The young Rizal

I maybe one of the few people last Sunday who wondered aloud, “Oh,yes, this is Father’s Day, June 19. But do people also remember that this was the day Jose Rizal was born?

Rizal, indeed, is not the father, but one of the fathers of the nation – a long line of heroes that began with Lapu-Lapu (whom President-elect Rody Duterte wants to rescue from the name of a fish to foundational enemy of white colonizers) and continues today, with our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

It is in this context that we welcome Ateneo de Manila University Press’ publication of Batang Rizal at iba pang mga dula by Ateneo professor Christine S. Bellen. Our writer teaches at the Dept. of Filipino of Ateneo, and grew up in Pili, Bacacay, Albay. She is a scholar of children’s literature and creative writing. She studied at UP for her BA and MA, and is winding up with her PhD in Children’s Literature at Hongkong Baptist University on scholarship from the Hongkong PhD Scholarship Scheme.

Bellen’s foreword on the creative process in the writing of Batang Rizal is most instructive. After the reputable Philippine Educational Theater Association asked her to write Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang into a play, her next assignment was to create a play on Rizal’s childhood.

Maribel Legarda asked her to frame the play so it would link the child Rizal of the 19th century to the Rizal of the present. And here let me reprint a review of the play I wrote when it was first shown at PETA.

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I am old enough to remember watching the plays of PETA at the Rajah Sulayman Theater, in the ruins of Fort Santiago in Intramuros. After watching a highly controversial play during the darkest days of martial law, we would go home but would quietly watch our backs, lest some Marcos secret marshal would be following us.

Last weekend, I watched Ateneo teacher Christine Bellen’s play, Batang Rizal, at the new and lovely home of PETA in New Manila. It’s a nifty musical about the young Rizal, and on the way there, the playwright said to me that what pleased her most was the audience the day before – a gaggle of around 50 tykes who had filled up a small van. As they say, if you can please such a young – and certainly most difficult – audience, you can please the most makunat of them all.

And pleased they certainly were, and so were we, when we watched the musical unfold before our very eyes. A small stage and a low-tech production did not hamper the unraveling of this memorable work directed by Dudz Teraña. In 2007, the young Pepito (the talented Christian Segarra) of Jose Rizal Elementary School breaks the face of Jose Rizal’s statue newly commissioned by Mayor Ishmael Rapcu (played with pitch-perfect, idiom-breaking English by Wilfredo Casero).

The indignant and corrupt mayor then threatens the teacher (Bernah Bernardo with the funny, rubbery lips) that he would shut down the school unless the statue is fixed. The poor, hapless Pepito – butt of jokes for his matchstick-thinness and unremitting poverty, has to do something – and quick! He then stumbles upon a big book containing the biography of Jose Rizal. He enters the realm of the book, and is transported to 19th-century Philippines, during the time of the young Rizal.

This device, of course, is nothing new. It was employed in a variety of texts, notably in The Neverending Story. But it works seamlessly here. For when Pepito and Pepe (the young Rizal) meet, past and present clash. (What does the English word “wow” mean? ask Rizal’s sisters). Not only language, but the great horse of politics neighs wonderfully here. Pepe gives Pepito a seven-day tour of his time, starting with Domingo (Sunday). The bells ring and the fraile comes, punishing the Indios for the smallest mistake.

When Pepito said to Pepe (in my English translation): “So during your time, the authorities punish those who they think defy them and make them disappear?” Pepe nods. And Pepito said something that made our blood run cold: “Oh, it’s the same with us. Nothing has changed.”

Remember, I watched this one week after the controversial Human Security Act (HSA) took effect with a controversial Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR). I watched this when Editha Burgos, the mother of missing activist Jonas and wife of press-freedom icon Jose, was still looking for her son two months after he was abducted while having lunch in a mall. I watched all of this and turned to look at Egay Samar, fellow teacher at the Ateneo, and we shook our heads sadly, in disbelief and in sadness. Nothing, indeed, seems to have changed.  

And remember this on days like these when alleged drug lords just vanish from the face of the earth.

As the song Pag-asa ng Bayan, written by the prize-winning musical director Vince de Jesus, goes: “Sa dami ng nagbuwis ng buhay/ Alang-alang sa bayan/ Ang kalayaan ba’y ating nabantayan?/ Tingnan mo ang paligid mo/ Ang lahat ba ay malaya/ Tingnan mo/ Malaya ba’ng mabuhay nang payapa,/ Malaya ba’ng magsabi ng gusto/ Ang lahat ba ay pantay-pantay ang turing/ Walang nasa ibabaw/ Walang nasa ilalim.”

I like this play because it shows you that history should never be a bitter pill to take for our children. The young people in the audience had a merry time watching. They rocked and rolled to the rap song of The Monkey and the Turtle, with shadow-play animation by Don Salubayba. They sat entranced when Dona Teodora Alonso Rizal sang to the young Rizal, telling him not to be like the moth that came too close to the candle flame, thus burning its wings. But when the young Rizal (played with wide-eyed wonder by Abner Delina Jr.) said, “Yes, Mother, but the light! How bright the light!” another shudder runs down my spine.

Those of us who follow our passion with everything we have in our lives should know how that line feels.

Later, it is the young Pepe’s turn to go to the 21st-century Philippines, with its color and cruelties. The stage becomes a rainbow of colors coming from the students’ costumes and the spectrum of light. But the very same children could also be a source of cruel lines against the poor. It is not heavy-handed because it is sung, or danced, or shown through gestures (the sticky Spider-man act of one of the young bullies, complete with a hissing like that of a sssssnake).

In the end, the play asks questions the notion of a hero. Is he only the one cast in stone? Or venerated blindly by people who do not really know him? How to be a hero in a society that hails the ignorant and rewards the corrupt?

One answer lies in breaking time and space and bringing us back the young Jose Rizal – who also gets upset, is lazy, proud, fearful, friendly and, in the end, lonely. But even if the young Rizal knows he would die, he still returned to the past so this would happen, so we would all be free. From the shadow of his fear he flew straight into the light, like the moth with its wide-open wings, into our hearts.

The Metro Manila Pride March will be held today at 2:30 p.m., Lapu-lapu Monument, Rizal Park. Comments can be sent to [email protected]. My show “Remoto Control” runs at Radyo 5, 92.3 FM every Monday and Friday, 9-10:00 p.m. with livestream at www.news5.com.ph