Viva PETA @ 50!

Athrowback involving half a century entails spotty but still sweetish memories. And nothing bitter, but purely wistful recall of an old world — when the air in Manila was fresher, cooler, and hardly subjected to any carbon footprint. Plus, yehey, no traffic!

April 7, 1967 turns out to have been the historic day when the Philippine Educational Theater Association or PETA was established by Cecile Guidote. And we’re fortunate to say that we were present at the creation.

Well, not exactly when all the necessary papers were incorporated, after what must have a tedious process of meetings with potential partners, supporters and a cohort of budding theater artists ready to set sail with their young, visionary captain. But soon after, with PETA’s first stage production.

VIP seniors whom Cecile succeeded in convincing as to the worth of her thought balloons were the influential journalist Teodoro Valencia and architect Leandro Locsin, who would become a National Artist. I suppose, too, that Fr. James B. Reuter, S.J., who held court at St. Paul’s Colege in Malate, Cecile’s alma mater, had a hand in seeing the venture through.

At only 23 at the time, Cecile gained approval from then National Parks chair Teodoro Valencia for the use of part of Fort Santiago as a venue for the theater company she had envisioned. PETA would initially stage original plays by Filipino playwrights, and eventually adaptations of international theater classics in Filipino.

Then still escorted by her beau, the UP mainstay Heherson Alvarez, Cecile also met with Leandro Locsin to lay out her concept of an open-air, T-shaped theater that could take over a walled but roofless quadrangle that had served as a barracks in Fort Santiago.

Thus was Rajah Sulayman Theater born, all of 50 years ago. I wouldn’t have become aware of the milestone had I not chanced in on an FB post by Lutgardo Labad. It featured photos of young people rehearsing on the old concrete stage in preparation for the formal commemoration of PETA’s golden anniversary last Friday.

Now all the vintage memories are revived. Or some of them, with gaps and bald spots in the reminiscing, especially with names and the exact chronology of events.

Very simply, architect Locsin designed a rectangular concrete block to protrude from the center of the back wall that still had a partial surface of brick, plus ramps no more than a meter and a half wide that extended from the ends and joined up with the central block that became the main stage, which also had a wider ramp extending out to the main door up front.

The audience was seated on revolving chairs on the two parts of the open-air space bifurcated by that wide central ramp. Entrances and exits by actors were conducted from either end or through the main door, which remained open for the most part for certain plays. The central action took place on the rectangular block, but a large ensemble would also make use of the ramps. A director had to take up the challenge that went beyond the use of a typical proscenium, and wasn’t quite in-the-round either.

Cecile Guidote was a genius when it came to theatrical challenges, and then some. The first play staged at Rajah Sulaiman was “Bayaning Huwad,” the translation in Tagalog of poet Virginia R. Moreno’s “The Straw Patriot.” Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, a young UP poet we called Willybog, did the translation. The central characters were played by popular movie actors Vic Silayan, Lolita Rodriguez and Robert Arevalo. The young Paulinian Lily Gamboa and artist Alan Cosio also had speaking roles.

My UP Diliman buddy Monet Serrano and I somehow wound up as extras — wordless peasants who held back the burly Vic Silayan when his comeuppance was declared by Alan Cosio in a military uniform while astride a horse. Yes, an actual horse was trained to enter the main door, bearing Cosio.

Now how did we wind up joining PETA? It must have been our friendship with both Willybog Sanchez and Virgie Moreno that led us to Rajah Sulaiman Theater, where we wound up ogling the tweetums cutie Lily, who had yet to finish college in St. Paul’s.

We were recruited as stagehands, then as members of the peasants’ ensemble that groaned and wailed unseen behind the front walls. Cecile must have noted that Monet and I had the best College Joe builds among the peasants, and were probably teachable as theater first-timers since we were from UP and were friends with the playwright. And so we wound up on center stage, too, restraining the burly Silayan in the climactic scene.

That started my days — actually a few years — with PETA. The evenings in Fort Santiago were breezy. The camaraderie was fine with the company, including the movie stars. After rehearsals or a weekend run, it was a brief cab ride to Los Indios Bravos on A. Mabini St. in Malate with Virgie Moreno.

Cecile asked me, and another UP poet, Frankie Osorio, to translate Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino into Tagalog. It became the long-running Larawan, with Lolita Rodriguez playing Candida, Rita Gomez as Paula, the upcoming movie actor Dante Rivero as Tony, an Atenean orator whose name escapes me now as Bitoy Camacho, plus Leopoldo Salcedo, Joy Soler, Cecilia Bulaong or “CB,” Lorli Villanueva, Veronica Palileo and Lino Brocka.

I was cast as Pete the newspaperman, who had to dance the boogie onstage with Lorli and Joy. Personal embarrassment over having two left feet was eventually surmounted on the sheer strength of Cecile’s patient pep talks.  

Despite my klutziness, the production was a memorable success. The final scene involved a procession that was enacted on the rampart above the stage that overlooked the Pasig River. For several nights, Nick Joaquin led that candle-lit procession with his buddy Joe Quirino, Teodoro Valencia, Alejandro Roces who also became a National Artist, and Virgie Moreno among a troop of PETA supporters. It was a heady experience, marching along to band music at the tail-end, with the overflow audience below us on the left, and the river darkly flowing to our right.

The actors’ make-up rooms were on the right side of the theater, while on the left was an open, roofless space that was said to have been Rizal’s cell where he wrote Mi Ultimo Adios. That was where some of us theater parvenus smoked nervously while waiting for our entrance cues, and surreptitiously swigged some vodka.

Eventually, I also got to play Cheever in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which was performed in English. I can only remember Behn Cervantes as the Captain, one of the more important roles. He was notorious for forgetting his lines, so that on more than one occasion, as the speaker who would cue him in, I had to adlib an additional line whenever he obviously forgot his: “Captain, will you send for the children now?” And Cecile would pat me on the back after the performance: “Good old Cheever.”  

As the Fireman in Ang Tatay Mong Kalbo, the translation of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, I had to recite a lengthy gobbledygook aria and carry Cecilia Bulaong (now CB Garrucho) in my arms. It was another moment of embarrassment I would live down. After all, we were in the same play as the great Joonee Gamboa. 

After one performance, Leonora Orosa-Goquingco who was in the audience tried to convince me to join her dance company, because she needed hefty men to lift the female dancers. I smiled at the gracious lady and looked up wordlessly at the skies over Fort Santiago.

The stints in PETA productions led me to write teleplays for Balintataw, a drama series for television that adapted short stories written by Filipino authors. Cecile’s production partners for the weekly show were playwright Alberto Florentino and actor-director Nick Lizaso.

Lino Brocka used to come to our place off Dimasalang to fetch me or to leave word with my grandma, with whom he would fall into conversation about his days serving in the leper colony of Molokai in Hawaii. My lola always said she loved chatting with the voluble young Mormon.

Lutgardo Labad, Soxy Topacio and Frank Rivera were among the young PETAns who would eventually take over when Cecile Guidote-Alvarez had to follow her husband Sonny in exile in the USA, once martial law was declared in 1972. 

That signaled the end of my association with PETA, although I also recall having shared the stage again with Joonee Gamboa in a play directed by Nestror Torre, Jr. at St. Paul’s College. It must have been the last play I acted in. The martial law period ushered us all into stark drama of another sort.

But today I should join Gardy Labad in expressing gratitude and appreciation to the lady of substance who began that era of a national theater that has lived on to this day.

Other theater personalities who also joined PETA in the early days include Isagani Cruz, Mario de los Reyes, Anton Juan, Marilou Jacob, Elwood Perez, Mario O’Hara and Joey Gosiengfiao.

We all owe Cecile Guidote-Alvarez a lifetime of blessings by way of PETA, which has gone on to stage over 400 plays to date, and which now enjoys its own venue, the PETA Theater Center in Quezon City, since 2005. I understand that CB Garrucho, the lady I had to lift up onstage in an absurdist play, now heads the organization.

The golden memories of Dulaang Rajah Sulaiman remain. Happy golden anniversary to everyone who has shared in the PETA experience!