At Play at the Dinner Table

Among many other things, your grandfather was an amateur actor when he was young.  So far as I can recall from snippets he recounted at the dinner table, he was stung by the acting bug in his adolescence, his first foray into this medium being thru the Moro-Moro, the traditional re-enactment of St. Helena’s quest for the True Cross which used to be staged during Holy Week.  A full-length production would require one week to stage and featured dialogue sung in verse, colorful costumes and an abundance of sword-and-dagger combats performed to a lively tune provided by a small band.  What role he played I can’t exactly remember, but he once recounted being hit for real by his supposed opponent in one crucial fight scene.  He recalled his teary-eyed adolescent self, valiantly sticking to his allotted lines and eschewing the rain of colorful language with which he was, in his lifetime, known to pepper his speech when agitated.

In college, he was active in the theater group of the University of Nueva Caceres (UNC) which staged plays by Shakespeare, Chekov and Rostand, among others.  Although good-looking, he said their Director usually cast him in character roles after auditioning for the leading man parts.  He was Luka, Elena Ivanovna Popova’s aged footman in Chekov’s “The Boor” and played Shylock in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”.  The only surviving mementos of this youthful pursuit, though, is a picture taken of the cast of Rostand’s “The Romancers” where he essayed the part of the scoundrel-for-pay, Straforel.

Quite incidentally, “The Romancers” is one of those plays I enjoyed reading as a young boy from a thick brown literature tome lying about in our old house.  I don’t remember the title of the collection as its spine was already cracked and the cloth covering faded and frayed from age.  “The Romancers” is a comedy about Percinet and Sylvette, a young couple who, imagining themselves star-crossed in the grand manner of Romeo and Juliet, were totally unaware that their fathers favored their eventual union.  To humor their children’s romantic sensibilities, the fathers pretend to hate each other and hire the rake, Straforel, for a fake abduction.  While all, needless to state, ends well in the play, surprising my father with familiarity of the play he was talking about was one of those small but proud moments for both of us, I think.

Your grandfather’s abiding interest in the theater is evident from a couple of drafts of plays I found among his effects.  Written in pencil and often revised in his distinctive, angular longhand, they were abandoned as, I imagine, the business of daily life took over.  He did write “Kasaysayan Kan Kampana Sa Pamuntugan”, a four-act pageant in the Bicol vernacular about the legend of the golden bell of Pamuntugan, a tale dear to the Buhi-non heart I have  earlier tried retelling on this blog.  With him as narrator, the pageant was staged by the Good Shepherd Sisters of St. Bridget’s School in the early 70’s at our Hometown’s Social Hall.  Featuring elaborate dances and tableaux performed by Bridgetines and members of a local farm cooperative, the production was, after months of preparation, quite well-received.

Of his children, only my sister Eva showed interest in acting when she was in High School, playing the title character in “Daragang Magayon”, an avant garde take on the legendary maiden from whose grave supposedly rose Mt. Mayon.  Her search for her lover, Ulap, bookmarks three stories - that of a relationship torn asunder by patriotic duty, a woman's resolve to turn a new leaf mocked by her old, sordid self and a third one I can't quite remember.  If memory serves, Daragang Magayon is later tried by a tribunal and sentenced for, among others, irrelevance.

I also pursued some interest in the theater when I was in College and had a part in the formation of the Teatro Dumalayan at the College of Arts and Sciences of the Bicol University.   Despite attending a workshop facilitated by a PETA veteran, I was, however, a big ham even then, appropriately consigned to such behind-the-scenes’ concerns like publicity and production design.  Worse thespian fate befell Tingting, though, in a college classroom re-enactment of the short story "How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife".  I still remember her hysterical laughter when she asked me to guess her role which, at first try, I correctly identified to be that of the carabao.

We may not have much by way of material things when we were growing up – I used to tell my friends – but we sure had bits of Shakespeare at the dinner table, courtesy of your grandfather. Try to think of him when you or children start developing interest in the theater.   It’s his birthday today, so I thought I should write you about these memories.