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FIVE
days in Antique is all it takes you to understand what
community theater is all about, in the primal sense.
Oscar Wilde’s notion of the theater—when he talks about
the stage as being not merely the meeting of all arts
but “is also the return of art to life”—comes true in
this place. Komedya, that theater art form, is strangely
and fortunately alive in Antique. Known in various
forms—moro-moro in some areas; linambay among the
Cebuanos—the theater tradition is going on strong amid
newer, more technologically supported entertainment
media like digital music and film. One wonders how a
thing could survive the continuing changes of theaters
and mass media on the island, but survive it does. It
even flourishes because certain people are seeing in the
form not the influence of Mexican-Spanish cultures but
the capacity of the medium to tell new stories in a
somewhat subtly altered structure.
In
February this year, the University of the Philippines’
College of Fine Arts launched the Komedya Fiesta. The
monthlong celebration had people talking about one work:
Orosman at Zafira, which took off from the komedya form
and never looked back. In that festival, the komedya of
Antique was well represented, carrying with it its own
stamp, singular and odd to the uninitiated. And we are
many who belong to the uninitiated.
It is
interesting to note also that where Manila is noted to
initiate events, utilizing the resources around it, the
komedya phenomenon brings to the fore one thing: Antique
has had its own Komedya sa Antique festival way before
anyone. At UP, the Binirayan Foundation, through its
performing arm Hiraya Theater Company, mounted the
komedya Kasanag Batok sa Sugal (Light versus
Gambling).
We know
the issue against the komedya, that it retains the old
stereotypes against Muslims by lumping them against the
Eurocentric label of Moors or Moros. In Antique,
however, groups are inspired by one writer, Exaltacion
Villavert Combong. She was a komedya writer who did not
have any problems in crafting a traditional structure to
comment on current concerns. Five works of this
dramatist were always addressing contemporary issues.
The titles of her works tell us how the artist, in
whatever form, triumphs over stasis. Listen to the
currency of such works as Science versus Superstition
and The Triumph of Integration over the Traditional, the
last a reference to a method of teaching introduced in
the mid-1950s.
In 1962,
according to Eileen Sorilla of the University of the
Philippines in the Visayas, the writer responded to the
betting craze known as “Daily Double” by writing her
popular Light versus Gambling. Alex de los Santos, the
creative force behind the Binirayan Foundation, recalls
this and more. The person he refers to as Lola Exal was
more than a komedya artist. She was an artist who made
herself relevant in times that were difficult and in a
political climate that is still looking for a more
reliable calm after so many storms.
When
scholars, especially those based in Manila, talk about
the komedya, the discussion is usually academic. Dr.
Cecille Locsin Nava has the word for it: komedya as a
heuristic tool, a means to talk about the quotidian and
the bracketed lives in a particular place. The noted
scholar of Ilonggo theater and literature also poses the
question about the continuing popularity of the komedya.
Why indeed does it persist? Dr. Nava proposes the answer
(which remains a question): The komedya persists because
the sociopolitical conditions in which it was founded
have remained the same.
Interestingly enough, Antique Gov. Sally Zaldivar-Perez,
who refers to the living tradition of komedya in several
towns in Antique (Barbaza, Laua-an, San Jose [the
capital], Hamtic and Valderrama), talks about the use of
the “arts to heal the affliction and divisiveness that
have plagued our province for so long a time.” The
governor is also the chairman of the Binirayan
Foundation. Her interest in the arts and culture and
history is enviable. She sits through academic
conferences and responds on the spot in support of the
group. At the other end is de los Santos, scholar and
poet, who, it appears, has the capacity to talk with
other scholars and experts and authorities on the one
hand, and with local informants and cultural workers on
the other.
If there
is one area we lack confidence about, it is in naming
and celebrating the presence of living traditions.
Confidence seems not be a problem in this province. De
los Santos and the Binirayan Foundation must have found
the key to the concept and practice of living
traditions. In this province, it is refreshing to hear
an artist described as a komedya artist. This dynamics
extends even to the memorialization of certain rituals
and historical events. Already, de los Santos has taken
out of the Maragtas Code and the story of the Ten
Bornean Datus, the mystically attractive figure of Datu
Lubay, supposedly the effeminate datu in that group of
intrepid rulers sailing across the Sulu Sea. To Datu
Lubay is ascribed the weaving skills of the land.
Flamboyant and controversial, Datu Lubay is always ready
to trigger discussion, which is good.
Antique
at present has a well-developed patadyong industry. The
local government has yet to work on integrating it to
the national textile development and trading. But for
the moment, the weaving industry is one more source of
identity for this group of people.
Why this
desire—creative and urgently political—to bracket itself
against all other groups on the
Panay Island?
That Sunday afternoon, we were honored to sit as judges
for the Ati-Malay Competition. It is a variation of the
street-dance competition that is happening all over the
island. For Antique, the competition is built around the
depiction of an identity through dance theater. Products
and natural resources figure in the presentations.
Choreographies range from flamboyant to that with the
pseudo-ethnic veneer of Manila-based television. De los
Santos bristles at how local choreographers manage to
ruin a good dance theater by infusing dances that belong
to girlie bars. He is keen in developing aesthetics that
he feels the local dancers are capable of. Beneath his
funny irreverence, de los Santos is really talking about
how to teach people about themselves.
Dr. Nava
talks of how the Antiqueños always suffered in terms of
stereotypes and classification created about them by the
more well-placed Negrenses and those societies on the
Panay Island.
The rituals owned and evolving under the strong creative
hands of Antiqueños are their way of “shoring up the
pride” that is always threatened, to use the words of
Dr. Nava.
In that
phantom world of rituals, where everything is possible,
Antique is one possible source of a national template
for cultural awareness and identity. It has only to use
the myths properly—and decisively. |
