Producing a play

Title

Producing a play

Creator

Avellana, Lamberto V.

Identifier

Wanted: an audience

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XIII (No.7) July 1961

Year

1961

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

Wanted: an Audience Producing A Play Lamberto V. Avellana The production of a play involves the contributive coo peration of several creative minds, working, it is assumed, towards one ideal: the crea tion on the stage of a presen tation, in whatever form the creators should prefer, its ar tistic integrity and sincerity of purpose being the only re quirements; a presentation in tended for an audience, view ed, applauded or damned, as the case may be, but viewed by an audience that shall have paid adequately for the right to so applaud or damn. A play that is written but not produced is so much ink on book paper. A play must be brought to life, it must be spoken and acted out. As an aria must be sung, a dance performed, so a play must be seen and heard. This can on ly be done with an audience. And here we come to the bur den of the plaint. In the Philippines we put on plays. But the ratio of our theatre-goers to the total socalled educated, cultured po pulation is embarrassing, in deed. In theatre-conscious centers of the world, the box-office determines whether a play is to stay on the boards for se veral years or the financier should buy himself a rope and a ladder. In the Philippines, reputed ly one of the most advanced and progressive of Far East ern nations, a play that ma nages on honest, no-arms-twisted, no-passes-foisted, and non-subsidized run of three to four evenings is consider ed a success. Why, then, do we produce plays, and for whom do we do it? Plays are presented in schools as part of the stu dents’ education and training; then usually, as graduates, they form themselves into dramatic guilds and venture forth with epic hopes of per manently establishing the long-sought-after Filipino na76 Panorama tional theatre. Tiring of this particular aggrupation, they form further splinter organi zations, and from these sece ding sections more little work shops and little drama socie ties emerge, to pop out in all their glory after two months of rehearsals into one play, three performances and a ge neral walk-out to form still another group. This over-re curring pattern of events can continue and has continued for a long, long time, but we are still without a national theatre, without a single prof essional company, without even a two-by-four building which we could say has been formally erected as a theatre, built at least with an intelli gent understanding of the mi nor theatre requirements such as acoustics, dressing-room partitioning, lights, pit and well, set storage and so on. We have had to put on plays in debating rooms, chapels, churches, gymnasiums, radio broadcasting rooms, com mencement halls, movie hou ses and even cockpits. Philippine theatre stints have utilized traditional, con ventional scenery, or no sce nery at all, arena or in the round, proscenium and frontof-curtain. We have perpetrated mira cles and fiascos with one-act plays, three-act plays, foreign and local; we have done read ings, in costume and without, with lecterns and without; tragedies and farces, in Eng lish and Tagalog; we have done originals and transla tions, from Spanish, French, Roumanian, Mexican. W e have tried everything from Shakespeare to Peralta. But still no Filipino national thea tre. Risking the danger of being accused of over-simpli fying the situation, I would like to state simply: the rea son we do not have a national theatre is, we do not have an audience. And the reason we do not have an audience is not that we do not have directors, playwrights, actors, a theatre, good, bad or indifferent in each case, not simply that the cultural level of the person who has one peso twenty to spend prefers Bentot to Fidel Sicam as an actor, the story of Mahiwagang Mangkukulam to Forsaken House. Or would you like to imagine how many SRO nights Bradford Dillman will rake in against Neil Sedaka on Broadway? Then change the locale to the Araneta Coliseum. A safe bet should be, Sedaka stays a month and Dillman goes home after two days. With one pe so twenty, one can witness a chariot race. With eighty cen Juiy 1961 77 tavos one can sit through three screenings of Susana del Vai weeping out her pan creas. So why watch Nick Agudo behind a beard talking to a dagger? A person is asked to buy a ticket to a play and he will have any number of react ions: who’s in it, what is it all about, for what is it, why for three days only, is there bakbakan or not, and why is it in English, the hall is not air-conditioned, that place! I’ll get bitten by surot, what, no bathing suits, no dancing legs, no one will sing a la El vis — what will they do, just talk and talk? Oh, it’s in Ta galog. That’s different, I de finitely cannot go. I’m Visayan. Besides the only “arena” I know goes into pan de sal. And as for the reading — I took it up in the third grade. The situation is not hope less, of course. But we will need time. Time, as they say, is of the essence. Time to develop an audience to such an extent that it will freely attend the theatre, not because they have relatives in the cast, or because they want to criticize the male lead, but because they sincerely want to see a good play, presented well, by a competent, if not always brilliant, cast, in a reasonably acceptable stage house, with the same willing ness and spirit as they would buy an NCAA ticket, a Clo ver Theatre ticket, watch a TV show or attend a movie. Actually the national thea tre has a larger family than we imagine. Besides plays, we must not forget that thea tre includes: ballet perform ances, concerts, recitals, ope ras, musical comedies, zarzue las. How many nights — of relatively full houses — can the ballet groups command? How many people can we guarantee will attend a ser ious concert by local musi cians? people for four nights (including the gala perform ance) when the audience is mostly composed of exhibitionistic grand dames and so ciety debutantes whose only use for the program is to fan themselves with? Now if a concert or a ballet perform ance can stand for only three to four nights with an au dience, does it mean our mu sicians and ballet performers are inferior artists? Now for the opera. The opera has songs even. How many nights? Four? five, in cluding the tickets that were distributed free so that there would be some human beings to sing to? We have had our Jo vita Fuenteses, and now our Fides Cuyugan-Asencios. How many nights on the 78 Panorama other hand, might have been possible for a Joni James? Let’s push our probing far ther. In the search for theatre audiences let us also inquire how many people go out to look over paintings and attend one-man exhibits, sculpture exhibits. On the other hand, do you want statistics on how many people have gone to the Manila Zoo? I should like to join cause with the poor, benighted in dividuals who have embraced the theatre for the sheer love of it, the hopeful groups who. with their continuous knock ing at the door of people’s consciousness for support of the theatre, are thereby creat ing the ambient, clearing the ground, exerting effort and perspiration, spending hardearned money, at times away from school or office, in the clear wish that some day the apathy will be gone, the bar rier shall have been broken, because, finally, the taste for the theatre has been develop ed. So I say to Dr. Montano, keep on with the Arena Thea tre, do it in English in Manila, translate your play into Iloca no and Hiligaynon, change it over to Ibanag and bring it to the rurals areas and there, show them what a play is and how completely it can be en joyed. I take cause with you because you are helping create an audience. I would say to Jean Edades, carry on with discovering young people who like to stand on the stage and take roles. Make them speak in English well, let them have their training, and be reward ed with the thought that with every person who sees them, applauds them, is an actual addition to that audience that we devoutly wish for. To Pimentel — sure, the Passion Play during Lent; you’ve helped swell that au dience. And now television. Per haps, through television to the theatre. The IL-FGU group, the FEU Dramatic Guild, the Ateneo Players Guild, the drama groups of all schools — all these are helping to build that au dience, the audience we need, which must support the na tional theater, that will pay its way in, so directors can be paid, so actors can be paid, so playwrights can write, not because they have to for a the sis, but because they are good playwrights, know their art, and therefore can collect res pectably for their work. Only then, when people in suffi cient number can support the theatre, may we lay down the yardstick of professionalism against their output. To date, July 1961 79 all societies are amateur groups. I will defend to the last my contention that ma ny of these drama groups are amateur only in the finest sense of the word. I believe we should keep on putting on plays, develop ing talent of all forms; in the writing, in the acting, in the producing ends. People who will develop the taste for the theatre must be constantly exposed to it, in its various forms with dramatic litera ture of the past and present, the classics and the modems, in prose and poetry, so that out of the knowledge and act ual contact with all these, there will be a distillation of our own culture, a flowering of our own dramatic theatre art. Let not Nick Joaquin stop with Portrait. Or Guerrero with his several books. The search for the Filipino theatre form in writing has yet to be consummated. Joaquin has borrowed from the Spanish spirit and written in English. Guerrero has used the truth of the candid camera for his creations, dabbling 'in dark, dark tragedy and caricature in farces. And now Antonio O. Bayot, who seems best to have captured the Filipino manner of thought, who has best in fused his characters with re cognizably Filipino behavior. He, it seems, has not borrow ed from the moderns and the avant gardes on Broadway. He has preferred to write as a Filipino about the Filipinos. Probably, he is, at present, closest to what might even tually be the acceptable form of playwriting for our nation al theatre. Of course a way must be made for the experimenting Peraltas, Morenos and Laperias, and Prolific Florentinos. There must be more. They must come forward, and in their search for their style, they shall be helping the greater cause: the search for an audience. We must encourage our playwrights by giving life to their creations, from the prin ted word to the warmth of the stage. The actors should, under able and consistent tu torship by directors, refine their art, imbibing what me thod, approach or interpreta tion is the distinguishing style of their particular group, and passing this on to others on a truly apprentice ship basis; encourage techni cians who must contribute their own artistry in the ex ecution of creative settings, the handling of lights, the mu sic; we must encourage the members of the sales staff to effect measures to make the box-office effective and live Panorama ly; we should continue to pre sent school plays; more and more groups should be form ed so that in the variety of methods and madnesses, a truly Filipino theatre will emerge. The Filipino national thea tre is not just a building. It is not just a Tagalog play. It is not just a set of playwrights necessarily writing about the nipa hut and slums of Tondo, English plays, Tagalog plays — there should be no discus sion here. We should have them all, to develop that awareness in the average in dividual. Theater-aware individuals will constitute the theatre au dience. And that audience, by the power of the box-office, will determine the course and nature of the Filipino theatre. That audience, that paying audience, will demand profes sionalism. It is my belief that the amateurs will not bp found wanting. * * * DEDICATION The visitor to the poet’s wife expressed her sur prise that the man of genius had failed to dedi cate any one of his volumes to the said wife. Whereupon, said wife became flustered, and dec lared tartly: “I never thought of that. As soon as you are gone, I’ll look through all his books, and if that’s so, I never will forgive him!” * * * DEFINITION The schoolboy, after profound thought, wrote this definition of the word “spine,” at his tea cher’s request. “A spine is a long, limber bone. You head sets on one end and you set on the other.” July 1961 81

pages

76+

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