rodante written by Atty Allanigue, for instance, she

recognized that the ending written by the lawyer needed to be changed The final scene was a court trial over the evil deeds of Prince Alvaro, where the Muslim

heroine, Princess Porciana, preaches the quality of mercy and pleads that Alvaro be forgiven Mendoza noticed how this scene seemed influenced by Shakespeare's Portia (and perhaps the fact that a lawyer wrote the script may have a bearing on the choice

of a court scene as a means of resolving conflict) The barrio folk, she felt, would be

more receptive to the conventional means of resolving conflict in the moro-moro

world, that is, through miracles and divine intervention Mendoza suggested an alternative final scene: Princess Porciana tries to save the life of Alvaro as he is about

to be executed, and she is accidentally stabbed As our Muslim heroine lies dead, Alvaro becomes stricken with grief and remorse and begs the heavens for mercy An apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary takes place, and Porciana is miraculously brought back to life

Mendoza reports that the "apparition scene was so convincing that many elders in the audience reverently made the sign of the cross, and a few were so carried away that they shed tears and started murmuring prayers when the Blessed Virgin was gradually seen atop the mountain".10 We see Mendoza's effective use of modern theater technology in terms of set design and lights, to enhance a folk tradition The apparition scene was particularly effective because of the element of surprise An actress appeared high up on the stage and was slowly bathed in light, as though it was

a real apparition This lighting technology was then something new to the villagers, yet it was something familiar, because "miracle" scenes were common (though less spectacularly rendered)

After the maiden performance in San Dionisio's village plaza, Mendoza decided to take the play "on-tour" outside the village She formed the Kudyapi theater and Arts League, which made use of local talent from San Dionisio to train

10 Mendoza., p 168

"outsiders" She established a Comedia school at St Paul College, where San Dionisio performers taught school children how to perform conventional choreography Actors from television, movie, and modern theater were also tapped to

increase the “star power” of the plays The popular movie actor Tommy Abuel was

trained in Mendoza's Comedia school in order to interpret the role of Rodante, and he starred in the play for a successful run not only in Manila's theater venues but also in the provinces

Rodante is a big part of San Dionisio's history That is why it was deemed

fitting that when the CCP embarked on a project to revitalize the komedya, the people

involved in staging Rodante in 1962 were invited to participate A "New Prinsipe

Rodante" was created in 1992, which followed the basic contours of the 1962 version, with just a few minor adjustments I was able to watch videotapes of the 1992 performance, which are available for viewing at the CCP library The play was performed both at CCP's indoor theater, as well as at an outdoor theater in San Dionisio The new play still retains the typical features of the genre, while

accommodating a few new "nationalistic" insertions

Synopsis of the New Prinsipe Rodante

The story takes place in the kingdom of Crotona where a tournament is being held for the suitors of Princess Floresca Aladin, a Muslim prince in disguise, wins the tournament as well as Princess Floresca's affection An envoy from the Sultan of Segovia arrives, and demands from the King Orestes of Crotona that he surrender his son Prince Alvaro, for an offense he has committed The envoy notices and recognizes Aladin, for he is the latter is a royal prince, son of the Sultan of Segovia,

no less

When Aladin's Muslim identity is discovered, Prince Alvaro demands that the King should not allow the marriage to continue But the King decides to honor Aladin's victory He sends his other son, Prince Rodante, to go with Aladin to the Sultan of Segovia to ask that Prince Alvaro's offense be forgiven, since Floresca is now about to be his daughter in law Alvaro is angered by the turn of events; he cannot accept that his sister will marry a non-believer

While Prince Aladin and Prince Rodante are on their way to Segovia, Prince Alvaro decides to usurp power from his father He takes over the throne in Crotona and imprisons his parents In the forest, Aladin and Rodante encounter peasants who tell them the news about Alvaro's betrayal Aladin heads off to Segovia to gather his troops, leaving Rodante behind in the forest As Rodante rests in a cave, the Moro princess, Porciana, disguised as a man, makes her appearance traveling through the forest in search of her brother Aladin When she and Rodante encounter each other, they engage in a fight In the heat of battle, Porciana's hat gets knocked off and her cover is blown Rodante becomes enamored with her and declares his love Meanwhile, Alvaro has ordered his men to capture his brother Rodante One of the soldiers finds Rodante in the forest, and offers him a poisoned drink Rodante takes a sip and weakens, and the soldiers take him back to Alvaro

Back in Crotona, Alvaro is trying to woo the Muslim Princess Perlita, whom

he has held hostage, but she rejects him He tries to force himself upon her, they struggle, and he slaps her Prince Rodante is brought in, and Alvaro orders his men to execute his brother, but Porciana intervenes to save Rodante The army from Segovia led by the Sultan and Aladin arrives and fighting ensues Peasants from the kingdom

of Crotona join forces with the Moros and together they defeat Alvaro and his men

So angered is King Orestes by Alvaro's betrayal that he almost kills him But his wife, Queen Yocasta, tries to save her son Alvaro from the wrath of her husband, and she ends up being stabbed Alvaro is so moved by his mother's love that he delivers a mournful speech of remorse, asking for forgiveness for his sins, and begging the heavens for his mother's life in exchange for his Then, by some miracle, the Blessed Virgin appears on the mountaintop and the stricken queen is brought back

to life

People Power and the New Rodante

The story line of the 1992 version related above differs from the 1962 version

in a number of ways In the old version it is the Moro Princess Porciana who is accidentally stabbed by her father, the Sultan, when he tries to kill Prince Alvaro, our Christian villain In the new version, the dramatic final scene involves all Christian characters: it is Queen Yocasta who is accidentally stabbed by King Orestes when he

tries to kill Alvaro This kind of substitution of characters is pretty common in moro script building Plays with the same titles would often have varying details from

moro-village to moro-village, but the alterations are slight enough for the basic structure to remain the same

Some insertions in the 1992 version are not at all common in the moro-moro

The presence and pivotal role of peasants is one; the introduction of a "modern" parade of soldiers is another From the very beginning the performance opens with a lone spotlight descending on a group of women and children dressed in tatters, positioned on center-stage, delivering a brief woeful choral recitation about injustice The spotlights dim, movie-like music plays in the background, and a narration begins from a voice over Then soldiers enter the scene, military-like, as they do in citizen's

army training courses in schools, using even the familiar commands: the "assigned

commandant" shouts in typical military fashion, rap sa kanan, rap! (face to the right,

face!) The soldiers are carrying their spears as if they were guns, the end of the stick cupped in the palm of one hand, the shaft resting on one shoulder, and the spear's edges pointing skyward There is no music accompanying the military march Then, after this unusual opening scene, the conventional music from San Dionisio's fiestas begins to play and the entrance of royalty in the traditional dignified march commences

The addition of peasants in the story is also unique because the moro-moro

always deals with the lives of nobility Moreover, role played by these peasants in the new version is pivotal When Rodante, together with the help of the Moros, attempts

to regain control of Crotona, it is with the help of the displaced peasants that they are able to overthrow the army defending the usurper, Prince Alvaro This sends the message that power lies in the people, and that if Christians and Moros unite, an unjust leader can be overthrown The battle for Crotona becomes the story of the Philippines which had just overthrown the Marcos dictatorship The Filipino reference

is likewise seen in the costumes of the peasants, who don the iconic attire of the Katipuneros who revolted against the Spanish It is one of these peasants dressed Andres Bonifacio-style, that defeats Prince Alvaro in battle This is a departure from the standard formula where the hero of the play, a prince, usually wins the crucial battle The play ends with the fighters waving their fists in the air and shouting

"mabuhay ang bayan!" (long live our country!)

Prinsipe Rodante in 2008

Let us now fast forward to 2008, some sixteen years since the CCP workshop For the Komedya Festival at the University of the Philippines, both San Dionisio and

Dongalo presented their own versions of Prinsipe Rodante—the former performed by

veterans and the latter by schoolchildren from Dongalo elementary

school (See Illustrations 18 and 19)

choreographically speaking did not suit the komedya design While the genre is

malleable and can accommodate all sorts of insertions, its basic contour of two antagonistic factions tends to be largely respected The genre has an inexhaustible, incorporative capacity and can absorb all sorts of new features, but insertions in the

komedya are not done in a haphazard fashion; rather, they follow a specific pattern The insertions must be in conformity with the choreographic logic of the moro-moro

and must be positioned in "allowable" places

Illustration 20 San Dionisio's veteran actors perform Prinsipe Rodante,

2008 (left) Illustration 21 A student from Dongalo Elementary School

performing their version of Prinsipe Rodante (right)

Illustration 21 A child performer from Don Galo Elementary school

2008 (right)

New dances can be inserted before a tournament, for instance In the previous

chapter, we saw how the singkil dance was inserted in the Prinsipe Reynaldo performance In the Rodante production of Dongalo, schoolchildren inserted a Belly Dance number By inserting the singkil or the Belly Dance, the producers attempt to

portray what they perceive to be an "authentic Muslim" dance While this can be read

as a practice in exoticizing and orientalizing Muslims, from the point of view of the producers of the play the insertion of these dances (which they are quite proud of) make for a more "authentic" portrayal of Muslims because "actual" dances from Muslim cultures are being used

Other dance moves can also be inserted into the fight scenes Felicidad Mendoza introduced the innovation of "slow motion" fighting While performing

conventional laban or fight choreography, actors are given free rein to improvise in

slow motion, while the music continues following the same upbeat tempo In the

Rodante version, one of the children performed a move inspired by a popular scene in

the movie "The Matrix", where the lead actor Keanu Reeves is shown to bend backwards in slow motion to avoid bullets When the young actor performs this move

to dodge the thrust of his opponent's sword, the audience responds quite audibly, recognizing the reference to the famous movie scene

Another choreographic innovation inspired by the movies that was well received by the audience had to do with the love scenes When princess Floresca and Prince Aladin see each other again after being separated, they reunite in a manner inspired by the typical 1980's movie love scenes where the famous pop star Sharon Cuneta runs and leaps into the arms of her leading man Gabby Concepcion, and he

twirls her in the air In the Rodante play, the schoolgirl must have leapt with too much

energy for the young man who was supposed to lift her into the air unfortunately fell

to the ground under her weight This, of course, elicited laughter from the audience

The men behind me, who were moro-moro veterans from San Dionisio, were saying

"mahina pa tuhod" (he still has weak knees) In a later scene, in typical moro-moro

fashion of symmetrical unfolding of the story, it was the turn of another pair of lovers, Prinsipe Rodante and his Moro counterpart, Princess Porciana, to be reunited after a long time apart When it was their turn to perform the movie-inspired move, they did

it successfully and were rewarded by the crowd with thunderous applause Some men

behind me were saying things like "ganyan!" (that's the way to do it!) And long after

the scene had ended, the murmurs from the audience still hadn't died down

The repetition of the same sequence in two kingdoms is typical of the moro This heightens the enjoyment of audiences, who anticipate and compare how

moro-the move will be performed by moro-the different set of actors The movie-inspired

choreography may not be conventional moro-moro movement, but its placement in

the play and its execution as a repeated move performed in both kingdoms are in

keeping with the choreographic logic of the moro-moro design

Both the San Dionisio and the Dongalo productions, of course, performed the

iconic San Dionisio-style pasa doble, paseo, escaramosa, kuratsa, and laban, or the

conventional choreography described in the previous chapter Over the last four decades, San Dionisio's performance style has enjoyed a great deal of transportability The long history of collaboration between San Dionisio locals and outsiders has created a system of transferring knowledge to beginners This is due in large part to the popularization efforts started in the 1960's, which are carried on by San Dionisio locals today

Prinsesa Perlita Revisited: From 1970 to 2006

It was after the successful staging of the "improved comedia" entitled Prinsipe Rodante in 1962 that the Kudyapi Community Theater was formed with Mendoza as

its founding director and Hermie Hernandez its first president Kudyapi soon received

many invitations to present Prinsipe Rodante One such invitation was issued by the

Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), whose Executive Director, Cecile Guidote, had been a student of Mendoza at St Paul College An invitation to perform at PETA’s World Theater Festival in 1970 is the backdrop for the

construction of Mendoza’s play, Prinsesa Perlita

PETA is considered the most active of the "theaters of liberation" in Asia Guidote established it in 1967 with the aim of focusing on socially committed national theater In her MA Thesis entitled "Prospectus for the National Theater of the Philippines", Guidote concisely restates PETA's aims: "the national theater of the Philippines should embrace the capital, the cities, the towns, and barrios of the island

It should be primarily devoted to the quest for a dramaturgy truly expressive of the Filipino's national culture."11

When Mendoza was invited to participate in PETA's project, she was aware

that the moro-moro was meant to represent native theater Finding none of the

existing stories suitable for the occasion, she felt the need to come up with a new

moro-moro that would better serve the nationalist project In her search for a play to

stage, Mendoza shares in her memoirs how divine intervention played a big role

Mendoza was having difficulty in starting to write so she went to church to contemplate Out in the churchyard, a little boy was peddling local romances called

11 quoted in Catherine Diamond 'Quest for the Elusice Self: The Role of Contemporary Philippine Theatre in the Formation of Cultural Identity' The Drama Review, Vol 40, no.1 (Spring, 1996) p

149

awit and corrido printed on cheap ricepaper booklets Moved by the boy's efforts at

earning a decent living, Mendoza bought one booklet, letting the boy pick which story

to sell her

Just as Mendoza was about to leave the church it began to rain, so she returned

inside and decided to read the corridor she had just bought She was excited to see that the boy had handed to her the work entitled Sa Dakong Silangan (In the East),

written by one of the most celebrated Tagalog poets of the early 20th century, Jose

Corazon De Jesus Inspired by this work, Mendoza wrote Prinsesa Perlita

With a clear story line already forming in her head, Mendoza was also strategizing on how to make this production spectacular and magical In her memoirs she shares her recollections of seeing her first comedia in her youth In the pre-war years, her father owned a cinema house called Cine Ligaya (the word "Ligaya" was the Tagalog equivalent of her first name Felicidad) As was customary in the American period, cinema houses were often rented by stage performers, and it was while playing backstage, one day, that she stumbled upon a Moro-Moro troupe that was preparing for a performance that night The colorful costumes, mechanical props and other devices simply enthralled her, and when one of the performers, a clown, saw her peeking through the curtains, he playfully blew fire at her, creating a moment

of pure magic for the little child

Mendoza wanted to achieve a number of things with her play—to capture the spirit of magic and wonder which the Moro-Moro of old evoked, to promote patriotism, to participate in Mrs Marcos's vision for using the arts in nation-building (a point we will discuss later), and to send a message of faith without being offensive

to Muslims To accommodate Mendoza's many aims, Perlita ended up having many

twists and turns to its plot, and it also had a multitude of spectacular effects: an

apparition by the Virgin Mary, three dragons, fire dances (perhaps inspired by the Moro-Moro clown who blew fire at her when she was a little girl), magic swords, and

a giant shell that housed our princess

Synopsis of Prinsesa Perlita by Mendoza

There was once a Princess named Perlita, in the Kingdom of Silangan One day, while seated on the Nakar throne (a giant shell) Prince Magiting hears her voice, and he is enamored by her beauty His brothers Prince Bayani, and Prince Dakila

arrive moments later, and they too, see Perlita and are enthralled by her

Perlita's lady-in-waiting calls out her name, summoning the princess to the

palace, where the king is holding a tournament for the princess's suitors The three men, hearing of the tournament, rush to the palace to join the contest for her hand in marriage King Silangan and Queen Malaya, signal the tournament to begin One by one, the suitors introduce themselves: Limahong from the Chinese nation; Prince Jakiri from Japan; Prince Le Prieto from France; Generals Dapier, Cornish and Drake from England; Raha Ali Baba from Arabia; Count Montenegro from the Black Castle; and the Princes Dakila, Magiting, and Bayani from Silangan Kingdom

Magiting moves forward and begins to declare his love, but he is interrupted

by Montenegro and they engage in a fight Magiting breaks Montenegro's spear into pieces and overpowers him, and then all the foreign suitors pounce on Magiting But his brothers come to his defense, and soon the tournament became a battle between the brothers and the foreigners The three brother successfully drive the other suitors

away Perlita chooses among them and picks Magiting The two other brothers

gracefully accept her decision and take their leave

Visitors from Spain—a Cardinal and Prince Leon—arrive in Silangan They bear a gift, a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and they introduced Christianity to the King and Queen The King accepts Christianity and orders everyone present to receive baptism, and everyone celebrates with dancing When the feasting ends and the guests leave, Queen Malaya is alone with the Statue of the Virgin Mary, who miraculously speaks to her, warning her of war, and instructing her to hide Perlita in the Nakar shell in order to save her life

Montenegro from the Black Kingdom, who was just defeated in the tournament, returns to the Black Palace in anger He wishes to exact revenge on the Kingdom of Silangan With the help of his father, King Itim, the two hatch a plan Hearing that Silangan had just been converted to Christianity they kidnap the Spanish Cardinal Using a powerful magic black sword, Montenegro returns to Silangan kingdom disguised as the Spanish Cardinal, for he can change his appearance with the sword's magic He discovers that Perlita is hidden inside the giant Nakar shell The brothers Bayani, Dakila, and Magiting have all come to help defend Silangan kingdom Bayani guards the Nakar shell; Dakila guards the Queen as she returns to the palace; and Magiting goes off to the mountains to recruit and train an army called

"Avanse de Gulok"

Montenegro gathers his army, and uses the Black Sword to change his appearance to look like Prince Leon from Spain He heads toward the Nakar shell and manages to convince Bayani that he is Prince Leon He claims that he met Magiting

in the mountains and was sent to the Nakar shell to guard Perlita He tells Bayani that

he is being summoned by his brother to the mountains As Bayani leaves, Montenegro

speaks with Perlita and she sees through his disguise Montenegro takes Perlita in his

arms, and she starts screaming, and Bayani runs back to help her Montenegro uses