Living on the edge

"Is fringe theater a big thing as well in the Philippines?" asked Guy Feldman, the Israeli embassy’s deputy chief of mission. A culture buff, he had brought to Manila this week a troupe to perform Anthology–a legend in Israeli avante-garde theater with a cast of two and crew of one–and was anxious how it would hit Filipino audiences.

"Here everything is fringe," replied Cultural Center president Nestor Jardin. The wry remark must be a frustration with local theater’s wealth of talent but dearth of cash to do as many plays as they would want.

Eavesdropping on the exchange, I remembered how a few years back Filipino artists were agog that Broadway-hit Miss Saigon would be staged in Manila but at the same time aghast that it could suck up the country’s entire theater budget for that year and probably even the next. I remembered too my old campus theater group Samapil’s own fringe presentations, which we alternately called at the time "street plays" or "improvisation theater" because we literally staged them in the streets and improvised on props, lights and sound which I usually handled. And I remembered The STAR’s Doreen Yu enthusiasm in bringing artists to mudslide-devastated Real and Infanta, Quezon, to encourage orphaned, homeless children to act out their hurts as therapy.

Border, periphery, edge. Fringe is a relatively new form of alternative theater in Israel. Staged in small venues, the audience is drawn into the performance by the intimacy of the experience. Walls are broken down and boundaries done away with, for in fringe theater there are no rules. The passion of the artists grabs hold of you, compelling you to join them in laughter or tears. In the land of milk and honey, where equitable wealth distribution guarantees everyone a good seat in fine theaters, fringe plays can strike the audience as extreme.

It has the same effect on Filipinos, even if everything here is fringe and thus prone to make audiences blasé. The ’70s-’80s shows of Cecile Guidote Alvarez’s PETA were fringe; one of the most memorable for me was Macliing Dulag, for it was when I introduced my young daughter and her cousins to theater, and they’ve been hooked since. More recently, Bart Guingona’s Actors-Actors Inc. plays too, like Art and Oleana, were fringe. Even Atlantis’s big production Rocky Horror Show started as fringe in New York bars.

Come to think of it, fringe has been with us since pre-Spanish times. Analyzing the structure of folk tales and ditties in the many Philippine languages – Tagalog, Ilocano, Bicolano, Ilonggo, Bisaya, Tausog, Yakan, Gaddang, Ibanag, Kiniray-a, Tagbanua, Subanon, among 75 of them – anthropologists have concluded that these originally were composed to be performed for education. In the olden days, children would gather round the campfire to be regaled by the best fisherman, hunter or warrior of the tribe with exploits and craft techniques. It had to be in some form of verse and song and riveting tale to keep the apprentices’ attention. For good measure perhaps, the performer would pull a lad from the audience to join him in acting out the catch, the hunt, the battle. Perhaps too, that was why Christianized audiences ages later would join the cast in reenacting Biblical street plays like the Senakulo (Christ’s Passion and Death), Panunuluyan (Nativity), Salubong (Resurrection), and the Holy Week-long Moriones. Do not the crazed Herod or blinded Longinus characters in such plays strike fear in the hearts of children as they chase them down dusty barrio roads?

Fringe theater thus stands out not so much for its Spartan venue or props or costumes, but for the message it seeks to deliver. And the message of the Acco Theater Group’s Anthology is one of the strongest that an Israeli or any humanist would want to convey: the effect of the Holocaust on its survivors and their descendants.

Anthology is the story of Zelma Greenwald (played here by Smadar Yaaron), who lived through the horrors of concentration camp. Her tale unfolds with the aide of a piano; singing to her own accompaniment helps her untangle the jumble of emotions. The audience are her guests, seated in her living room and partaking of cognac, as she unburdens through song the trials and triumphs and even the trivialities of her race, at times sniping at Allies and Axis powers who did nothing while the Nazis went about for 12 years butchering six million of them.

Zelma worriedly is waiting for her neurotic son Menache (played by Moni Josef) to come home from play, yet he is all of 47 years old. Menache’s neurosis makes his a free character – free to poke fun at the Israeli embassy hosts and the audience that included diplomats from other lands, even ex-Allies and ex-Axis, and to utter the most hilarious politically incorrect lines. The neurosis also allows him to spell out the fears and pains of present-day Israelis, who feel surrounded still by enemies out to exterminate them.

The crew, who handles lights and props by serving as a waiter, is actor Pirs Rava, an Arab Israeli from Accu, a city 120 km north of Tel Aviv where 40,000 Jews and 20,000 Arabs live in harmony.

It’s a pity that Anthology ran for only one night in Manila and another in Cebu. But I’m proud to have played a role somehow, not just as one of Zelma’s guests sipping Fundador on play day, but as a source shanghaied by Smadar, Moni and Pirs the night before from Ambassador Yehoshua Sagi’s residence to their hotel. They needed to inject local flavor to Anthology and had me brief them on current Philippine events and what makes Filipinos tick. I mentioned sex, religion and music. What made them sit up and take down notes was my mention of the Filipino Diaspora, a Hebrew term I believe, but referring to 7.5 million of our countrymen scattered outside our islands to toil. I wonder if our OFWs have occasion for fringe theater about their life and times.

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