kultura

notes on Gawad Buhay, democratization, and the anxiety of smallness

this year was the first time i even cared enough to go to Gawad Buhay, and that is really because of a good three things: my love for Tuxqs Rutaquio, my love of Layeta Bucoy, and my new-found discovery of and respect for the kind of hard work that Tanghalang Pilipino’s Actors Company stands for.

which is of course to wear my heart on my sleeve (obvious ba), and really to point at some of my good ol’ biases, the kind that i’ve always had and have never denied having. anyone who was reading my theater reviews from the beginning (i.e., 2009) would know that i had much respect for the work of Rutaquio and Bucoy (as director-playwright tandem), long before i came to know them as people (which was mostly this year). i had also done reviews of the work of AC’s Tadioan long before he even became the monolith of an actor that he has become.

i’d like to think these biases do not diminish my own thoughts about Gawad Buhay’s limitations, which i feel should / can be fixed at this point — democratization is the word i like to use — as a matter of actually and truly being about all of the theater community, and not just the few who are willing to become part of Philstage. yes, Gawad Buhay is not / cannot be a measure of the year that was in Philippine theater. because it is not looking at all of Philippine theater.  (more…)

komentaryo

#YesAllWomen

i had watched the hashtag #YesAllWomen take a life of its own on Twitter, and was fascinated that while it didn’t trend in the Philippines, the tweets from elsewhere in the world (mostly the US it seems) resonated with this Pinay so removed from that context.

i’m the last to imagine universality to be a valid enterprise, imagining as i do that we are always more complex than just being / standing for / standing against one thing. yet it is feminism still — no matter how it is not named such, no matter that it denies this label — that i realize i fall back on, if not go back to. (more…)

radikalchick.lit

for Joelle: how are these days?

i’ve been out of this blog, mostly because i was writing like crazy for most of March and April, and i mean working on four columns a week (!!!) for The Manila Times. and yes it was as crazy it sounds.

i’m glad it’s over. (more…)

radikalchick.lit

Lola Nita, 1923-2014.

“At a certain time of day, between the high heat of noon and the cool afternoon, the streets of Casay have a strange quietness — of a leaf arrested in its fall, or of a vacuum from which air and life have suddenly been drained — a quietness which seems to bide its time. Very infrequently, a car, a truck, or a cart may disturb the stillness, raising brown dust in its trail and sowing screeching echoes into the silence. But a minute after, the dust settles, the noise fades away, and it is quiet again. Even when the wind blows and rustles leaves, sways branches, scatters blossoms, it is still quiet. (more…)

komentaryo

Wishes for the Pinay 2014

Women’s Month always gets me thinking about the women whose lives affect me every day, and I don’t just mean the few women friendships I keep, the ones who have become my younger sisters, the relatives that I grew up with, the nanay who is at the heart of who I am, the teachers whose voices resonate in my head.

The Pinay “other”

I also mean the Pinays I know only through images: those on billboards all perfected by technology, selling every from clothes to whiter armpits, kitchenware to new boobs. Those whose images dictate how women are defined and limited to certain roles. I mean the diverse set of women Senators and government officials who rise to the occasion of the news; or if you’re Miriam Defensor-Santiago (who I am not at all related to), who will actually ask the more difficult questions and assess the more complex assertions.

There too, are the Pinays I am distanced from by class, but who define how I live every day precisely because of this difference. Of workers in factories and malls, of every manang who works the markets, each one who works the underground economy to survive. That woman who takes care of land and family, who takes on more than her husband does; the Overseas Filipina Worker who knows to take on the task of leaving home, if only so home might become better.

This year, a set of wishes for all of us Pinays, given the common conditions we suffer under, and taking cognizance of our differences. (more…)