When dealing with the life of a super hero like Rizal, how should a play look like? Should it inspire the audience by highlighting his works, or should it comment on how irrelevant his ideas are now considering the people’s lives and how they have been shaped by socio-political events? Would it heal anxieties about life in this world or would it be a detoxifier of all its impurities?
I watched Rizal X at UP Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theatre and found a spectacular play that oozed with that highly energetic chutzpah but at times, anger of the youth which sad to say only briefly touched on the life of Rizal. Dulaang UP, a university theatre organization produced, while Derek Santos directed it, with financing coming from the cultural funds of the State University, among others.
The play was similar to an essay, skipping and hopping from one topic or issue to another. Its structure is reversible and convertible from any part, and its ending could be the beginning or vice-versa. It was also episodic, featuring scenes and slices of lives of gangters at Monumento circle, the plight of overseas Filipino workers – nurses, entertainers, construction workers – as well as teachers and students. It commented on the lack of values of the youth, and the discouraging state of love relationships turning into pragmatic liaisons among the OFWs.
Sad to say, Rizal’s life became footnotes or scene breakers, except for the Rikepedia which rattled off the events in his brief stay on earth.
Rizal X had a huge cast, twenty plus composed of students and some faculty members of the UP Speech and Drama providing technical support. The show was replete with action after action with singing, dancing, gyrating, screaming, hugging, kissing and oh, yes, killing but not so gruesome, all occurring in that small stage of the theatre which could be about 20 feet by 10 feet?
What is memorable was the lighting of the play which at one point had lasers streaking across the audience and reaching up to the wall at the back probably the latest lighting technologies in the country. These were truly appropriate to the hyper treatment of the play as the lights danced, circled around and about, moving from the ceiling to the background of the stage and on to the audience. Ohm David, a faculty member and the technical director must have used almost all of his skills to give that play the best exposure. By the way, the program reveals that Ohm was at one time the resident technical director, scenery and lighting designer for Altera Pars Theatre Company in Athens, Greece where he designed for numerous plays and also did the technical direction at a performance of the music group Arpiyes, as well as the 2006 Athens Video Art Festival. Truly he could be deemed that lighting icon of the country.
Well, a musical play needs good microphones. Sad to say, the mikes used here did not deliver clear words and dialogues making it difficult for the audience to understand the lyrics of the songs. I had to refer later to the program for these songs to understand what was being said. Moreover, it was disturbing to see plasters on the faces hiding supposedly the lapel mikes of the actors. I wonder they did not use headphones instead.
Some of the songs, especially the rapping of the life of Rizal were appealing to the taste of the young audience who were mainly high school students of a religious school the audience. Majority seemed mesmerized by the visual effects and all the acrobatic stances of the actors.
Costuming the characters was typical of the youth crowd nowadays. This was what I would call “ewan’ style – typical “patong dito, patong duon” corto, sando, jacket, and what have you.
Nonetheless, actors delivering the songs was a delight to hear as they could hit their notes well and sing in rhythm all throughout. For this, we should commend Janine Santos for musical direction and William Elvin Manzano for the music and lyrics as well as Happy Days Ahead for Musical Arrangement.
Sometimes though, some of the male actors had the tendency to shout their voices hoarse and could not pronounce their vowels well. I had to sit forward to hear what they were singing and get the message.
However, it was a surprise to find that the rock band accompanying the singers were merely up there playing along, too . Initially, I kept wondering where they were as the sounds had been coming from the stage. I could not believe that they could possibly be positioned in such a small stage nor even at the back of it. However, at the end of the show, suddenly they were visible – at the backstage, where a plank had been built up to carry the band. That was truly a skillful way of using the stage to the hilt.
Presenting the lives of heroes on stage is a tall order. Rizal x just skimmed through the life of our hero and concentrated more on the current problems of the country. Although that is laudable, in the end, the question is: will the young audience embrace Rizal as their hero after watching the show? It is difficult to answer in the affirmative because the show tended to focus on the writers, not Rizal per se whose life could have been a veritable source of many scenes in the play – his agricultural Laguna versus European backgrounds; his relationship with his sisters and mother versus the kinds of women he related with abroad, and his marrying Josephine Bracken, a British woman; and his relationship with the revolutionaries and his desire for a peaceful transition of the country from being a colony, among others.
It is true that in the academic we must respect that freedom to let the imagination of the students run the way they want them to run, but still they need guidance on what is writing apropos and in-depth especially about the life of a national hero recognized not only here but internationally as well. We owe that much to the succeeding generations of students, to make them know what is true heroism, what is being a hero or heroine, and to understand, appreciate and respect heroes and heroines who had died for our country.
To paraphrase Seneca, "if people know not what harbor they seek, any wind is the right wind."
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