Pingkian
Directed by Jenny Jamora
Presented by Tanghalang Pilipino
April 12, 3 and 8 p.m.
GSIS Theater, Pasay City

INTENT on meting out revolutionary justice to a traitor to the Katipunan, the man on center stage points a revolver at an erstwhile comrade-in-arms. That same man on center stage is hemmed in from the back by a military officer of the colonial government and a guardia civil, two rifles aimed at his temples.

The man is Emilio Jacinto (played by Vic Robinson), fondly called “Miling” by friends and comrades, and the eponymous figure in Pingkian, Tanghalang Pilipino’s season opener for 2024. That very spot where he stands represents two temporal dimensions: first, a more immediate past when, as general of the revolutionary army, he wielded the power to execute erring members like Florencio Reyes (played by Gab Pangilinan) for being an enemy spy; second, as a prisoner of the Spanish colonial government and a target of summary execution by its military authorities.

The scene captures the play’s premise: the duplicitous nature of the revolutionary project, and the double-edged blades that represent the paradox between noble aspirations for human freedom and the bloodshed necessary to achieve the goal.

Such a premise may be one of the more difficult materials that political theater can handle but Pingkian’s vision is carried out by a well-designed dramatic structure, solid ensemble work powered by rich and vibrant singing, and a production design that made accessible to the audience Emilio Jacinto’s most shining gifts — a prodigious intellect that produced the seminal ideas on secular citizenship, and a literary talent that created the most mellifluous prose known to Katipunan literature (“Sa pag-ibig nunukal ang kinakailangan pagdadamayan at pagkakaisang nagbibigay ng di-maulatang lakas, maging sa pag-aabuluyan at pagtutulungan ng isa’t isa, maging sa pagsasanggalang ng mga banal na matwid ng kalahatan…”1)

The audience gains entry into Emilio Jacinto’s life through that critical moment when he straddled between life and death after an encounter with enemy forces. During those moments facing near death, the most crucial events of his life panned out, compelling him to evaluate the choices he made. Pingkian is built on the eloquence of memory, the two-act play unfolding from the tangled threads of recollection, scene by scene, sliver by sliver.

Elected Kataas-taasang Tagausig (adjudicator) of the Katipunan, Jacinto presided over some infractions of the members of the secret society, some of which involved malversation of funds and the more serious offense of acting as enemy spies. He has always had the trust of Andres Bonifacio, not only because he was an excellent military strategist, but because he had a discerning mind, inclined to reflect on the moral and ethical foundations of waging a revolution. He asked the most difficult questions as they waged a revolution: is social change always predicated on the reformation of the individual whose weaknesses and foibles are inherent, even if they have signed up for the loftiest goal of laying down one’s life for Inang Bayan? Who is the greater enemy: the self or the colonizer?

Emilio Jacinto wielded language to talk about the premises of a revolutionary undertaking, and what it requires of the individual and the collective entities. Throughout the play, Jacinto wore his military uniform, thus conveying his prowess on the battlefield, but more than adequate time was spent on the literature that Jacinto produced. Visual displays created by light, shadow, and illustrated text embody the main protagonist as a writer of the most important prose works of the 1896 revolution which carried the pseudonym of Pingkian. That it was staged in CCP’s black box2, styled as a theater-in-the-round, provided an intimacy with the literary text. You could almost touch and flip the pages that embody the most insightful ideas about human nature and its longing for freedom, and the most ardent lines that valorize the kalooban (the will or spirit), and its immense capacity to give so much to the community and the Motherland.

In the song “Hindi Ito ang Katipunan,” Jacinto laments the demise of organizational unity (“Anong nangyayari sa atin/Hindi iisa ang damdamin/Balangay at sanggunian ay nalalagas sa halip na lumaganap”3). In the same song, he provides an insight: the leaders fail not because they failed to recruit members who will represent the revolutionary ideal. Revolutions fail because its leaders have failed to address the issue of remolding the kalooban (“hindi sa pagsasala ng mga kasapi/kung di sa paghubog/bale wala ang lahat ng ipinaglalaban/kung di natin kayang labanan ang ating sarili…4)

One of the most powerful but arguable contentions in Pingkian was when Jacinto, in a somber moment, sang “Ang tunay na himagsikan/Sa loob nagsisimula/Sa puso’t kaibuturan…5” Does it put individuality as central to what is innately a collective undertaking? Does it over-valorize the kalooban? Does it equate revolutionary victory with the remolding of the kalooban of the revolutionaries thus turning a blind eye to the military strength of the colonizers?

But this is what good political theater is all about. It probes. It unsettles. It disrupts commonly held assumptions. It raises difficult questions that have no immediate answers because the paradoxes are so overwhelming — the quest for peace is through a violent uprising, revolutionary gains pitted against human weaknesses, and then there is power wielded for the people against power for self-aggrandizement. Is it always “bayan muna bago sarili (country first before self)?”

Pingkian’s power was spun from the webs of paradoxes inherent in social movements that seek to reinstate human freedoms but wrestle with the looming possibility of defeat and collapse because the endeavor went amiss in instilling deep and self-renewing changes in the kalooban of the revolutionaries.

Pingkian is arguably the most important play on the Philippine revolution since Charley de la Paz’s 1896, staged by PETA in 1995. At a time when mainstream theater is very much into the restaging of plays drawn from the West or narratives spun around a pop music repertoire of a popular singer or band, Tanghalang Pilipino’s recent endeavors, including the more recent Anak Datu, is a force that swims upstream, against the tide of pop culture that has engulfed much of metropolitan theater. By making such bold and risky choices, Tanghalang Pilipino is claiming a spot in the theater landscape that was previously held by PETA.

Jenny Jamora is indeed one of mainstream theater’s most reliable directors whose fidelity to the material is matched by neat and non-sensational aesthetics. At the center of this performance are forceful and compassionate performances by Vic Robinson and Gab Pangilinan as the Jacinto couple deeply committed to the cause of the Katipunan. As for Pangilinan, we can only wish for more solo material that will showcase her voice as clear as crystal (and, oh, her delectable vibratos) — perhaps a plaint, a song of lament for Inang Bayan (Mother Country), or her fallen lover, where she can be both tender and intense, a vulnerable yet commanding presence onstage.

It must be noted that Pingkian was supported by grants from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Office of Senate President Pro Tempore Loren B. Legarda. In a time when post-pandemic mainstream theater endeavors have been mostly about keeping afloat and achieving commercial success, then Tanghalang Pilipino is an outlier. The support it received and continues to receive will be much welcome in forging a truly relevant theater, for art that will expand our imagination about the nation.

1Roughly translated: “In love, there is the necessary sympathy and unity that gives indescribable strength, even in mutual support and cooperation, even in the protection of the holy and righteous people of all.”

2The author saw Pingkian during its run from March 8 to 24 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Ignacio Jimenez, in Pasay City.

3Roughly translated: “When it happens to us/Feelings are not the same/Village and council are falling instead of spreading”

4Roughly translated: “not in filtering the members/if not in shaping/it doesn’t matter what we are fighting for/if we can’t fight our own selves…”

5Roughly translated: “The real rebellion/Starts from within/From the heart and core…”

Maria Jovita Zarate is a jury member of Gawad Buhay, the leading awards-giving body for Philippine mainstream theater.