Puppets perform senakulo for kids

MANILA, Philippines - A children’s version of the “Passion of the Christ” will be staged today at Teacher’s Village in Quezon City by Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas, the pioneer children’s theater and puppetry group in the country.

Papet Pasyon, which has been staged every year since 1985, will highlight the incidents from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, Mulat manager Amihan Bonifacio-Ramolete told The STAR.

“We want to introduce to the children the life of Jesus through puppetry. Children are generally attracted to the puppets,” she added.

Ramolete, who also chairs the UP Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, said Papet Pasyon limits the violent content and the gore to make the performance child-friendly.

“But they will get introduced to what happened,” she said, adding that even adults who watched their performances in the past have appreciated the play.

“We have a child who is narrating, telling the audience what is happening,” said Ramolete.

The play, which is open to the public for free, is at 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. at the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Papet Teatro-Museo.

Mulat founder and artistic director Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio wrote Papet Pasyon, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, in 1985.

Bonifacio – known as the grand dame of children’s theater in Southeast Asia – wrote the play out of disappointment after missing a performance of a live passion play, performed once every 10 years in Oberammergau, Germany in 1980.

“To create the right atmosphere for writing, she read Philippine pasyon, a children’s bible and the English translation of the Oberammergau passion play. She pored over illustrations and even bought art pieces – a marble sculpture of the Pieta and a reproduction of the crucified Christ,” her daughter Ramolete said in an article for the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

“Papet Pasyon squeezes the most important events into an hour and a half with the help of illuminated screens as backdrops. The shadows in the background move the narrative forward when there is a need to delete the less pertinent features of the passion story,” she added.

In the article, Ramolete noted that an important point in the play is the design of the puppets.

“How were the characters to be portrayed? Like the blond and blue-eyed Spanish images of saints in churches or like Hollywood actors in the biblical-epic movies? Professor Bonifacio rejected these popular images and approved artist Bernadette Solina’s dark skinned and pug-nosed puppets: the first Filipino Jesus and Mary,” she said.

Meditation, spiritual retreats

Meanwhile, Fr. Carlos Evangelista of St. James the Apostle Parish in Iguig town in Cagayan province advised the public to treat religious places such as the Calvary Hills as venues for meditation or spiritual retreats instead of dating or picnic grounds.

He lamented that the place  is being used as dating area and even religious statues and artifacts are being desecrated.

He said Calvary Hills) is “a sacred place for prayer and meditation, not a park or playground nor a dating place.”

Lying along the Cagayan River, the 11-hectare Calvary Hill features concrete life-sized statues of the 14 Stations of the Cross, portraying Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.

The place hosts various centuries-old religious artifacts, including relics of the Church of San Antonio de Galicia.

The other major destinations during the Lenten break in the region are the Miraculous Our Lady of Piat, which the Vatican has declared as Basilica Minore in Piat, Cagayan; Our Lady of Guibang in Gamu, Isabela, Bangan Hill or the so-called Golgotha of the north in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, and the Dariok Hill in Isabela’s Santiago City.

Crucifixion

In Bulacan, at least six devotees are expected to participate in the reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Barangay Kapitangan in Paombong town.

Councilor Myrna Valencia, head of the committee on tourism of the Sangguniang Bayan of Paombong, said they expect at least 100,000 tourists, devotees and pilgrims to visit Sto. Cristo Chapel starting Holy Wednesday.

“It is a tourist destination that needs no promotion because every year, the crowd visiting Kapitangan continue to grow,” she said.

Aside from the crucifixion, there will also be a live performance by Teatro Paombong, which will stage a two-part cenaculo. – With Raymund Catindig, Dino Balabo