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Writer Cid Reyes donates tapes of artist interviews to National Museum

AUTHOR, curator, and art critic Cid Reyes has turned over cassette tapes of conversations with late renowned Filipino visual artists to the National Museum of the Philippines. As part of a museum project, the contents of the tapes are now available on YouTube.

The one-on-one interviews, some from 50 years ago, include conversations with National Artists Victorio Edades, Vicente Manansala, Hernando R. Ocampo, Napoleon Abueva, Arturo Luz, Jose Joya, and Ang Kiukok. Other renowned artists on the tapes are Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Mauro “Malang” Santos, Nena Saguil, Juvenal Sanso, and Pacita Abad.

“Lost Conversations,” an event held on March 7 at the National Museum of Fine Arts, formalized the turnover of the materials. It also marked the launch of ArticulatePH, a YouTube channel dedicated to the preservation of the oral history of Filipino visual art, where some of the digitized interviews have been uploaded for public access.

Mr. Reyes, who previously used many of these tapes as source material for his book Conversations on Philippine Art, published in 1989, told the press at the launch that documentation is just as important as the works themselves.

“I have always expressed my disappointment in having missed conversing with Fernando Amorsolo and Botong Francisco. I was able to talk to Professor Edades and that was really the start of this compilation,” he said.

He also explained that digitizing the interviews and putting them on social media through ArticulatePH is vital, as it is “the instrument for communication, for connecting, where there are interactions and contact with the global.”

“Even though we have what you call written history, written by historians after the fact, oral history which is history being lived at every moment, is history, as we say, straight from the artist’s mouth,” Mr. Reyes explained.

At the sidelines of the launch of “Lost Conversations,” the National Museum’s deputy director-general for museums Jorell Legaspi told BusinessWorld how meticulous the turnover process of the physical cassettes will be.

“It’s important for us to have a sit-down with Cid Reyes because, of course, he was a custodian of these tapes for such a long time. For us to continue that work is a very big responsibility because this is such a treasure trove of information,” Mr. Legaspi said.

He added that the tape’s previous storage conditions will inform the “short-term interventions” that the museum will have to do, under their dedicated conservation lab.

In attendance at the launch were officials from the Museum Foundation of the Philippines and heirs of some of the artists whose voices are on the tapes, such as Khristina Manansala and Diwa Abueva. The two granddaughters of National Artists, who are now artists themselves, praised the ongoing “efforts in preserving history for the future generations.”

The event also coincided with Mr. Edades’ 40^th death anniversary. With this, Mr. Reyes shared an anecdote of going to Davao where Mr. Edades had retired in the 1970s.

“I was sent by my advertising agency to Davao. It was my opportunity. I looked for Professor Edades, not knowing where he lived. I asked a tricycle driver if he knew and, by some miracle, that driver changed the history of Philippine art and said yes!” Mr. Reyes said.

Their conversation that evening lasted six hours, from 6 p.m. until midnight, then Mr. Edades invited him to come back the next day. “So I came back and brought four cassette tapes. That started it all.”

As for the goal of having the recordings uploaded on ArticulatePH, Mr. Reyes said, “I want young artists to realize the real tradition that has been handed down to them. The value of oral history cannot be underestimated.”

The compilation of “Lost Conversations” is now available via https://www.youtube.com/@articulateph. — Brontë H. Lacsamana

How stories reflecting our history evolve over time

By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

Theater Review
Kisapmata
Presented by Tanghalang Pilipino

IN 1981, one of the best Filipino films ever made captured people’s imaginations. Kisapmata, directed by Mike de Leon and co-written with Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. and Raquel Villavicencio, disturbed audiences with its twisted premise of a possessive patriarch unwilling to free his daughter from the tyrannical rule of his household.

Though it was based on a real-life crime story by Nick Joaquin called “The House on Zapote Street,” the film reshaped the narrative into a representation of the then ongoing Marcos dictatorship. This year, theater company Tanghalang Pilipino brings Kisapmata to modern audiences, now upfront in grappling with a history at risk of being forgotten.

Within the first few minutes, playwright Guelan Luarca immediately sets the adaptation apart from all versions that preceded it. It opens with Dely (played by Lhorvie Nuevo), the wife numbed to submission from years of living under the iron fist of her husband, ex-policeman Dadong. In neither the Nick Joaquin story nor the film does her character have a voice, but she does here.

The setting of Zapote Street (described by Joaquin in the original story as a residential area in Makati which was once an empty field of tall grass) provides the atmospheric, eerie overtones of the play. Dely opens with retelling how the area was once a silent overgrowth, now taken over by humans, though the grass (or talahiban) remains in the shadows. The elevated platform where the characters move is backgrounded and surrounded by stalks of this grass — the only design element present on the bare stage.

“Pagmamahal ang batas (Love is the rule),” Dely whispers many times throughout the play. And this so-called love is enforced only by Dadong (played by Jonathan Tadioan) as he abuses his wife and daughter psychologically.

Compared to the film before it, Tanghalang Pilipino’s Kisapmata leans into the ridiculous yet chilling dynamics of the family’s suffocating household.

The story kicks off when the couple’s only daughter, a medical student named Mila (played by Toni Go), reveals that she is pregnant by her boyfriend Noel (played by Marco Viana). The latter, already a doctor, has been helping her study for her medical board exam. The two ask for permission to marry, though Dadong only agrees on the condition that a dowry is paid — and later, that they do not move out of his house.

One of the points of acclaim for the 1981 film was the production design (recognized at the 7^th Metro Manila Film Festival, along with a plethora of major awards), due to the use of the split-level suburban architecture that made the house a perfect instrument for the family’s dysfunctional story. It was also an element described explicitly in Mr. Joaquin’s story, as it was a prevailing style for middle-class families.

The play goes for something completely different. It evokes the rigid rules of the house with a minimalist approach, the square elevated platform the actors move on never changing, no matter where the characters go. Be it indoors, outdoors, the hospital, right at the gate — the four walls of the house are always present.

No other actors appear in its entirety. It is only Mila, Noel, Dadong, and Dely, even if they speak to others on the phone or walk past people in a given scene. No matter where they go or what they do, the house and its unforgiving rules remain. The costumes also evoke this, all of them dressed in beige as if prisoners of their own making.

At the CCP Complex’s Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Kisapmata plays out as a full tragedy, the unease, grace, and defiance in the movements of Toni Go as Mila giving the audience someone to root for. She shines in hopelessness as much as she does in the steadfast attempts to escape the grasp of her father, along with Marco Viana as Noel who gradually becomes desperate to free himself from the household’s intangible prison.

Wholly original, the scenes between mother and daughter are electric, the two women representing separate generations of submission, one who has accepted her doom and another who will fight it to the very end.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Tadioan’s take on the merciless Dadong is trickier to receive by those who’ve watched the film with its enormous performance by Vic Silayan. Tadioan puts his own spin on it, his voice softer and wheezier and his mannerisms more jovial compared to Silayan’s booming presence. But when his quiet, bodily presence is used to full advantage, usually when the character loses his cool, the effect is just as chilling.

The gradual rise of tension and escalation of intimidation tactics used by Dadong carry over strongly to the medium of theater. The anti-Marcos allegory reaches its peak when, in the throes of the character’s physical and sexual abuse of Dely, the screens around the hall flash with news clippings and reels of the oppression suffered during the Marcos dictatorship.

At this point, Nuervo’s haunting, whispery narration and commentary of events is given full context by the horrific beating she endures, similar to that of the Philippines during Martial Law. Creepily, the only props shown in any of the characters’ hands throughout the play are Dadong’s weapons — a gun and a machete — the rest merely pantomimed by the cast, driving home the reality of his rule over them.

The way everything boils over in the end is as impeccably paced as the film and the short story before it. Luarca’s take on Kisapmata also benefits from its tight running time of an hour and a half, with no intermission, leaving the audience barely any time to breathe.

It’s amazing to see a story’s journey from an actual true crime case to a well-written short story by Nick Joaquin, to the horror masterpiece by Mike de Leon, all the way to this gripping theater adaptation by Guelan Luarca. It reminds me of something Ricky Lee once said of the greatest stories in Philippine literature/cinema/theater — palagi iyan manganganak basta’t may dahilan para ikuwento pa rin ang kuwento (it will continue being reborn as long as there is still a reason to tell that story).

Tanghalang Pilipino proves that there are still many reasons to retell Kisapmata today.

Kisapmata runs until March 30 at the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex, Pasay City. It is restricted to audience members 16 years old and above. Regular tickets cost P1,500 while VIP tickets cost P2,000. For more details, visit Tanghalang Pilipino’s social media pages.