Sitting between contradictions
Who could have expected that inside UPLB’s NCAS auditorium on November 13 and 14 was a stage design that was calming and disturbing, enchanting and repelling, as well as quiet and loud?
The Theater Arts (THEA 102, section XY1) class at the University of the Philippines Los Baños staged Die Inday!, a Filipino adaptation of Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’. Directed by Assistant Professor Elmer Rufo, the production assembles in impressive symmetry draperies, pillars, bed, pillows, shoes, and artificial flowers to form the classy interior of a house. This visual spectacle was made even more appealing with the changing hues of light bathing the stage. No wonder, the audiences were not restraint in taking photos before the show, an overt manifestation of their admiration.
As the play unfolds, the stage, which was calming, enchanting, and quiet at the start, starts to become disturbing, repelling, and loud as the dynamics between the male protagonists Soleng (Odraude Alub) and Claire (Nehemiah Lopez) and their mistress Madam (LJ Lubaton) signify a socio-economic divide. In this light, the stage becomes a space for power and oppression.
Madam exerts power over Soleng and Claire, but she does it surreptitiously. She hides it behind her dignified manners, expressions, and rewards, and the stage design, which covers underneath its whiteness the act of cruelty, serves as a visual symbol of her character. This aspect of the production worthy of respect emanates only from a rich understanding of the text and its powerful signification through the machineries of theater like the stage.
Soleng and Claire fight against oppression. Their tools against power are their queerness, their language, their inventiveness, and the physicality of their actions. I fell in love with them as I am always in love with the fight against oppression.
Rufo’s directorial success in Die Inday could be gauged in creating meanings through juxtaposition of polarities on stage. He assigned ‘blackness’ to the costumes of Soleng and Claire in contrast to the ‘whiteness’ of the room of Madam, and to the ‘redness’ of her gown. The acting of the two was flamboyant while that of Madam was subdued. In terms of use of space, downstage positions were countered by upstage blocking, right by left, clockwise by counterclockwise. All these nuances were performed in dramatizing a narrative teeming with contradictions where I found myself sitting between them.
