CERVANTES. Well-deserved recognition.
We’re so happy that our dear friend and colleague, Behn Cervantes, will be honored, along with other awardees, by the UP Alumni Association with its prized Lifetime Achievement award in appropriately significant rites on June 22.
We hope that this well-deserved honor will make Behn realize that many people are grateful for his lifetime of distinguished service as inspirational teacher, actor, director and all-around theater artist.
To start with, Behn should be credited for having been a standout actor in pioneering works mounted at UP and elsewhere by visionary directors like Freddie Guerrero.
His memorable portrayals through the years include “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” and his exceptional singing and acting performance in the title role in “The Mikado” at the Metropolitan Theater, a portrayal that was so luminously exceptional that we remember it to this day.
As director, he taught us a lot when we acted for him in numerous productions, including “Guys and Dolls,” “The Short, Short Life of Citizen Juan,” “Iskolar ng Bayan,” and several play readings in which we were privileged to act with the dynamic likes of Winnie Monsod.
Memorable portrayal
We later tried to return the favor when we directed him in the musical, “Cabaret,” with Ric Segreto and Cynthia Patag, where he came up with another memorable portrayal. —Behn really is to the musical manner born!
But, of all his many achievements, we should be grateful to Behn for the courage and pioneering creativity he showed when he led the activist theater movement, right after the First Quarter Storm at UP in the early ’70s, and throughout the dangerous martial law years.
Some people have thoughtlessly chosen to forget Behn’s major contributions in this regard, and we are deeply incensed at this. It took real courage and vision (he was incarcerated several times), and we should immediately make up for our blithe and callous forgetfulness, starting with Behn’s UP honor this month.
Behn’s activist theater pieces were a major contribution, because his daring productions fanned the flames of the country’s struggle for freedom during the darkest period in the nation’s postwar history.
Aside from his professional impact on us and other theater people, we value Behn’s deeply loyal yet exhilaratingly “fun” friendship. In addition, he’s gone out of his way to introduce us to other outstanding people who’ve also become our valuable friends, and further enriched our life in their own way.
Contributions
It’s an understatement to say that Behn’s Lifetime Achievement Award from UP is long overdue, as are other honors hopefully to deservedly come soon from the Cultural Center, NCAA and other institutions—!
Now is the time for us to express our thanks, albeit belatedly, for Behn’s many selfless and visionary contributions, which have sometimes been shunted aside to favor a number of notoriously lesser lights.
Aside from his major achievements in theater, Behn will always be remembered for his film, “Sakada,” about the tragic travails of sugarcane “slaves” in the south.
It was banned because it told the bittersweet truth, but the powerful film should be restored to its former crispness and clarity, for the next generation to benefit from. By all means, honor Behn with lifetime achievement and other well-deserved awards, but also make sure that, like him, his best works are not forgotten!