Theater Lives in Mindanao

 Many of Mindanao's "theater" are not "staged." They are of the kind that is communal, participatory, spontaneous and immediate to the eco-social concerns of its communities. In contrast, Manila has a theater of commodity where producers market the play-product to an audience-consumer willing to shell out a sum of money in return for a correspondingly gratifying experience. Many urban centers in Mindanao have similar experiences with that of Manila as far as the relationships between the play and the audience are concerned. Their differences lie in the intrinsic quality of their forms, processes, and intents.
 
With two sets of conventions distinguishing the "theaters" of the two milieus, how does one now reconcile these to come up with a Theater that should enrich Philippine dramaturgy? Why the need to reconcile conventions when the Mindanao communities have been surviving with their cultural expressions that fulfill the multi-functions that these "theaters" have been providing them all these generations?

 Few may deny that in the blossoming of theater interest during these recent years, Mindanao has been reaping a significant share of the harvest. Perhaps outside of Metro Manila, Mindanao has the most fecund theater movement that has immersed itself in, experimented, adapted, and utilized the wealth of the cultural and artistic resources of the island and its people. As with its various cultural communities, the forms and functions of this emerging theater movement are as varied. In the urban centers, the rural communities, tribes, and sectoral groups, theater has flowered to become a significant medium of creative expression fulfilling socio-political transformation, entertainment, religious ritual, cultural action, and communal assertion.

However in recent years, changes have been adapted. Corresponding changes in the setting: industrialization, the construction of power plants, urbanization of rural communities (subsequently their "Westernization"), and massive migration of people from the North (whose encroachments have considerably displaced the native Mindanaon) have altered the natives' way of life. Consequently, these changes have transformed the natives' cultural expressions.

 Theater necessarily becomes a potent means that can unify the Mindanaon's concerns, assert his cultural identity, and integrate his cultural expressions (before Mindanao loses these entirely). Mindanao's cultural quality is easily identified from those of the urban (Manila) and the Hispanized folk (Visayan). But sadly, the ubiquitous television, movies, and FM radio have become so pervasive they are culprits to the painful loss of identity. The changing landscapes of forests to export-processing zones, hunting lands to industrial estates, grasslands to concrete jungles prove this rapid transformation that has methodically decimated Mindanao's indigenous qualities. Cultural symbols have begun to disappear because the emerging needs have produced new values that have evolved newer symbols. Sensing the inevitability of change, we regretfully accept these transformations. But still, we defend that these alterations should provide for the good of the majority.

 Thus will contemporary Mindanao Theater recollect the peoples' cultural expressions. Its role is to revitalize the indigenous by reconciling this with the emerging contemporary setting. This should disseminate and popularize indigenous artistic culture in our present setting. Having achieved a new usefulness to meet new functions, the transformed indigenous symbols project the emerging values. The Mindanao communities' interests are once more upheld.
 

Secondly, Mindanao's history is as multi-woven as its tapestry of culture. Mindanao has a history of confrontation, of wars for self-assertion, and of conflicts among its many tribes. This long continuing struggle mostly fueled by the Mindanaon's fight for self-determination can be most recent. Even today, unmitigated migration, the confiscation of ancestral lands for government projects (as in the Mt. Apo geothermal plan), infrastructure development in lumad lands have continued to fire this clash of cultures.

Lastly, Mindanao's location in the southernmost part of the country links it to a wider ASEAN cultural sphere farther from the West-oriented cosmopolitan centers like Manila. This decidedly advantageous cultural position has enriched Mindanao's artistic cultures. Southeast Asia is a trove of artistic and cultural treasures. Its dances, visual arts, music, theater and literature are precious because of their authentic, unadulterated and age-old qualities that have seemingly overflowed into the fringes of Mindanao.

Theater in Mindanao therefore finds its dynamic expression in a region that is exciting and volatile, a melting pot of cultures, and a region that innately uses the theater to assert its power. In a sense, Mindanao and theater mutually feed themselves healthy.

How do we now contextualize "theater" as it emerges to grow into a Mindanao Movement evolving to become a main spoke in the wheels of Philippine Theater?

Let me conceptualize the Mindanao creative expressions as it relates to our view of "theater". Then, I shall attempt to draw out a quality of "Mindanao Theater" and how factors have continued to shape this movement. Finally, I shall be bold as to foresee the emerging form that Mindanao Theater will shape itself into.

Breathing More Life to Mindanao Theater

I have introduced the preliminary distinctions between theater-as-staged and theater-as-communal-process

Theater-as-staged activities take place in relatively larger population centers, schools, parishes, and mass-based sectors. These have their own forms, fulfill specific functions and relate specific values.

Theater-as-process in communities represent communal yearnings. Its artistic expressions fulfill a different set of functions. With a spontaneous process, it directly relates to the integrative and defensive needs of a community.

These two modes of theater practice have the essential qualities that make up contemporary Mindanao Theater.

The first is structured, organized in the formalistic sense, planned, and is developed through a step-by-step production process to come out with a "product." The second (although also organized but in the emic sense) is created within the inherent rhythms of the community: its cycles, calendrical events, planting and harvest routines. Process rather than the end product is the point of this pattern.

The first has performances with actors in specialized roles performing for a separate viewing audience in mind. The second is an "all join" activity where performers can also be the audience.

The first is planned for set functions as in entertainment, education, or political action. The second is multi-functional for the various needs of the community.

The first adapts and transforms cultural symbols to recreate form; the second is the form itself. The first builds its process from a prepared planned guide (as in a script), while the second spontaneously releases a process well imbibed by the community.

The practitioners of the first are specialists - artists who have gone through some formal training. They are separate from a "lay" relatively passive audience. The second has folk artists who do not bar the participation of the other members of the community from taking direct and active part in the creative process, from being performers too. Being such, the first is more typical where formal education is accessible, the second in communities with a more distinctive ethnic character where lore and custom are handed down by tradition.

These two distinctions merge to produce the characteristic qualities of contemporary Mindanao Theater. They reflect similar cultural values each distinguished by its own functions and a structure molded by a specific cultural milieu (time and place).

Transforming Contemporary Theater Forms from the Ethnic

Contemporary theater therefore evolves from indigenous sources. Present forms seem to be transplanted models of the indigenous - the ethnic. Generally, the indigenous form:

1. integrates music, dance, literary (basically oral), and visual expressions;

2. emphasizes creative process motivated by its multi-functional quality;

3. betrays no strictness of time, nor limitations of space of a structure that is improvised and spontaneously created;

4. presents a direct and personal audience-performer interaction (audience and performers meld and are oftentimes indistinguishable); and,

5. reflects values that are of a communal rather than individual nature.

1. artistic expressions are similarly integrated (very seldom will you see Mindanao-created plays that have dialogues only);

2. process is a communal rather than an individual activity - the vision of the play does not emanate primarily from the single playwright or director. A communal process involves a "collective" effort where the vision is shared by a "community" of artist-participants. For instance, in Western-oriented theater practice, we find one choreographer conceptualizing all dance. In contrast, Mindanao Theater has choreography which is the result of a shared effort, of artist-participants collectively taking part in the creative process to articulate the vision shared by a community, of plays that may be constantly changing to meet the demands of a milieu;

3. the "beginning-middle-end" structure, a close-ended time frame, inevitably becomes necessary considering the altered setting of a fixed and limited "stage" time. While the creative process is still an overriding concern, the end product - the "whole, completed play" - is the subsequent result. There is a transformed function - like entertainment - using techniques of sustained conflict, suspense, tension, and spectacle.

4. the direct and personal relationships of the performing process destroys the "fourth wall," approximating a communal ritual, working best in spaces without boundaries (though transplanted to limited spaces in gyms and auditoriums). Theater in the seminal sense is forum and ritual.

Contemporary Mindanao Theater is also the venue for the dissemination and popularization of cultural values and symbols. It translates the indigenous into the contemporary. It adapts "entertainment" (in the present sense) to make meaning more effective to the contemporary audience.

Evolving the Process

What, therefore, is the usual pattern of transformation? From my observation of theater practice in Mindanao the following is the usual process:

1. features from cultural communities are imbibed (rather than picked up), transformed and adapted to the stage.

Despite the transformations, these features maintain the essentials (values, ethics, form) and the orientation (process, integration of expressions, performer-audience (relationships). The adaptation and transformation into modern conventions revitalize these forms by fulfilling new emerging needs, reflecting emerging values that have developed as a result of social, economic, and cultural alterations.

2. These transplanted forms are used in the practice of "entertainment."

3. Entertainment is the means that bring issues and needs like social transformation, value regeneration, communal action, economic liberation, spiritual upliftment, communal assertion, and the fora for ventilating and challenging ideas to an audience.

Let me therefore summarize the general theater patterns in Mindanao. By all indications, these theater practices project social, economic, and political concerns. While they focus on situations more local than universal, their themes convey that universal quality of life and human affairs.

Like all patterns, practices overlap. Examples of the groups cited are typical to the pattern but these groups may practice other patterns too. For instance, in the examples following, groups in Pattern 2 usually practice Patterns 3 and 4.

Pattern 1: Traditional proto-theater forms used as ritual for communal functions as worship, harvest, birth, and other way-of-life concerns inherent in the peoples' lives: diandi of the Manobo, Kashawing of the Maranao, sinulog of the Iliganun, and Kaamulan dance-music performances of the Higa-unun. [Interesting to note though not a pattern because of its unique practice only in Iligan is the San Miguel "comedia", a play in verse in the "moro-moro" ("yawa-yawa" to Iliganuns) tradition performed once a year as "panaad" by an all-male group. This "drama" narrates the celestial battle between the San Miguel and Luzbel (Lucifer).]

Pattern 2: Theater, built from indigenous lore and cultural elements, adapted and transformed for the stage, and performed on a regular basis by organized repertory groups. The materials and artistic elements of this pattern are developed by careful process through research, immersion, and cultural study produced through a "studied" play production process. In effect, their productions have the ethnic of "professional" theater. Their structured plays are performed mostly in conventional settings using the technology of Western-oriented dramaturgy. These groups are mostly based in population centers, in schools, community centers. Examples of these are the Kaliwat Theatre Collective, Sining Kambayoka and the IPAG theater groups.

Pattern 3: Theater taking off directly from a specific community's or sector's immediate concerns, to ventilate problems and needs, for social action, value transformation, assertion of communal rights, and the like. Because of the immediacy of an action expected, this pattern presents productions that are easily mounted, improvised, itinerant, and are as temporal as the issues that produce the plays usually without a permanent physical base (as in an auditorium) and/or the procedures of production management. Examples of this type include the various Creative Drama groups that have sprouted in recent years in parishes, communities, labor sectors for such events as rallies, calendrical activities to commemorate political events, and the like. Groups include the LEAD of Iligan and its music arm Himig Piglas, the various CD movements of Lanao Norte, the Agusan-Surigao area, Davao, and the community theaters associated with the likes of Bro. Karl Gaspar.

Pattern 4: Theater produced from already-available scripts written and/or published mostly in Manila, translated and/or adapted in the dialect and performed by Mindanao-based groups. Such plays like Bienvenido Noriega's Batang Pro and Bayan-Bayanan, Anton Juan's Taong  Grasa, Tony Perez' North Diversion Road , or Al Santos' Sistema ni Tuko have materials that are either presented as is or transformed to fit into local situations. The forms however remain essentially the same. Followed are the ethnics of Western professional theater in terms of the play production process including such activities as marketing and promotions. Groups involved in this pattern include also those in Pattern 2 and such other groups as TEATRO! and the defunct GenLuna of Davao.

Pattern 5: Similar to Pattern 4 except that the materials used are original, that is, one developed by a resident playwright or a collective. The form is one borrowed and adapted (realism, expressionism) but the issues are relevant to the locality. The same groups in Patterns 2 and 4 are involved in this type of theater.

In evolving Contemporary Mindanao Theater, a multitude of groups in various communities and sectors have been rapidly molding this genre in the past few years. One thinks of Mindanao Theater with such movements as those mentioned earlier. The list may be endless. Newer groups with newer intentions have sprung. Let me however cite the more notable movements (if only because these have brought Mindanao Theater into the national limelight): Sining Kambayoka of the Mindanao State University in Marawi captures the folk spirit of the Maranao and other Muslim communities through its adaptation of the folk form bayok, a verbal joust between two groups, usually male and female. The bayok and all its intricacies is used most magically in narrating plot and recreating setting. Through the bayok, Kambayoka draws out meanings in folk lore transformed to modern theater aesthetics.

The Kolambugan Dance Theater of Father Dong Galenzoga is distinguished because of its pioneering use of folk aesthetics in the monumental Maranatha (1974), a prime example of Philippine "expressionism" (as theater scholar Nic Tiongson would aver). The KDT utilized actors pooled from the folk of Kolambugan, a quaint little town in Lanao Norte, and a collective process of sharing and creative development from its own local resources. The Integrated Performing Arts Guild has evolved a dance-theater format integrated with other folk traditions, aesthetics, and expressions. Based at the MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan, the IPAG has adapted as its signature dance idiom the generic pangalay which may perhaps come closest to a Philippine classical dance form appropriately capturing the intricacies of contemporary folk culture.

The Kaliwat Theater Collective is distinguished by their process of cultural immersion (called "playback") in subject communities. The process absorbs the folk symbols and signals transforming these to the stage that recaptures the folk conventions in their performances. Because of the scrutiny in the Kaliwat immersion, their performances come closest to the authentic in texture, idiom, and the life style they portray.

It is a theater where a distinguishable form is evident: Mindanao qualities have evolved from her cultural communities, a history, developing conditions, folk aesthetics, process, and relationships.

It is a theater that fulfills the needs of a community as it grows out of communal aspirations, asserts communal power, and meets defensive and integrative demands.

It is a theater that reflects values accepted by a community as their own. Acceptance is possible when a theater draws participation from the community that sees the theater as a mirror of their aspirations.

It is a theater with the capacity to integrate into the mainstream of national culture - and a National Theater. It can accept and acculturate the aesthetics of contemporary Philippine Theater that borrows discriminatingly from foreign forms to further vitalize it.

It is a theater that is not a physical stage or a structured play but an emerging quality.

Culture writer Edilberto Alegre is correct in his "wild theoretical guess" that "our emergent national culture" is a-forming in Mindanao. Likewise, the National Theater is right now shaping in the Philippines' most dynamic island.