http://www.LivingInthePhilippines.comis theORIGINAL, firstPhilippines Expat site on the Net, since 1989. This is not one of many knock-offs, copycats, imitations. Some have permutations of the names,misspellings and "in" and "the" or "ing." left off to deceive you. This is the original, by: Don A. Herrington
Quo Vadis
San Miguel Comedia? (By Christine F. Godinez-Ortega)
Being forced into retirement
after nine years due primarily to lack of financial
support from the community, will the San Miguel
Comedya (play of San Miguel, originally called
Yawa-yawa or devil-devil) survive well into the next
millennium? Academics who were in the Iligan City
National High School (ICNHS) auditorium on September
26, 1996 to watch the revival and the only
performance of the San Miguel Comedya couldn't help
but ask the question. Some also took note of the
deeper meaning into the comedya and what values this
theatrical form carries for the Iliganon.
Out of curiosity at how the comedya will turn out
that night was good reason enough to rush through
dinner with friends, Ricky de Ungria, Bobby Timonera,
Tony Tan and Nancy Carvajal. We all wanted to be on
time for the comedya's revival three days before
Iligan City celebrated Michaelmas honor of its
patron saint, St. Michael the Archangel on September
29.
Today, and for many reasons, it barely survives
elsewhere in the country. For instance, Dr. Erlinda
Kintanar Alburo, director of the Cebuano Studies
Center, said that the comedya, popularly called "linambay"
in her hometown Carcar, Cebu, stopped being
performed in the early '70s. She attributes the
death of the "linambay" to the diminishing
landlord-tenant relationship, thus not fulfilling
the play's original function anymore.
Many stories abound about the origins of the San
Miguel Comedya and many descendants of claimants to
the authorship of the original script. But there are
no extant documents to set the records straight.
The San Miguel Comedya was reportedly first staged
around 1900 in Iligan, 263 years after the first
moro-moro was believed to have been staged in Manila
1637 to celebrate the defeat of Sultan Kudarat by
Spanish conquistadores led by Hurtado de Corcuera.
For 300 years of Spanish colonization, the Spaniards
saw the powerful influence of theater proselytizing
or propagating Christianity.
Dr. Resil B. Mojares in his book, Theater in Society
and Society in Theater, discusses the significance
of the comedya or linambay in Carcar, Cebu as a
highlight of fiesta activities, the fiesta being a
"manifestation of the esprit de crops of the town or
barrio," as well as the fiesta becoming "a point of
collective pride to hold a 'good' celebration."
Majores likewise explores the rationale behind the
stage of the moro-moro and said that this drama form
must have evolved from a marriage of pre-Hispanic,
native rituals and the European play.
Dr. Nicanor G. Tiongson, in his essay on the
"Spanish Colonial Tradition" in Vol.7 of the CCP
Encyclopedia on the Philippine Art, says that there
are two types of comedyas. The komedya de santo,
which the San Miguel Comedya like the "moro-moro," "kumidya,"
"linambay," "miniris," etc., bring home the point
that the Spaniards representing the Europeans or
Christians are superior to the Moors or the
non-Christians.
The Iligan comedya's revival this years can be
credited to Ricardo Flores (production coordinator),
Jose Gaite (director) Felipe Padilla (musical
consultant) and Julian Zalsos (Lusbel), members of
the Lumad Kaliwat Iliganon (lukai); the executive
assistant to the Iligan City mayor, Francisco A.
Cruz (in charge of production), as well as the
determination of 44 members of the cast.
Must we acknowledge the sad fact that the comedya,
part of our Spanish Colonial heritage, has become
just an appendage to other fiesta festivities?
In this high-tech age, new forms of non-religious
entertainment like the street dancing and
merrymaking in Iligan called "kasadya," the "Wara-Wara
sa kadalanan"; the Ms. Ilagan beauty pageant, as
well as the various sports and cultural activities
during the Iligan City fiesta celebration, naturally
eclipsed the revival of the San Miguel Comedya this
year after a nine-year hiatus.
In the past, the San Miguel Comedya was performed
alternately at the plaza, the churchyard of the San
Miguel Cathedral or the city auditorium for three or
more days culminating on the eve of Michaelmas.
The present administration headed by Mayor Alejo A.
Yañez, a decendant of one the original families that
staged the comedya as an individual or family "panaad"
or promise, pushed for its revival with P25,000 for
props, a few additional costumes for the "devils"
and for the stage backdrop at the ICNHS Auditorium.
The amount appropriated for this year's staging of
the comedya is considered measly by some people.
Production expenses with a cast of 44 could cost
from P70,000 to P100,000 without paying the players
any honoraria since mounting the comedya is their "panaad."
Majores, in his study, pointed out that in the 1919
staging of Orondates, the costumes must have cost
about P1,000 which was equivalent to 100 cavans of
rice, enough to feed a family of six for five years.
Today, the San Miguel Comedya was shown for free as
is the tradition. This kind of instence on free
admission could correspond to keeping the
traditional form intact despite the changing times
and the empirical world of today's generation. At
one time, the Mendoza family, originally from San
Miguel, Bulacan, bankrolled the San Miguel Comedya's
Production in the 1960s. It is therefore of outmost
significance that the community support the staging
of the comedya otherwise, like other art forms, it
will eventually disappear.
Its re-staging of the three-act play about the
rebellion of Lucifer (Lusbel) againts God and St.
Michael's triumph gathered a crowd composed of the
players' relatives, Iligan's culturati and their
children, music professors, Frankie Englis and Dr.
Precy Magdamo Abraham and her pyschologist husband
(who took time off from their teaching job at
Silliman University in Dumaguete City just to watch
the comedya), Mita Lluch Cruz, Benny Badelles and
the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Outreach and
Exchange Program documentation team. Throughout the
play, vendors went about their business reminiscent
of the staging of the zarzuela or moro-moro of old.
If one is not familiar with the conventions of
watching the comedya, one can really get impatient
and bored with the drawn-out stage movements in the
innumerable, prolonged entrance and exits, the
actors strutting to the strains of the marcha music,
taking eternity at their designed places on stage:
right stage for the angles or the good guys and left
stage for the devils or the bad guys. Lighting, too,
left much to be desired since it was simply
on-off-on washes.
While the gestures were clearly theatrical, we could
not make out much of the dialigue. Most of the time
the dialogue of the characters was prosaic and
colloquial even for the main characters, San Miguel
and Lusbel, which should have been in verse and
elevated as dictated by tradition. It would have
helped if the San Miguel Comedya's script was made
available to scholars which, as claimed in the
playbill, has been improved by Joaquin Echaves and
Ramon Padilla in 1936.
During the performance, poor acoustics was
irritating, you just had to fill in the gaps by
relying on what you learned in catechism or by
recalling your college nightmare, John Milton's
Paradise Lost.
Of course, it was not surprising if the devils
upstaged the angels. The devils with their
nightmarish makeup over angelic expressions, got
more lusty cheers from the audience than the
serious-looking angels with their painted wings of
plywood and some branded swords shaped like the
Maranao kris. The rest of the komedya players often
went about their places in a bewildering manner with
the prompters bothering everyone. Most amusing was
the medieval backdrop of hell and the use of smoke,
bereft of any magical effect as intended, to herald
the entrance of either a seraphim, an archangel, a
spirit or the devil, the difference could be seen
only after the smoke cleared. Scene-stealing
particularly by the rowdy, pot-bellied devils and
Julian Zalsos, who played Lusbel, was the order of
the day.
Colorful costumes long month-balled were a delight
to the eyes throughout the two-and-a-half
performance. This shortening of the comedya
introduced because people can no longer sit through
comedya performances that would last for as long as
10 hours. The seven-headed monster representing the
seven capital sins and a vital prop to the comedya
failed to materialize that night.
The surprise elements in the play were the
intermission number consisting of the "eskrima," a
part of the Sinulog, and the "diyandi," an Iligan
creative dance which is really a pact between
Maranaos and Higaunons in their homage to San
Miguel. The "eskrima" and the "diyandi" are not part
of the comedya.
One can be distressed no end if one brings in his
pre-conceived notion of theater that is Western or
Hollywoodish. Indeed, appreciation of the comedya
has to be taken in the context of what is and its
original purpose. This, of course, needs to be
explained to the present generation who is
constantly shaped by the aesthetics of MTV.
Can the komedya survive when in the other places in
the country it has already been forgotten?
Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of
Technology Humanities professor and theaterman,
Steven Patrick C. Fernandez believes the komedya
still fulfills man's spiritual needs especially when
his economic or health needs wanting.
But his prediction as the how long the comedya will
last is grim. Give it 20 years, Fernandez said,
unless the government takes over in staging it for
tourism purposes; otherwise the comedya will just
fade away. Culture is dynamic and should always be
contemporary, he emphasized.
A solution to keep the comedya alive is to form a
core group composed of the young, Fernandez said.
Fernandez, who studied the comedya and the Iligan
sinulog extensively for his master's thesis at the
U.P Diliman, opposes any changes that some Iliganons
want to impose on the comedya to make it more
acceptable to present-day audiences.
"If changes in blocking and other movements are
done, then it will not be comedya anymore but just
entertainment," Fernandez said.
Majares (in the telephone interview at this home in
Cebu City) agrees that the comedya can continue if
it satisfies the need, for the Iliganon to keep his
identity or uniqueness.
For his part and fresh from a second trip to Europe,
Fernandez believes that compared to the Europeans,
Filipinos have a weak cultural base and are
constantly bombarded by "pop media". But he proudly
pointed out that the Philippines has more diversity
in its culture compared to the Europeans.
He talked lengthily about how each town in Europe
has a folkloric group initiated by families that
showcase a country's own culture and promote
regional pride. He said that these groups are
supported by their governments.
"It's a matter of empowering the people by creating
a consciousness about discovering and popularizing
culture," Fernandez adds. He cites the renovation of
the Globe Theater where Shakespeare's plays are
shown, among other things, "to know what is like
during Shakespeare's time.
Although he is cautious of the "pop media" like the
radio, TV and the komiks, he still thinks they can
play a strong role in promoting our own culture.
Revival of the Iligan's San Miguel Comedya this year
is good sign because the religious fervor of the
members of the cast has again been awakened to
manifest their "panaad." But for how long?
If proselytization was the first intention of those
who wrote the script of the comedya, then the
philosophical dialogue and intense debate between
angels and devils reminded the audience that in
whatever time or age, good always triumphs over
evil.
But this superficial meaning of the comedya.
Fernandez believes that the San Miguel Comedya is
ethnocentric in the sense that, By implication, only
the Iliganons or Christians as represented by San
Miguel and his coterie of angels can be saved and
are therefore superior to other ethnic groups such
as the Higaunons or the Maranaos.
In fact, only lumad Iliganons can take part in the
play, an unconscious way of showing superiority over
migrants, or, say, the Higaunon who may not be
technically advanced but whose heritage of oral
literature and wide-range of gods and philosophy
show a culture superior to that of the lowlander,
Christianized Iliganon who had been supported by the
Spanish and American colonizers.
Majores also expressed surprise over this instance
on "lumad" players for the San Miguel Comedya
against the demography of Iligan being a melting
pot. "To lay a claim on a local identity that is
fictive is understandable but ironic," he said.
The San Miguel Comedya supported by a fulfilling the
needs of the community can go on for generations.
Its central figure, St. Michael the Archangle could
become a rallying point to the Christian, Muslims
and Lumad groups in Iligan. Both the Christians and
Muslims consider St. Michael their Archangel, and
the Lumad Higaunons pay homage to the saint and
fondly call him Li Gandingan.
*From Ani, 1997, a publication of the Cultural
Center of the Philippines
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