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All the world’s a stage During our performance swing through Europe, we encountered the dinner conundrum. Dinner for the French is a two-hour ritual of social refinement. For many of us Filipinos, dinner is a 15-minute eat-and-run affair where viand and rice are merrily mixed-and-matched. Vinegar or soy sauce or catsup, spiked by homegrown spices, is slap-dashed into the plate for good measure. All this is washed down with ice-cold soda. The French would scream at this barbaric atrocity, and not merely because soda and catsup are taboo at the dining table. by Steven Patrick C. Fernandez In Nuremburg, Germany, the sun was pale, almost orange, not the fiery ball of crimson that signals the start of our days in Mindanao. We noticed this even though we were worn out from our journey from the Netherlands, where we had just attended the Holten International Festival. Our company, the Integrated Performing Arts Guild, better known by its acronym, IPAG, was on a performance tour in Europe, thanks in large part to the CCP Outreach Program. We were tired but we were ecstatic, all 20 of us, buoyed up by all the accolade we received for our performances. And so there we were in Nuremberg early in the morning, contemplating the apparition in the sky. Was that the moon or the sun? Nolly, our principal choreographer, insisted it was the moon because in his hometown (Wao, the final frontier of Lanao del Sur in Mindanao), the moon loomed large and near, as if within reach, much like the hazy host teasing us in the sky that first day of our stay in Germany. We laughed. Nolly did not think it was funny. He walked over to a couple having breakfast at another table. They looked like they were from the place. Nolly begged their indulgence and asked, pointing to the sky, “Is that the moon or the sun?” The man’s answer was brief: “What do you think?” What did we think, indeed, of Europe? We came to terms with it by comparing it to our experiences in Mindanao. As the resident theater company of the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) in Iligan City, IPAG has always sourced its strength and inspiration from the cultural vocabulary of Mindanao. Our productions mine this richness of articulation that gives us firm grounding in our indigenous heritage even as it propels us to take flight in the multilayered skies of our imagination. And so, Europe. We, from there, were here, enjoying the ambiguity of early mornings before the jolt of caffeine kicked us out into the strange streets, alive and ready for the here and now. Europe is draped in bucolic images. But its rustic charm is not that of our ricefields and waterfalls. Instead, the landscape is peppered by the remains of the day, now an abandoned castle, and then in the next bend the ruins of some palace. If it were an essay, Europe would be an evocation of the glory and violence of history. Words like grandeur and devastation would ring throughout the essay. There would be occasional descriptions of chateaus and chalets. But there would mainly be long passages illustrating the opulence of Empire: such images as we saw during our trip, like portraits of dukes in Baroque salons, and of princes draped in all their accouterments as they rode thoroughbreds, trailed by loyal sycophants. Mindanao is also a land of grand hopes and violent realities, a battleground for the lost cause of Empire in all its meanings. While we do have our share of glory, too, the images first-time visitors will take home with them from our homeland are tropical, raw, and improvised—such images as our tin-roofed homes abuzz with noisy kids and noisier mothers. So when the raw Filipino meets the well-mannered European, it is commedia d’ell arte—without the acting. And so, there’s the dinner conundrum. Dinner for the French is a two-hour ritual of social refinement. For many of us Filipinos, dinner is a 15-minute eat-and-run affair where viand and rice are merrily mixed-and-matched. Vinegar or soy sauce or catsup, spiked by homegrown spices, is slap-dashed into the plate for good measure. All this is washed down with ice-cold soda. The French would scream at this barbaric atrocity, and not merely because soda and catsup are taboo. For one, gustatory indulgence, such as of cheese in any of its 365 varieties (in France alone), may only be washed down by the best red wines. (I found that French cheese has a smell I cannot describe here. Learning to like it, like I did with blue cheese and its traces of molds, is like getting to like durian back home: a force of habit and will.) For another, while most Filipino meals are generally assertions of basic survival, if not of nutritional improv wizardry, for the French, dinner is a performance art of great expectations. Dinner is served by acts at a leisurely pace, and in between courses, you engage in social intercourse with everyone else at the table, not minding your hunger pangs as long as you’re witty with your repartee. (Filipino time is French time without soufflé.) During our first French dinner, we were served steamed vegetables sprinkled with olive oil. Sensing that this was the only food served for dinner—no rice!—we helped ourselves to heapfuls of it. We were famished after having had two full-length performances that day. It was a strange minimalist meal, but we tried to make the most of it. And we did. When we had had our fill, we washed it off with all those alcoholic beverages with a medicine-like aftertaste. We were ready for small talk. But it turned out that dinner was just getting started. What we gorged on was only the first course, the aperitif. Now came platter after groaning platter of meat and seafood—which were prepared just for the guest artists from the Philippines. There was no escape. Not even through witty repartee. We had to eat up all the courses whipped up by the masterful chef—never mind our bursting stomachs. It felt like some French kiss of death: slow, delicious, and certain. We learned to pace ourselves. When we were served salad in a Dutch restaurant, we did not fill up our plates. Some of us even opted to forego the crispy greens. After half an hour, there was no sign of the next course. The waiter stood behind the counter, a smile pasted on his face. I shrugged my shoulders at him, by way of announcing that we’re ready for the rest of the meal, and he shrugged back, cooing in halting English, “Did you enjoy your meal?” Talk about the Dutch and their treats. We realized that dinner, however many or few the courses comprised it, was over when the waiters served us coffee. One time, we were served espresso with an accompanying stick of chocolate. Arlem, a rather daring soul in our group, picked up the chocolate stick and stirred his cup with it. His seatmate, Reynan, followed suit, but with a dramatic flick of his fingers, the pinky in an artsy angle, as if performing the pangalay (Muslim dance with intricate finger play). The rest of us did the same, but without the artsy pinky. All of us, however, were taken aback at the bitterness of the concoction. Noticing that coffee was served—or perhaps noticing what we had done?—our French hosts took a pause from their animated discussion. They plopped the chocolate in their mouths, relishing its sweetness, and then sipped their coffee, savoring the play of textures. The whole table was struck silent. Now, coffee at the start of day was a different thing altogether. The French serve coffee in bowls during breakfast. The first time we were served thus, we thought they had run out of cups. The idea must be that people needed a heavy dose of caffeine early in the morning to see them through the day. Such caffeine rush actually intensified our dancing rhythms. We were fortunate our youthful hearts at the time could handle what seemed to us like an “upper” overdose. * * * * * * * So what had our gustatory experiences to do with our performance tour? At Pesmes (pronounced Pehm) in Southern France, we were asked to perform in a spacious underground tunnel. It was once an impressive wine cellar of a 17th century mansion, but it has since been refurbished as a high-society salon. It had excellent acoustics, and it was thrilling to catch snippets of the small talk of the chi-chi crowd before the show began. The select audience included two members of Parliament. There was a former Ambassador to the Philippines. There was also a former manager for Asia of Air France. Of course, there was a host of royalty in full force. Everyone was in their gala best. When the pre-show cocktails commenced, Melvin, another of our brave souls, had no second thoughts about trying out the pink champagne and caviar. The mood set, everyone sat down for the show. That evening we were performing “Earth, Wind, Fire and Water,” a pulsating vignette about the four elements of nature and their relationship with man. It was a dance-drama production that required a high level of performance energy. At the finale, the dancers rolled, rotated, stretched, and then froze in a dynamic tableau. The music stopped. And then at the center of the performance space in the sealed underground tunnel with excellent acoustics and filled with high-society name-droppables, Melvin could not hold it any longer—and let out a distinct burst of stomach gas. And then there was Spain. To this day, bus drivers and mechanics in Orenze in Cataluña province may still be talking about the mystery of the leaking bus. There were 15 buses ferrying 15 dance groups to a provincial plaza hundreds of miles away from Orenze for a showdown of performances. During the long-distance trip, one of our female dancers needed to pee really badly, but the buses were not equipped with a toilet, so she kept her peace. When we arrived at our destination, however, there did not seem to be any public toilet around. So the male dancers of IPAG, in all gentlemanly chivalry, took guard positions around one of the large buses in our convoy (it was parked at a discreet corner), and allowed the poor female dancer to take a leak. This was the bayanihan (group) spirit at work. And in any case, it was an ordinary occurrence in the Philippines, especially when no public toilet would be available, which would mostly be the case. After a few dance numbers, we returned to the bus parking site. We stopped in our tracks. Ten to 15 men, clearly the bus drivers and their mechanics, milled around a wet spot beside a bus. Some of the men squatted on the ground, others crouched on their haunches, and still others lay under the bus. They were trying to determine where the wetness came from. Was the bus leaking? What was the make of the liquid? The men were in deep discussion. They looked like a bunch of scientists trying to unravel some mystery. We vowed to keep the secret of the leaking bus to ourselves. But if you think the tour dampened our spirits and made us less sure of ourselves, this was simply not the case. In fact, the tour harnessed our strengths and pushed our self-confidence. First, we realized that our facility in spoken English was an advantage. Many Europeans were amazed at our command of the language. They did not mind our thick Binisaya accent. After all, many of them spoke English with funny accents, and even then their English, such as it was, was in grammatical disarray. Somehow we found this ego-boosting, and need we belabor the fact that confidence is a necessity in performance? It sets the ground for any success in stage work, whether you are an actor, dancer, singer, or even director. Nolly Ceballos, our choreographer who insisted that the European sun is but the Philippine moon, is confidence personified. Even when he sets off for work at the break of dawn (he is a teacher and a businessman: he supplies iced tea and lemonade to schools in Iligan City), he exudes confidence with his regal bearing: chest out, head tilting in a patrician angle—a mark of his training in classical ballet. In Europe, Nolly’s confidence was not limited to his posture. Although he did not speak, say, French, he had the audacity to interpret what the French were saying to us in French by reading their body language: facial twitches, hand gestures, eye movements, pout of the lips, and even voice inflections. Since we had no interpreter with us, we relied on Nolly’s confidence in wading through language barriers to forge negotiations during the tour. This was the confidence of the choreographer: to encounter and appropriate the world through body movement. But the confidence of IPAG as a performing ensemble during our tour in Europe lay, in no small measure, in a material manifestation of the beauty of our cultural heritage. Philippine indigenous costumes are confidence embroidered. If foreigners have their strutting peacocks, we have the panika (headdress) that blazes brighter than their peacock’s feathers. A crowd-pleaser that landed us on the front page of several newspapers in Europe was our colorful Higaonon costume, complete with the proud headdress. Put it on our slim, brown-skinned dancers, and we had a winner. Even in the massive crowd of a festival or parade, we would grab people’s attention with the striking “look” of our costumes. And we’re damn proud of this! Who would think that an insignificant troupe from the back land would receive this much appreciation from these jaded Europeans? Who would also think that IPAG can earn the respect of critics, impresarios, and audiences worldwide? Who could ever imagine that a small ragtag group of 11 friends who decided to form a theater group in 1978 would be able to build a company that has made imprints in the world map of art and culture? Who would ever imagine that an underdog would be a significant part of the Philippine performing arts landscape? Who would have thought IPAG would survive? * * * * * * * IPAG is 27 years old. Once upon a time, we had messianic illusions. When we started, we did not only want to produce theater; we also wanted to change the landscape of Philippine Theater. Admittedly, we had more energy then but none of the expertise. As beginners, we had our models. Like most theater groups in the 1970s, we looked up to the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) and the movement it spawned. Our Bible was Dr. Nicanor Tiongson’s “What is Philippine Theater?” Ours was a mimeographed copy that has become crumpled with use. Our limited experiences had a bearing on the limiting kind of theater work we did: dula-tula (group renditions in verse) and variety shows. I shudder to recall those beginning years, but these memories reappear like lizard bones in the drawer. But one needs to reflect on personal and group histories to draw lessons from them. We were building from scratch. And by that I mean really the act of scratching our heads in desperation. We were ill-prepared. The shows we did were of the concert types: drums and coarse singing, with lots of visual effects make the experience elevating. And if we did theater, these were of the loud sort that mouthed angry slogans and lectured about injustice. These were also the years when Sining Kambayoka was making waves in Manila, and director Frank Rivera amazed us with his magical weaving of color and movements. College taught me O’Neil, Miller, and Chekhov—but little of Joaquin and Guerrero, and certainly none of Noriega. And if opportunity allowed us to mount plays, it would almost always be a one-act Guerrero or, if there were more actors than roles and we didn’t want to discourage the others, Dumol’s “Paglilitis kay Mang Serapio” (The Trial of Serapio), where we would cast as Mga Pulubi (Beggars) the multitude who had no talent. My first taste of theater in Manila, the closest to some kind of professional exposure at the time, was when I was cast as a rock (yes, a large stone). I kept pictures of my involvement in this production at Fort Santiago, but the title escapes me now. I would show the pictures to my friends and say, That’s me in the black slacks. I went to the PETA workshop, where I learned the eight basic efforts, creative dramatics, and the art of making-do. I also attended the University of the Philippines (U.P.) Summer Theater Workshop. The U.P. workshop was handled by the theater greats of the Manila scene at the time: Tony Mabesa, Anton Juan, and Amiel Leonardia. They were academicians and their approach to teaching theater was methodical and theory-based. I valued their lectures on the history of drama, styles, technical theater, and management. In this workshop’s final showcase, I was cast as a doctor in a Filipino translation of “Dracula.” But besides the workshops, I also got involved in professional productions, such as Bienvenido Noriega’s “Bayan-Bayanan.” The in-the-round production was directed by the irrepressible Anton. He showed me the power of beats and apogees, of silences and sounds. When used with sensitivity, these elevated a play into the sanctified purity of music. I will always remember Anton’s dictum, which for years I have held sacrosanct: Silence in a play is more difficult to handle than dialogue. But once you master it, you have a symphony of meanings. Actual theater exposures augmented my readings. I learned by watching and reading all about theater. While reinforcing my theoretical grounding, I was being more sensitive about the reality around me: the rhythms and textures of daily life, the sounds in the streets, the colors of the world. When I was a child, instead of joining my classmates and friends as they wheeled their scooters around town, I was squirming before the piano painfully trying to go through my Hanon finger exercises. Thanks to Led Zeppelin, the pain turned to pleasure, and rock music saved me. In my study of theater, I saw good direction when one controlled the music of drama. I was awed by the magic and the power music wields. Music, here, loosely refers to all moments in motion, in cadence, in beats, in sounds and silences, in roughness and silkiness, in the rhythms of life. In this country, music has a twin expression: dance. Both are the norms in public performance and are imperatives in the artistic expressions and experiences of Filipinos, particularly those in Mindanao. Any form of expression emanating from Mindanao invariable integrates some music and dance in it. Here lies the connection between ritual expression (from indigenous sources) and studied theater (from our own experiences): the common thread is the intertwining of music and dance. Music and dance surmount the limitations of dialogue-based theater. With music and dance, we have a universally-understood theater, a forum that allows cultures to interact and performers and audiences to understand each other. In Mindanao, these forms are the order of artistic creation. In 1978, dance guru Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa arrived in Iligan City after 15 years of field work in Tawi-tawi and Sulu, where she studied the dances of the Tausug, Samal, and Jama Mapun, among others. She brought to IPAG the pangalay dance, which can best be described as “motion in stillness” depicting man’s affinity with the sea and the earth. Luckily, the dance could be taught with precision: its movements could be summed up in 26 poses. The pangalay became an IPAG signature, whisking us away from the kitschiness of our repertoire at the time: “Ito ba ang Iligan?” (Is This Iligan?, a satire), “A Star is Born” (a dance-drama inspired by the Barbra Streisand movie), Nonilon Queaño’s “Ang Hawla” (The Birdcage), Jose Ibarra Angeles’s “Kastilyo ni Kardo” (Kardo’s Castle), Juliet Malit’s “Fad Jazz,” Amilbangsa’s “A Hand-and-Shadow Puppet Show” (later re-titled “Not for Adults Only”), and my own “Makina” (Machine). Though deficient in dramaturgy, IPAG had a dedicated working team always open to suggestions and willing to learn novel approaches. If social movements have their café rebels who talk about revolution without really fighting in them, we had our own library-bound dramaturges who studied drama and theater avidly but had difficulty in translating these thoughts into stage productions. Like some theater aficionados who end up as critics because they could not be practitioners. Gay (that was how Ligaya came to be known) gave IPAG its name. She drafted our first constitution. She was slowly reshaping our theatrical and dance orientations and shifting our perspectives. During the two years she stayed in Iligan, IPAG gradually imbibed her craft and dedication. Our first dance-drama production was “Sarimanok” (the name of a mythical bird which has become a symbol of wealth and prestige in Mindanao). It was an experiment in fusing pangalay with modern dance. Our resident choreographer was well-equipped for this adventure: Juliet Malit studied at the old CCP Dance School, pursued an undergraduate degree in dance at the University of Santo Tomas, and obtained a Master’s degree in dance from U.P. Our music director, Ricky Caluen, an ex-La Salle brother who did one TV show, mastered the art of fusing jazz and ethnic (meaning, kulintangan) music. The melody was lyrical and the rhythm, bouncy. We felt our new work, which had Maranao motifs, would take us to national prominence. Our dance drama was an allegory narrating how the Sarimanok, tasked to feed her flock, discovers the wonders and freedom of flight. Because of this, she was sentenced to death. The tragedy ends with a Brechtian elocution that urges the audience to question the scheme of things. The theme itself was a borrowed one: individual freedom and the choices one can make amid social restrictions. In 1981, this theme was as relevant as the farcical lifting of Martial Law. Many people saw in the dance-drama a reflection of their own personal conditions in their struggle against traditional regulations. To many Maranao friends, this articulation on stage was a signal of their liberation vis-à-vis their own social prisons, albeit vicariously. Maranao girls who were frustrated, at least secretly, of their own restricting conditions, hailed the piece as evocative of their own personal stories. In 1981, we toured “Sarimanok” to Silliman University in Dumaguete City. The long applause at the end of the performance at Luce Auditorium electrified us in IPAG. That performance generated three reviews, one by the distinguished Albert Faurot. That tour was our baptism of fire. “Sarimanok” became IPAG’s turning point. Our succeeding productions—“Ranaw,” “Datu Matu” (King Matu), and “Mga Kwentong Mindanao” (Tales from Mindanao)—were variations and enhancements of the “Sarimanok” experiment: its aesthetics, directorial vision, creative process, collaborative chemistry, and use of local color. The process of creation was fine-tuned along the way, the dramaturgy established, and IPAG as a theater style took shape. The national cultural scene took notice. In fact, the CCP Outreach Program toured IPAG’s signature dance-dramas. IPAG continues to innovate. Exposure to other genres has expanded our horizons. Note our trailblazing attempts at using postmodern techniques in narrating local stories: “How the Women of Joaquin Met Lawanen” and the currently successful “Ming-Ming.” The “variety show” genre, with its structure that strung together disparate segments, was not totally abandoned but was re-formed to suit “higher” aesthetics. Instead of song-and-dance numbers strung together in bodabil fashion, now we use a thematic thread to unify dance and dance-music vignettes, such as in “Buhay, Pag-ibig at Kamatayan” (Life, Love, and Death) and “Ugoy ng Duyan” (Rocking the Cradle). Talking of daring experimentation, at one time, we in IPAG did a stand-up comedy series for the commercial bar circuit. While our creative process is not unique, the materials, the means these materials were gathered, and the transformation of these materials to the stage using our idioms make the IPAG experience novel. IPAG is blessed with accessibility to indigenous sources of both subjects and forms of expressions, as well as with opportunities for immersion and immediate validation of the immersion experiences. The long route of trial and error prepared us for the challenges along the way, the most compelling of which was the challenge of survival. * * * * * * * What’s the point of doing aesthetic innovations in theater when you don’t have an audience? Survival means having the resources to support your work. Begging for more grants was tedious and unproductive. It was unrealistic to expect continued contributions from tired benefactors, who would eventually suffer from donor fatigue. The most immediate means of support was having a community willing to pay for whatever work we produced. This mainly meant having an audience. We set out to find that audience. But audience development required image-building on our part. With the right image, selling came easy. At this point in IPAG’s life, and without sacrificing our advocacies for the development of the regional Philippine Theater, IPAG transformed its vision from “towards a National Philippine Theater” to the more attainable “a professional theater company by, for, and with the community.” We had to establish an image of high standing in the performing arts, and this meant producing exceptional works. Being dance- and music-driven, our repertoire was most appropriate for an international audience. Then again, these productions were grounded on indigenous sources and were truly culturally-bound, perfect for world festivals. And after all, the works were often conceived as touring pieces: the productions were mobile and minimalist. And so we went international. Our first international stint was at the Singapore Festival of the Arts. Then we had our European tour in 1996, which brought us to the Netherlands, Austria, France, and the United Kingdom. Afterwards, getting bookings for international shows was a lot easier. (The only problem was getting funding for airfare.) More tours followed. France was so impressed that it invited IPAG to extensive tours in 1997, 1998, and 2002. IPAG also visited Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan. We performed at the World Cup in South Korea. In 2004, we premiered another post modern work, “Reviving Sub-alternity,” in Taipei City, Taiwan in collaboration with Cambodian and Chinese artists. This same work remounts in Tokyo in 2005. In 2006, the Hawaii Centennial Commission has invited IPAG to highlight 100 years of the Filipino presence in Hawaii. Back in Iligan City, we had to face questions of sustainability. We realized we had a limited audience. It was mainly school-based. Which meant our audience could be packed in one show at the school gymnasium, and that was that. During the summer months, this audience was also on vacation. We considered two options: produce different shows in a season, or produce one show and bring it to other audiences. The second option was less expensive and seemed more viable. The solution was to look for audiences elsewhere. If Iligan lacked a sustainable audience, then we would go elsewhere for audience development. IPAG reshaped itself into a touring company with stock productions without forgetting its own base in Iligan. Productions are not the only sole determinants of success. It is also important to look at our human resources: the artists, staff, technicians, craftsmen, business partners, and the audiences. Then there are our marketing affiliates which ensure bookings for our shows. Through our audiences and benefactors, we build up our finances and capabilities—which help us pay for the services and the talents that create our works. Even with eight international touring legs, a string of awards, numerous acclaim, the reputation of being the first Philippine cultural group to have a website, and perhaps the distinction of being the theater company with the most extensive audience network in the Philippines, IPAG remains homegrown. Never mind the lack of European sophistication. The sun will always be the sun, whether in Wao or in Nuremberg. It is the same sun that will shine through our many days of future performances. We perform as Filipinos confident of our culture, confident that we as artists are on an equal footing with anyone on earth because we know, after all these years of pursuing our theater work through ups and downs but always with commitment and dedication, |
