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

175 Chapter 6: Tradition in Motion: The Moro-Moro in New Performance Spaces In previous chapters we discussed some salient features of traditional moromoro performances: The utility and pleasurability of their repetitiveness; the 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 176 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. Illustration 19. Dongalo Elementary School's Prinsipe Rodante. 2008 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 MoroMoro 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 timehonored conventions, there was also an impulse to "improve" it, to rid it of its perceived shortcomings. 177 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 178 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- Mendoza., p. 195 179 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 See the commentary mentioned previously on page 11 of Chapter 1. 180 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 Nicanor Tiongson. Ang Kasaysayan ng Komedya sa Parañaque (1850-1976). p. 22 Bienvenido Lumbera. 1997. Revaluation 1997: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema and Popular Culture. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. p.177. 181 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 moromoro 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 poet Francisco Balagtas. In staging it, he incorporated a few conventional marches 182 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 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 to Shakespeare. They not 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 Fernandez., p. 117 Mendoza., p. 95 183 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 Alfredo Roces, quoted in Mendoza, p. 96 184 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 postEDSA 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 director- in Fernandez, p. 72 208 Prinsipe Bayani, who was earlier shown to have been stabbed, was resurrected in the song as the Katipunan supremo, Andres Bonifacio. He wore the iconic white shirt and red pants, and held his clenched fist in the air to give the song an emphatic finish. Next to him stood other actors dressed as Lapu-lapu, the hero who defeated Magellan, and of course, as Jose Rizal, who took center stage in the person of Tommy Abuel, the guest of honor. As the song unfolded, a huge Philippine flag was unfurled on stage and the song received a standing ovation from the audience. From the productions of Prinsipe Rodante and Prinsesa Perlita, we can arrive at a few generalizations about the Komedya in San Dionisio's transformation from a folk panata performance to a popular theater form. We can see that at the core is a basic repertoire of choreographic sequences consisting of the stylized entrance and exits, and the various sequences related to battle, the paseo, eskaramosa, giri and laban. At fiesta time, these are performed many times over but for an external audience they are repeated just a few times. Additional dance moves may be incorporated, especially during the performance of "slow motion" fighting. This creates space for contemporizing the komedya through the addition of movements borrowed from television and film. These incorporations keep the moro-moro anchored in the present and serve as a means for the actors to connect with the contemporary audience. In terms of changing the content and theme of the plays, two strategies are used: inversion and insertion. In Rodante, the role of villain was inverted, with the Christian prince now being made into the main antagonist. In Perlita, the antagonisms are re-formatted from Christian-Moro to Foreign-local, with the Spanish being assigned to the villain's side. The moro-moro 's basic structure of opposition between antagonistic factions need not necessarily be along Christian-Moro lines. The 209 categorical instability of the identities of the opposing groups allows producers to freely re-assign new heroes and villains to suit the nationalistic aims of their plays. Another strategy for infusing nationalistic content into the moro-moro is through insertions. The patriotic song number’s insertion into the play Perlita, is one fine example. The moro-moro has a marked malleability as a genre, allowing the introduction of many insertions while still being able to retain its basic structure. San Dionisio's performance style had become transportable and could be taught to schoolchildren and non-Komedya performers. This can be attributed to a number of factors. Memorization, for one, has resulted in the separation between dance and movement. This makes learning the dance more accessible. In chapter two we showed the complex and intricate interaction between dance and dialogue, which hinges on dictation. In places where this is practiced, exporting the performance style is far more difficult than in San Dionisio, where the separation between dance and movement has simplified both the dance and the movement. With more than four decades of experience in teaching others to perform their moro-moro, the practitioners of San Dionisio have cultivated a system of transferring knowledge. They teach their dance steps in the ways that arnis drills and folk dance steps are taught in school. At the Komedya conference, I attended the dance workshop that taught the conventional steps and sequences from San Dionisio. The trainers have fully systematized the teaching process, and it seemed to me to be very organized and easy to follow. The production of Prinsipe Rodante by Don Galo Elementary School is proof of the transportability of San Dionisio's conventions. The young children who acted in the play, and who had just recently learned San Dionisio's komedya style, were assisting at the workshop and even demonstrating the steps to the participants. 210 Since the steps themselves are not too difficult and are accessible even to outsiders, San Dionisio's strategy for making its panata performances more special than others is by keeping them running long. Through the repetitions, more stamina and endurance are required of the performers. A longer play means more lines are memorized, making the performance special enough as an offering to the patron saints. There is also an emphasis in San Dionisio of paying attention to costumes, special effects, lighting, props, and set design. There are more costume changes at fiesta time, making the performances even more spectacular. It seems that San Dionisio has found a formula for sustaining its tradition and popularizing their Komedya in contemporary times. Thus far we have been focusing on the performances of San Dionisio. In the section that follows, we take a brief look at another village moro-moro that has gained prominence for itself in a manner much different from San Dioisio, thus offering interesting points of comparison between the two. New Performance Spaces for the Comedia de Baler The Comedia de Baler is well known for its demanding dancing style, made more exciting by the use of weapons with sharp blades. What distinguishes their dancing from those of other moro-moro troupes is the exertion of substantial force in the swings and blows of their swords, spears, and daggers. It is common knowledge in Baler that the actors and actresses actually get wounded during performances. In fact, at their performance for the Komedya Fiesta 2008 held at the University of the Philippines grounds, two nurses were stationed off-stage and were put to good use when three actors sustained minor injuries.12 12 See Sir Anril Tiatco. 'Postscript to University of the Philippines Komedya Fiesta 2008: Prelude to a Discourse on National Theatre' in Asian Theater Journal, vol. 26, no. (Fall 2009). p. 287. 211 So exciting are the performances of the Comedia de Baler that the small troupe of performers from the small village of Buhangin are constantly invited to appear at touristic and cultural events to represent the town of Baler, and the province of Aurora.13 The Comedia performance has become an emblem of Baler, and the locals proudly consider their Comedia uniquely their own. The actors and actresses from the village of Buhangin are used to conforming to various time constraints and performance spaces. During fiesta time in Buhangin, held in October each year, they can perform for an entire week. They can trim this down to a two-hour play, like the one they showed at the Komedya Fiesta at the University of the Philippines, or as short as a twenty-minute skit, and in some cases, just one dance number.14 For the Department of Tourism's "Island Paradise Adventure Race" in 2005 for example, a Comedia performance was held on the beach, on a makeshift elevated stage, in open air. On August 27, 2006, a Cultural Night was organized for the fiesta of Baler. The event was held at the garden outside the Musuem of Baler. Dignitaries and guests sat on plastic chairs, but the rest of the crowd stood or sat on the ground. The Comedia made an appearance, again in its abbreviated version for it had to share the stage with many other dance numbers and skits. This format, of a medley of performances, has become the standard fare at fiestas. In October 2006, a festival entitled "Best of Central Luzon" was held at the Shomeart (SM) Mall in Marilao, Bulacan Province. In these abbreviated performances where time is of the essence, the story has taken a back seat to the dancing and has been reduced to a narration that effectively introduces and strings together the different dance sequences. 13 Baler is the provincial capital of the province of Aurora, a long and narrow coastal province sandwiched between a mountain range to the west, and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It is next door to Nueva Ecija province, lying some 230 kilometers northeast of Manila accessible by an eleven hour bus-ride via a steep mountain pass. In February each year, celebrations are held for Aurora Day, which commemorates the founding of the province. 14 I witnessed this during the celebration of Aurora Day in Baler on Feb. 19 2006 when the program of events was jam-packed with performances from various schools 212 Comedia de Baler Dance Demonstrations Illustration 25 Top: Comedia on the beach. May 7-8, 2005. Staged for the Dept. of Tourism's Island Paradise Adventure Race. Right: Cultural Night. Aug. 27, 2006. For the Baler Town Fiesta. Below: "The Best of Central Luzon" Festival, Oct. 2, 2006. Performed inside ShoeMart Mall, Bulacan Province. Photo credits: Joseph Gonzales 213 In some ways, the "theater of war" that is the moro-moro, is here returned to being a "war dance", which is, at least etymologically, its original meaning. In the previous chapter we talked about the "choreographic logic" of the moro-moro plot and how scenes are arranged to best showcase dance and movement. The shifting to narration of the story by Comedia de Baler emphasizes this point even further. Despite the popularity of the war dancing of the Comedia de Baler, and the practicality of devoting scarce performance time to the exciting fight scenes, the loss of the spoken components is nevertheless lamented by the locals of Baler, who are familiar with the traditional modes of delivery of dance and dialogue. Joseph Gonzales, a proud local of Baler, has been blogging about the cultural events in his hometown and has religiously taken photographs and uploaded them regularly. In one blog entry he writes: "a live band accompanies the komedyantes. It's quite disappointing that this fare is now reduced to just a dancing demo without dialogues. I miss komedya speak". This elicited a response from one of his readers who left a message in his site stating:15 Sayang naman walang dialogue. Paano maiintindihan ng husto ang flow ng istorya. (It's a pity there's no dialogue, how can the flow of the story be understood well?). Another forum participant shared this experience: Napanood ko yang komedya sa tabing dagat nuung sabado, akaw ay kahit na walang dialogue nakakagilawgaw pag nagtatagaan sila. Para bagang may matatag-is. Mas maganda sana nga kung may dialogue. (I watched the komedya on the beach last Saturday, akaw even without dialogue it was exciting when they were fighting. It was as though someone would be hit. Though it would have been better with dialogue). 15 See the website and blog of Joseph Gonzales http://www.batangbaler.com the ensuing forum discussion were posted from May to 9, 2005. 214 Fortunately, in 2008, on the occasion of the Komedya Festival organized by the University of the Philippines, the Comedia de Baler was invited to stage a play. A new play entitled Sakim Na Pag-ibig (Selfish Love) was written for the occasion. A well known politician, Senator Edgardo Angara, who was a former president of the University of the Philippines and a native of Baler, functioned as hermano or sponsor and he donated funds for the new costumes, transport, and other expenses of the group. A brief presentation of less than three hours was performed in the open air on campus grounds, this time with dialogue and with the use of lapel microphones. There was a concealed prompter—a departure from the usual practice of having an audible and visible diktador. Nonetheless, the use of dictation gave the delivery of dialogue a peculiar cadence characteristic of traditional village performances. Related to the use of dictation is the kinesthetic manifestation of listening—the actors being suspended in listening poses, registering nonchalant blank looks on their faces. The audience that gathered at the UP campus grounds found the distinct acting style, the melodious punto or the accented Tagalog used in Baler, and of course the breathtaking dancing, all very exciting. There were audible and timely responses from the crowd: teasing uuuuyyys, during the courtship scenes, called palahardinan (garden scenes), and exclamations of surprise and gasps during the rousing fighting scenes. The Comedia de Baler troupe follows a dual approach in their performances. They retain conventional modes of composition, delivery and consumption when staging a play as a panata in the context of an intimate village fiesta in Buhangin. Performing for an audience of "insiders" they are able to sustain some degree of autonomy in upholding their own aesthetic sensibilities. They are able to give full reign to the impulse to produce lengthy and repetitious performances that last for a 215 week. When invited to perform outside the village, however, such as at touristic events in Baler and elsewhere, they are flexible in their performances for "outsiders". It seems to me, at least as far as I can gather from conversations with the actors, that a lengthier and more repetitious performance is considered more desirable by the performers from Baler. At the Komedya Fiesta in UP, I had the good fortune of sitting at the table of the actors from Baler at the reception dinner held after their performance. I congratulated the actors for their very successful presentation, and one of them told me "punta ka sa fiesta namin, yun ang mas maganda" (come to our fiesta, that is the better one). He also meant to say, although didn’t, that the better one also took far longer to perform. Despite the fact that the exhibition performances of the Comedia de Baler are much shorter than the performances during village fiestas, the abbreviated exhibitions are able to provide an arguably faithful sample of an authentic Comedia de Baler viewing experience. This is due to the fact that in whatever performance space the Comedia de Baler is found, it is always performed by the same few people from Buhangin, who wear the same set of costumes. And even if they have a new set of costumes made, they will look the same as the old set in terms of design. They perform the same dance moves to the same music. The increased exposure and frequency of the Comedia demonstrations not necessarily mean that the tradition is alive and well. There are only a handful of residents from the village of Buhangin who can perform this style of moro-moro and it is difficult to teach. Some locals of Baler fear that their Comedia, despite its being very visible today, is bound for extinction.16 There is only one maestro-playwright-director by the name of Isabelita Tangson16 Personal communication with Joseph Gonzales, April 14, 2007. These sentiments are also reflected in the comments left by those who participate in the forum in his batangbaler.com website 216 Mejia who still knows how to write, direct, and stage the plays in the traditional manner. Perhaps it is also because the same maestro-playwright-director writes all the abbreviated versions of the play, that they are able to retain the symmetrical unfolding, the stock imagery and stock situations, and the choreographic logic characteristic of the traditional moro-moro, and this gives the performances of Baler a higher degree of authenticity not enjoyed by other "modernized" moro-moro plays. In San Dionisio, some villagers comment that the newer moro-moro plays being produced today are "no longer komedya" but are simply just "a play" like any other play, one that can be performed by just anybody17. No one will say this of the performance of Baler. I overheard Hermie Hernandez, the patriarch of the Komedya of San Dionisio, make this comment when he watched the Comedia de Baler performance: "kahit ako bayaran di ako magpe-perform na may tunay na itak" (even if you pay me I would not perform with a real blade).18 No matter how celebrated the superior dancing and fighting skills of Baler's performers may be, the issue of transmission of knowledge seems to be something that still needs to be addressed if the Comedia de Baler is to continue to excite audiences with their breathtaking performances for generations to come. GTF's Florante at Laura In July 2006 one of the country's more established theater companies decided to open its 29th Season with Francisco Balagtas's masterpiece, Florante at Laura. Gantimpala Theater Foundation (GTF) has been producing this Filipino classic each year for the consumption of thousands of high school students who study Balagtas' 19th century text in their classrooms. The 2006 production, however, was different 17 Personal communication with Nemie Pagtakhan. San Dionisio, Parañaque, July 19, 2006 While watching the performance Sakim na Pag-ibig performed by the Comedia de Baler at the Komedya Fiesta 2008, UP Campus grounds, February 29, 2008. 18 217 from all the previous years' because, for the first time, GTF attempted to present the play in Moro-Moro fashion. As Tony Espejo, the Artistic Director of GTF, explained: This Florante at Laura production uses the Filipino theater form of the komedya, with its stylized entrances, marches, batalla and pingkian and the conflict and triumphs that befall the warring kingdoms of Christians and Moors. We firmly believe that it should be staged as such for it was the prevailing theater form during Balagtas' time.19 Gantimpala Theater Foundation (GTF) started out in 1977 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), where it was originally called Bulwagang Gantimpala. It emerged under the leadership of then CCP President, Lucresia Kasilag, and Gantimpala's founding President and Artistitc Director, Tony Espejo. The company endeavored to develop Philippine dramaturgy by grooming both performing artists and technical staff through their in-house training workshops and year-round productions. It was fully subsidized only in the first ten years of its existence, when the Marcos government was in power and Mrs. Marcos was a patroness of the arts and generous benefactor of artistic groups based in the CCP. With the ouster of the Marcoses and the consequent drying up of funds for CCP groups, GTF had to shift to a strategy of securing a solid financial footing by producing "curriculum-based" plays, which allowed them to tap into a "built-in" student market. GTF is now a self-sustaining and independent theater company with an all-year round production season and regular summer workshops to train new talent. With a reputation tainted by the company's association with the Marcos administration, the GTF has since distanced itself from the elitist and exclusivist image attached to CCP artistic groups. It moved out of the CCP and transferred to a more accessible home. It is now the resident company of the Luneta Park where its plays and other special cultural events are shown to the public for free every week in 19 Taken from the "Curtains Up" Section of The Daily Tribune. July 25, 2006. 218 a program called "Concert at the Park", produced by the National Parks Development Authority, which aims to bring the arts closer to the masses. GTF has outreach programs that provide free plays both in Manila and the provinces. It has also embraced a patriotic thrust in its choice of plays, which in the words of Artistic Director Espejo, is GTF's "modest way of preserving our unique cultural heritage".20 GTF's bread-and-butter performances are the ones staged for high school students. Their tickets are modestly priced and they often perform to a fully packed house. I was able to watch the August 12th performance at SM Mall. One of the cinemas in the mall had been converted into a theater. A table was set up and manned by GTF staff. Long queues formed outside the theater before the performance, as the students, organized into groups, went in to occupy their designated seats. The house was packed with students from different schools, who were required to attend the performance. Teachers were on hand to supervise them. They sat at the end of the rows, to make sure the students did not sneak out to gallivant. In fact, the security guards at the theater were instructed not to allow students to leave the area, and they were stationed along velvet ropes that blocked the entry/exit points to the cinema. On the inside cover of the souvenir program are instructions on "Theater Etiquette" addressed to students who can be uncontrollably noisy at performances. Another page gives a brief overview of the komedya, describing the delivery of its dialogue, the choreography, blocking, characterization, marches, and battle scenes. What it does not mention is the festive context, and relaxed atmosphere in which it is traditionally performed. Surely, GTF would not want students to know that village moro-moro are often accompanied by food, a great deal of chatting, and a lot of standing up, and moving around. This is counter to the guidelines emphasized in bold 20 Taken from the "Message from the Artistic Director" published in the souvenir program of the play Florante at Laura, Gantimpala Theater Foundation 29th Theater Season 2006-2007. 219 letters in the etiquette page, namely: to "keep ideas, comments, and excitement to yourself", or "remember that the theater is a special place where eating is not allowed"—though in reality the cinema venue where the play was being held allowed standard movie-house food like popcorn and soft drinks and the like to be consumed inside by moviegoers. Conventional moro-moro performances have informal seating arrangements for spectators. The cinema house, in contrast, had fixed and inflexible seating, with clearly delineated individual spaces, designed with modern habits of autonomous consumption of art in mind. The stage also bore little resemblance to Moro-Moro set design. Conventionally, a moro-moro a stage is divided into Christian and Moro sides and has minimal changes of backdrop or scenery. GTF's Florante stage had risers, or ascending platforms, prominently positioned in the middle of the stage. These platforms alternatingly turned into a forest, a castle, or an academy. It did not seem as though there was an effort to recreate the physical set-up of a komedya performance, be it for the set design or the audience seating. Despite the formality of the set-up, there was, in the demeanor of the audience, a relaxed informality reminiscent of a community-based moro-moro audience. The students were indeed noisy (a fact that GTF is very much aware of). Sitting in their midst, I couldn't help but notice that it was the kind of noise that comes about because of the presence of two factors that I also observe in the village context: group intimacy and familiarity with the play. Students who go to school together form a community. Just because they are in a theater, seated in the dark, does not mean they start being strangers to one another. They start making comments about how cute the lead actor Wowie de Guzman is, or shriek in delight at a kissing scene saying 220 things like "Oh my God tinuloy nila!" (Oh My God, they actually kissed!), which is something I also heard mumbled in San Dionisio, also in response to a kissing scene. Another important factor that contributes to their excitement and, by extension, their noise is their familiarity with the play because they get to read the text in class and even memorize some of the verses. One famous scene in Florante is a "rape" scene, where the villain Alfonso, is about to dishonor the leading lady Laura when a Moro comes to her rescue. Right before that scene, a student behind me began to say "Ayan na, ayan na" (here it comes, here it comes). The excitement was palpable, the shrieking during the scene loud, and the students recovered afterwards through excited murmuring. The students seemed engaged with the play not because they were awaiting unexpected twists, but precisely the opposite: they knew beforehand what was going to happen and they anticipated its portrayal. Familiarity with the verses also seemed to increase their enjoyment of the play because when actors on stage recited some of the more famous verses from Florante, many students audibly recited right along. The anticipation of the familiar is also one of the features of consumption of village moro-moro. From the Arakyo and San Dionisio, the repeated stories generate excitement. In both contexts, the audience is composed of an intimate community: in the village setting, it is a community of neighbors, and in the case of GTF, it is a community of classmates. Intimacy and familiarity, features present in the audience of community-based theater, are factors that shape the native habits of consumption of the arts. It is a markedly communal form of consumption, which may sometimes lead to an audience becoming noisy as they consult with one another, give feedback, shriek and squeal as the situation demands. While espousing patriotic aims, GTF privileges modern (western) habits of consuming art and urban sensibilities. By unhinging the 221 komedya from its context and "educating" students on "proper" theater etiquette, they are attempting to shape a modern theater constituency. If the conduct of students is any indication, it seems that native habits of consumption are proving to be quite resilient—either that, or a room-full of teenagers is simply bound to be noisy. GTF's presentation of Florante at Laura in 2006 capitalizes on the works of two contemporary National Artists. As Espejo points out: We bring to fore two great men of Philippine arts and culture as the famous Filipino love story now uses the literary version of National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, and we incorporate the movements of the komedya from San Dionisio, Paranaque, Nabuan, Isabela and Batanes as researched and documented by our newly proclaimed National Artist for Dance, Ramon Obusan.21 Dancers from Ramon Obusan's Folkloric Group (ROFG) worked with the Florante cast to teach them the choreography for entrances, exits, and battle scenes. The ROFG is one of the resident folk dance companies of the CCP. Ramon Obusan, its founder, took pride in having done extensive research on local dances over the last half century. He carefully learned, recorded, and taught obscure dances as closely as possible to their original versions. For the Florante production, however, Obusan's research was used to create hybrid dances instead of reproducing original choreography. Dance steps from three different village performances were strung together to form choreographic sequences. The conventional music for the dances were also recorded to accompany the movements, but the editing of the music was not quite seamless, and it highlighted the transition from the choreography of one village to another in a rather choppy fashion. Perhaps, if the locals from San Dionisio, Isabela, and Batanes had a chance to see the performance, they would not have recognized the Florante as anything like their moro-moro at all, for only a few dance steps and bits of music would have been familiar. 21 The Daily Tribune. "Curtains Up" Section. July 25, 2006. 222 In GTF's Florante we see the attempt of a professional dance company, ROFG, in collaboration with a professional theater company, GTF, to produce a komedya by inserting various choreographic sequences—entrance and exit marches, and battle scenes—researched by ROFG from different village performances. The insertion of dances into a play is a common practice, as we have previously shown. Performers from Parañaque have incorporated a singkil dance, fire dance, dance on stilts, and even belly dancing in some of their performances. The moro-moro has an capacity to incorporate that is nearly inexhaustible. The problem with GTF's Florante, however, is that the incorporation of dances made for a rather disjointed and fragmented insertion of choreographic sequences. Some central features of the moromoro are missing, most obviously the symmetrical unfolding of events between two antagonistic kingdoms. This is in some ways due to the fact that Florante is written as an awit, not as a moro-moro, and the composition of its characters and the plot of the story not follow the genre's choreographic logic. Florante was also not episodic, which is a necessary feature for the harmonious execution of entrance and exit choreography that begin and conclude episodes. As a result, the insertion of moromoro choreography felt somewhat contrived. This does not mean, however, that any attempt to recontextualize the moromoro in new performance spaces and for new audiences are pre-ordained to become necessarily contrived, or "less authentic". The other performances discussed earlier in this chapter, such as the performances from San Dionisio, Dongalo, and Baler, were able to translate the conventions and the flavor of the moro-moro into new formats and were effective in introducing their village tradition to new audiences. The key to the preservation of the moro-moro's spirit seems to be in the upholding of its choreographic logic—that is, in designing a story in a way that suits and showcases 223 the dancing, in writing scenarios that lend themselves well to the performance of the signature movements. Even with the writing of new content in Perlita, and the substitution of villains and heroes in Rodante, or the abbreviation of performances and creation of new formats in Baler, the underlying logic remains constant: dance, and especially the war dance remains central, and the need to perform choreographic sequences remains the organizing principle of the plot and theme. [...]... 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;... "theaters of liberation" in Asia Guidote established it in 1 967 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. .. 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... is finally defeated and order is restored to the kingdom Perlita and Philippine History In Perlita, Mendoza translocates the moro- moro from its conventional setting in some fictitious medieval kingdom to a kingdom somewhere in Southeast Asia She retains the formula of nobility as the main characters, but this time, instead of being dressed in the finery of European royalty, the nobles are dressed in. .. 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... 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. .. be in conformity with the choreographic logic of the moro- moro and must be positioned in "allowable" places 193 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, ... Christian -Moro lines The 209 categorical instability of the identities of the opposing groups allows producers to freely re-assign new heroes and villains to suit the nationalistic aims of their plays Another strategy for infusing nationalistic content into the moro- moro is through insertions The patriotic song number’s insertion into the play Perlita, is one fine example The moro- moro has a marked malleability... those involved in Perlita were also involved in GTF's Florante In addition to these professional theater actors and dancers, were the local actors from San Dionisio A noteworthy cameo role was played by the theater veteran and respected movie actor Tommy Abuel, who was invited to appear briefly as the national hero Jose Rizal for the patriotic song number inserted into the story Abuel had played the. .. used: inversion and insertion In Rodante, the role of villain was inverted, with the Christian prince now being made into the main antagonist In Perlita, the antagonisms are re-formatted from Christian -Moro to Foreign-local, with the Spanish being assigned to the villain's side The moro- moro 's basic structure of opposition between antagonistic factions need not necessarily be along Christian -Moro lines . 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. 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. 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