Playwriting in the Time of Exigency

Abstract

This is a personal testimony of a dramatist trained and honed in the craft of drama and stage during the Marcos dictatorship. Unable to finish college, and without a formal training in drama or playwriting, my main reason for writing and struggling in the field of theater was to be able to address the need for change in the Filipino audience’s social consciousness. It will deal with the following topics: what my training ground had been like under the informal guidance of playwrights who had just a little bit more training than I had in the craft, the different dramatic styles used, dramaturgical devices that my colleagues and I developed in order to avoid the clutches of censorship and repression of the Marcos regime, what my dramatist collaborators and contemporaries and I drew from other political plays from other countries (like the agit-prop forms, dramatic theories of Brecht), as well as from the earlier political dramas in the country (seditious plays of the American colonial era), and the radical tradition that had taken shape in the Philippines prior to Martial Law, and how we tried to help in building the foundation of playwriting in the country, and developing the forms that were produced for lightning productions as well as the most effective dramatic strategies in the theatrical exposition of issues in order to persuade and enlighten the audience.