Far from coming to terms with one’s sexuality, Vladimeir Gonzales’ Ang Paglaladlad, staged by Dulaang Batingaw of Pamantasan ng Cabuyao on February 26, 27, and 28 unveils stories within a story.
First of these is the story of Mananahi (seamstress) who addresses the audiences and philosophizes that all are puppets in a story. With this statement, I made sense of the chorus whose movements and poses were seemingly maneuvered by a puppeteer as they shared the stage with the Mananahi during her long monologue. Clearly, these movements were not just for spectacle, but a theatricalization of a philosophy. Mananahi ends her monologue with the birth of another story.
Ina (mother) shares her story, one that is economic as she sells fabrics for a living. From her own lens, we see the moral landscapes of her three daughters – Panganay (eldest) who privileges her ego, Pangalawa (middle) who manifests her fixation with materialism, and Bunso (youngest) who is obsessed with the affairs of her young age. At the verge of death, Ina asks her children to tell their own stories.
As the eldest, Panganay tells her own. She narrates the story of a daughter who journeys into the underworld in search of the potion that could save her dying mother. The daughter learns from an old woman in a forest that Hari (King) of the dead has the potion in his keeping. She pleads Hari for it and reveals her reason behind. Hari is willing to give the potion in exchange for her soul when she dies. She agrees, but when she gets hold of the potion, she immediately escapes. On her way out, she drinks the potion to save her soul, and in so doing, turns her back against her dying mother.
Pangalawa weaves the story of an alahera (jeweler) who obtains pieces of jewelry fabricated by her alter ego inside the mirror. At the height her popularity and success, alahera is attacked by toothless zombies who reveal that their teeth were stolen from them by her alter ego to make jewelry. They demand that their teeth be replaced. Out of fear, alahera collects insatiably pearls from the sea. She is punished by sea creatures for her greed. She turns into a mermaid to guard the pearls she once stole.
Bunso shares her story of dalagita (young woman) who is ordered by the Queen to look for the finest gift for her King. On her quest, she encounters a bird on different occasions who always tells her “Sa itaas. Sa itaas.” (Up above. Up above). She keeps on looking above but could not find anything for a gift until she suddenly disappears. The palace guards look for her but to no avail. One early morning, the Queen hears her voice telling her to go outside the palace with her King and for them to look above. Outside, they see a flock of beautiful birds hovering. The King is fascinated by what he sees. The Queen tells him that what he is seeing is her gift for him, which he finds to be the perfect gift.
The challenge of staging a play as complex as Ang Paglaladlad lies not just in theatricalizing different stories having their own nuances in terms of plot, characterizations, tempos and moods, and scenery, but as well as the liminalities between the stories. Elmer Rufo was able to respond to this challenge on a positive note as the director of the show. His direction was able to highlight the nuances of every scene, thus providing the audiences with diverse emotional and cognitive experiences. The devices he employed for every scene were not repetitive, but imaginative. His manipulation of the chorus clad in skin-tone costumes and masks was not only impressive, but an effective tool in creating transitions. Worth mentioning was how he was able to suggest changes in scenery within a single set. He did this by using movements, lights, and sounds.
Watching Ang Paglaladlad was part of the collective experience where members of the production, performers, and audiences were players. This experience is a story itself, and inside this story are stories – stories of students, of group of friends, of organizations, of classes, of teachers, of administrators, and of a lot more. Each of these stories will have its own time of unraveling.
