Category Archive for: entablado

kultura

Drag Them! The case of Pura Luka Vega, conservatism, and us

When Pura Luka Vega was arrested and detained in late September, one of the dominant reactions was surprise: how can this happen in the Philippines? What happened to creative freedom? How could they get jailed for a case they had no idea had been filed, when they had been going from one city to the next facing persona non grata charges, in full drag, with Instagram documentation, and stories about the openness of these spaces to seeing them and their artistry?

But the curse of the Philippine present is that we are reaping the outcomes of our refusal to have the more difficult, because complex conversations about arts and culture, much of which is not simply about data and history, but about fleshing these out, tearing these apart, so that we know better the state of discourse, freedom, and creative work in the present. At the very least, we need these conversations so that we might be reminded that our freedoms — including all those enshrined in the Constitution — are never guaranteed.

Especially not when we are talking about artistic freedom. A sense of (recent) history in fact reveals how in the post-Marcos leaderships from Cory to Duterte, censorship was a constant. Sure, not in the Martial Law era kind of way, but in ways that were equally dangerous because insidious and consistent. And yes, there’s the MTRCB and its mere existence as a regulatory board; but there are also the acts of censure, the bannings, the cancellations that are borne of an ever-growing conservatism, one that is bound to the ways in which Catholicism is practiced in these shores, and in the age of online platforms, a predisposition towards simply swinging between black-and-white, right-and-wrong, acceptable-and-unacceptable for the loudest voice, the bigger mob. There is also a constant mistrust of creative work, as there is an insistence that it must serve the purpose of espousing a certain kind of morality, that is about a fixed set of rules, a list of lessons to be learned.

It is for this reason that Pura Luka Vega—their artistic practice and their performance—would never be understood. It is also why they have been victimized by these acts of censure. Because there is nothing simple about drag, and certainly nothing simplistic about the art practice of Pura Luka Vega. But censorship lives off simplicity, the black and white, and in the case of the Philippines, it lives off feelings of offense.

Which is why the better question is not: when did this start happening in this democracy? It is: how has our democracy come to this? How did we come to this point when being offended by something, disagreeing about a specific portrayal, a kind of artistic work, has to mean actions that curtail artistic freedom, from the cancellation of individuals, to campaigns to boycott their work, from online bullying to legal cases filed?

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kultura

On “Mula Sa Buwan” #theaterPH

My bias against foreign theater works staged in the local has grown through the years. The possibilities for original theater work will never be realized if we don’t take the risk of staging it, more deliberately and consistently. On the upside, there is an untapped resource of a handful of people doing really good adaptations of foreign works, old and new, a productive and critical way of taking something distant and different, and making it familiar and relevant in this context. Done well, with a very clear sense of the value of the original, and how it can speak to a wider audience in the here and now, the adaptation cradles a creative spirit that is not only relevant, but can also be very powerful.
 
This is the inevitable context of Mula Sa Buwan, an independent production, being restaged in 2018, now in the context of a theater scene that struggles to deal with a state of the nation that allows little for leisure expenses, even less for theater. After all, when films remain as cheaper alternative and more accessible option, why would you spend on theater?
 
But maybe the question isn’t why, but when. It is when the theater production is originally Filipino, even as it is twice removed from an original, even when the original text seems so far gone from where we are. Mula Sa Buwan is a musical based on Soc Rodrigo’s translation into Filipino of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. What it remains is this: it’s the story of a protagonist who is on the one hand confident in his intellect, but insecure about his looks. Of course this means an unrequited love, as it does mean the ability to love so willingly and humbly, that life and limb don’t matter.
 
It is a love story. And it is no surprise that this is what is sold about this production — it is what will bring audiences in. But what should be said about Mula Sa Buwan is that it is more than that. 
Click here for the rest of this review.

kultura

Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino and the creative spirit

You do not know Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino.

Yet you’ve seen her often on television and in film. She’s that archetype of a mother in the soap opera factory, as she might be the secondary character we forget in that recent rom-com. You might remember her as the mother of Basha in One More Chance, in that one scene where she asks if Basha’s okay, kung kaya pa ba ang heartbreak kay Popoy. She is also the mother of Teptep in Maybe This Time, the one who for most of the film is inexplicably disapproving of her daughter but who breaks apart as mother who forgives and understands and loves.

Of course you are wont to forget her, or imagine her to be the every-actress whose name you do not know, and whose face – when you see her in another film, another TV show – you will remember but can’t quite place. That this is the way the cultural system has created us into audience goes without saying.

That Centenera has an enviable body of work in theater, and holds the reputation of being one of few actors who can breathe life into any role at all, is the ironic twist to this story. And tragically so. (more…)

kultura

The question of Bracken

The premise of Dear And Unhappy is a simple question: what of Josephine Bracken? Rizal’s wife and / or lover, depending on who you believe. Or depending on your internalized racism against the Irish woman our National Hero was enamored with — it is after all why Bracken remains marginalized in narratives about Jose Rizal’s life; it also has arguably spawned multiple texts about Bracken — the less we know about someone the more exciting our stories about her. (more…)

kultura

Political insidiousness, public complicity

Boses ng Masa is deceptively simple and painfully familiar, which is what’s both good and bad about it: the discussion is worth having, but you can see that ending from a mile away.

It’s not that you’ve seen this before, as it is that you have lived it.

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