THEATRICS AND AGEING PAPERS

THEATRICS AND AGEING PAPERS By Wilhelmina S. Orozco

When I was in college, we used to prepare for theatrical productions of classic plays that require us to age sets, costumes, and faces. Our play director wanted us to show the passage of time in the way we constructed sets and the sewed the costumes. Ageing the sets meant, pasting tissue paper on canvases and allowing wrinkles in them to show, then painting them. Through proper lighting from the sides, the wrinkles would show appearing as if the wall had cracks, a sign of ageing. Our costumes meanwhile should not look ironed but crumpled due to use depending on the scene of course. Then when ageing characters through make-up, we were told to draw lines to where wrinkles would first show like the sides of the mouth, the eyes, and the forehead. “Daya” we called it then. “Paanong dadayain ang audience para maniwala silang ang tahanan ng mga gumaganap ay luma na, ang mga damit nila ay matagal na nilang ginagamit, at ang mga tauhan ay tunay na matanda na?” We enjoyed that very much – the make-believe stories we wove on stage. However, when we enter the legal world, we know that “daya” is not possible at all. We have to be truthful all the time. We cannot manufacture papers and say these are valid, authentic and legal. We have to show the markings – the receipt of the office concerned, the filled up spaces, etcetera. Actually, I was intrigued by the goings-on in the impeachment case yesterday, when the papers re Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) of the Chief Justice became the center of attention. The SALN is supposed to show once and for all if the declarations of the CJ match the number of properties he had acquired. Senator Jinggoy Estrada pointed out some discrepancies in the papers submitted to the Supreme Court in terms of receipt. Some bore machine-made dates while others were handwritten, not in sequential order. We would expect the earlier dates to bear handwritten dates and machine-made later. But no, the former showed in between of the latter. Why so? I would go further to question – how old are the papers? If these are original, can the experts tell us how old were the inks used? In this day and age of technologies, we should be able to come up with techniques already to show proof of the age of papers, the age of writings in order to authenticate them. This is what archaeologists do to establish the date of fossils and relics they find. There is no reason not to use the same now if we are to establish the assertion that there has public malversation of funds. I think we were not so active during the first impeachment that happened in 2000 because we were so dazed by the speed of the proceedings and the tilting of Catholic forces with the Edsa crowd. By the way, I reiterate: that was no People Power at all.