Kidding Around the PETA Theater Center
CB Garrucho’s Tele-Aralan ng Kakayahan (at least the arts and crafts episodes) was to me then, what Art Attack probably is to kids now. Perhaps because I had developed an interest for making things early on, I was just enthralled by how the guests on Ms. Garrucho’s show tinkered with treasures from a place called Tabora (which I imagined to be every crafter’s paradise) and, moments later, produce from under the table something more magnificent than what they had at the beginning. I don’t remember which came first-having longer school hours (which prevented me from catching the show) or Tele-Aralan getting cancelled-but there came a point when I didn’t get to see the show anymore. And though I never lost interest in making things, growing up without Tele-Aralan also brought with it the realization that while Tabora is indeed a crafter’s paradise, it can also be one hell of a congested, foul-smelling street, and that without the magic of television, finished products don’t just pop out from under the table.
Through the kindness of Gibbs Cadiz and the folks at pinoycentric.com, however, I got to see CB Garrucho again, not on TV, but in person at the PETA Theater Center. As it turned out, she would be giving us lucky bloggers the tour of the premises, and, along with her “resource persons,” acquaint us with the craft of theater. Naturally, I was like a kid watching Tele-Aralan all over again, which was actually a good thing, because if I weren’t on “kid-mode”, the prospect of spending an afternoon singing, dancing and playing dress-up with a bunch of strangers would have scared the hell out of me. It still scared me a bit, but like the other bloggers, I just threw myself into the tour activities which had us learning a song, doing movement exercises, wearing weird costumes (I got a bonnet with dreadlocks), and forming tableaus in a couple of different venues in the theater center, after which, they had us showcase everything we learned on the actual PETA stage. True, it wasn’t the kind of tour I was expecting, but it turned out to be more interesting and actually more fun. More than anything, those activities reminded me about what I always hear but often forget whenever I encounter the grown-up issues of stress, frustration and heartache (yes, heartache) involved in theater production-that theater is all about play. It is supposed to be fun.
Nowhere was this spirit of play more evident than in, well, the play that we got to see after the tour (but of course!). Christine Bellen’s Batang Rizal, PETA’s initial offering for its 40th season, is a brilliantly-staged, highly-entertaining re-imagining of our national hero as a child (and human being in general) as seen through the eyes of a time-traveling elementary school kid (whew, that’s a lot of hyphens!). I had seen something with a similar concept before (a vignette in Dulaang Sibol’s Centennial production, Duyan ng Giting), but I quickly forgot about it and instead found myself laughing at the numerous antics of the (mostly) young cast, tearing up at the more touching mother-son moments, and even getting goose bumps when the giant pad paper screen (?) was first raised to signify the shift in time period and when the young Rizal first found out that he was going to be killed. But what is great about the play is that aside from the entertainment value, it also imparts valuable lessons to the audience, especially on the topics of nationalism and heroism. Personally, I think one of those lessons is that, like in a play, doing something good for our country is mainly just a matter of doing our parts the best way we can. That sure beats anything I ever learned from Tele-Aralan! After that experience, if ever I would be made to choose between an afternoon of watching Tele-Aralan (or any other TV show for that matter) and an afternoon in the theater, I would gladly choose the latter. And I hope that by posting this entry, I would have done my part in convincing even just a few others to do the same.