“CALL ME FLORY”

BY: Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero

Summary:The play Call me Flory is about a woman who does not know how to look back from where she started. Florencia Aragon de Caracoles is the protagonist in the story. She became rich when she marries Juan caracoles, a man, whom people believed is, making money with the Japanese which caused him to become rich. With his wealth, Flory, his wife, turned out to be a boastful arrogant woman. ─ In the story, Flory was invited by Matilde to join a charity program for the people of Sapang Palay (the place where she used to live.). With the opportunity to meet well known rich personalities, Flory agreed to join the charity work and even bet that she will buy as many ticket as possible only if she will be introduced and get acquainted with the first lady. But Flory’s secret Setting: The story took place somewhere in San Lorenzo VillageCharacters:1. Florencia Aragon de Caracoles· She’s otherwise known as Flory, but during the days when she was still poor, people call her Enchang· She is a rich woman who used to live at the slum area before she married a man who makes money/ business with the Japanese, the reason why they suddenly became rich. Later on, Flory enjoyed their wealthy life turning her to a boastful arrogant person trying to bury the life she used to have.2. Matilde· A true blooded rich woman who married a fine business man. She is engaged in charity works and enjoys helping the unprivileged members of the society. She is very humble and kind of heart.3. Osang· A poor woman who does embroidery for Matilde. She used to be the neighbor of Flory when she was still living at Sapang Palay. It was from her that Matilde discovered the kind of life that Flory used to have.

Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero was born in Ermita, Manila. At the Age 14, he has already written his first play in Spanish, entitled, "No Todo Es Risa." This play was produced at the Ateneo de Manila University when he was 15. Aside from becoming a reporter and a proofreader for La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, and a drama critic for the Manila Tribune, he also worked for some time in Philippine Films as a scriptwriter. He also became the director Filipino Players from 1941-1947. In 1947 he was appointed as the University of the Philippines Dramatic Club director despite lacking a degree, a position he served for sixteen years. In 1962, he organized and directed the U.P. Mobile Theater that goes on the road all over the Philippines to for performances. Several Guerrero plays have been translated into and produced in Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano and Waray. Six of his plays have been produced abroad: "Half an Hour in a Convent" at the Pasadena Playhouse, California; "Three Rats" at the University of Kansas; "Condemned" in Oahu, Hawaii; "One, Two, Three" (premiere performance) at the University of Washington, Seattle; "Wanted: A Chaperon" at the University of Hawaii; and "Conflict" in Sydney, Australia. He is the first Filipino to have a theater named after him within his lifetime: The Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater of the University of the Philippines. He has received three national awards: the Rizal Pro-Patria Award in 1961, the Araw ng Maynila Award in 1969, and the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1972.The U.P. Mobile Theater has been a recipient of two awards when he was its director: The Citizen's Council for Mass Media Trophy (1966) and the Balagtas Award (1969). In 1997, Guerrero was posthumously distinguished as a National Artist for Philippine Theatre.

“TATARIN”BY: Nick Joaquin

Summary:The play is an adaptation of Nick Joaquin’s short story Summer Solstice. It is all about the celebration of the sacred feast of St. John during the mid-1920. The story of a ritual performed by women to call upon the gods to grant fertility; the ritual they perform is to dance around a century-old Balete tree. The ritual was known as Tatarin and lasted for three days during the summer months. The story revolves around the family of Moreta’s. Entoy tells Dona Lupeng that Amada has participated in the ritual. While they are on board a carriage, Dona Lupeng talks about why Amada still believes in the ritual. The carriage comes to a halt and everyone watches a procession taking place. Dona Lupeng mocks the arrogance of the men taking part in the procession. When they arrive at a house Dona Lupeng discovers that Guido, Don Paeng's cousin, had taken part in both the procession they have just witnessed and in the Tatarin ritual. Guido lifted Dona Lupeng's skirt whilst she was looking for her children. Dona Lupeng then tells Don Paeng about the incident and tells him that Guido had even kissed her feet. Don Paeng is disgusted that the woman has been shown adoration, as he feels that love and respect are more befitting. Dona Lupeng and Don Paeng go to witness the ritual and Dona Lupeng joins in with the ceremony.Once home, Dona Lupeng makes Don Paeng tell her that he adores her. He submits by kissing her feet. The Summer Solstice was classed as controversial because of the mix of Pagan ritual and Christian rites of passage. The story was later adapted into a play and this was itself adapted into a film.

Nick Joaquin (1917-2004) is a Philippine novelist, poet, playwright, biographer, and essayist writing in English, the National Artist for Literature. Joaquin wrote largely about the Spanish colonial period and the diverse heritage of the Filipino people. Often he dealt with the coexistence of 'primitive' and 'civilized' dimensions inside the human psyche. After World War II Joaquin worked as a journalist, gaining fame as a reporter for the Free Press. His most acclaimed play is A Portrait of the Artist As Filipino (1952).

"But there was one house in this street that never became a slum; that resisted the jungle, and resisted it to the very end; fighting stubbornly to keep itself intact, to keep itself individual. It finally took a global war to destroy that house and the three people who fought for it. Though they were destroyed, they were never conquered. They died with their house, and they died with their city-and maybe it’s just as well they did. They could have never survived the destruction of the old Manila..."

(Bitoy Camacho in A Portrait of the Artist As Filipino, 1952) Nick Joaquin was born in Paco on Calle Herran, the son of Leocadio Y. Joaquin, a lawyer and a colonel of the Philippine Revolution, and Salome Marquez, a schoolteacher. After three years of secondary education at the Mapa High School, Joaquin dropped out of school to work on Manila’s waterfront and in odd jobs. On his spare time he read widely at the National Library and on his father's library; he died when Joaquin was 13. Joaquin's brother Porfirio (Ping) Joaquin was a jazz pianist and for a period he worked in the same vaudeville as a stage hand. Joaquin started to write short stories, poems, and essays in 1934. His first poem, a piece about Don Quixote, appeared in 1935 the Tribune, where he was employed as a proofreader. The story 'Three Generations', published in the Herald Midweek Magazine in 1940, marked the beginning of a new era for Filipino writing in English. After the Spanish-American war in 1898, English had became the official medium of instruction in the country and virtually all Spanish literature ceased. Since the 1970s, Tagalog strengthened its position as the national literary language alongside English. Together with such writers as Stevan Javellana, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Celso Carunungan, and Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Joaquin influenced the development of the Philippine novel and short story.

“THE DANCERS”

BY: Alberto S. Florentino

Summary:It is a story of a poor family who struggles in the harshness of poverty. Because of poverty Mang Tomas (The father) wants his youngest daughter - Nenita to join Rita and make a living at a young age as dancer. The older brother – Tony does not approve to his father’s decision and the youngest sibling – Juanito seems become submissive and no longer argue with them. As well as their mother does not approve to her husband’s decision, but then Mang Tomas persistently insist because for him he has the rights and the authority to decide for his daughters being their father.

Setting:An early evening

Characters:

TonyJuanitoRitaNenitaFatherMotherElena

Alberto S. Florentino is the author and playwright of the famed " The World is an Apple". The themes that he usually tackles about deals with everyday scenarios of a commoner's life. He usually portrays the struggles of Filipinos. He was born on July 28, 1931. Florentino had his first taste probably during the time when his father, a teacher, was active on school activities such as directing plays, opted to get assistance from his son to do copies of the plays that he is directing. It is said that Florentino got his technique in playwrighting with the experiences he got due to the fact that while typing multiple copies of his father's plays, he needed to read the manuscript over and over again. As for his education, he attended U.S. Information Service and then at the University of the East. He also attended the University of the Philippines and the Far Eastern University. Alberto Florentino was 23 when, as an accounting student at the University of the East, he won a Palanca award for his play, "The World is an Apple." This success at his first serious attempt at playwriting made him abandon his accounting studies to become a writer. He has since written more than 50 plays for stage and more than 100 for television, besides having published seven collections of his own plays and more than 70 titles by other Filipino authors. He is today considered one of the foremost Filipino playwrights in English.

“MAY KATWIRAN ANG KATWIRAN”

BY: Rolando S. Tinio

Summary:“May Katwiran ang Katwiran” (There’s a Reason for Reasons) Revolves around the distress of a wealthy haciendero (land lord) who wants to get away from the crime of killing someone who wanted to covet him. He finds this kasama (farmer) and uses him as a mode to take him to a far away valley where the Helicopter that will take him to South America will be. On their way, they bumped into a group of Tulisan (),and so, to take care of his own life Senior (the land lord) had a witty idea of changing clothes to fool the Tulisan into thinking that he was the poor farmer and that kasama is the wealthy haciendero. Eventually, kasama was found murdered and Senior had himself in a sticky situation. Senior was left questioning himself “Who has the Greater power?”

The play is all about the never ending Issue of Social Hierarchy written in a very interesting way. Rolando S. Tinio emphasized the fact that theater is not an instrument to impose ideas; it is an instrument of reflection, so that people may think if what’s going on is right or not.

Rolando Tinio was the Philippine National Artist for Theater and Literature. He was born in Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila on March 5, 1937. As a child, Tinio was fond of organizing and directing his playmates for costumed celebrations. He was an active participant in the Filipino movie industry and enjoyed working with Philippine celebrities who he himself had admired in his childhood. Tinio himself became a film actor and scriptwriter. He is often described as a religious, well-behaved and gifted person. Tinio graduated with honors (a "magna cum laude" achiever) with a degree in Philosophy from the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas at age 18 in 1955 and an M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing:Poetry from the State University of Iowa.In Iowa, Tinio was known as a great writer that used English as the medium of the Filipino writer. He wrote his poetic collection: Rage and Ritual which won an award from the University of the Philippines. Bienvenido Lumbera, also an alumnus of the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas, describes this collection as elegant and with a truly contemporary tone if taken from the European literary critical view. At this point in time, Tinio believed that only English can hone the themes that he wanted to communicate in his works. Once, in a conference, an author delivered his belief in the value of the Tagalog dialect in Creative Writing. In response to this, Tinio published an article in the scholarly journal Philippine Studies, which contained parts of English poems translated into Tagalog. The article’s purpose was to prove the inadequacy of Tagalog as the writer’s medium.

Tinio was also an actor, director, and a set and costume designer. He served all these roles during his stay with the Ateneo Experimental Theater. Tinio chooses the plays, designs the stage, directs, creates the costumes and determines the musical score and other sounds. Productions of the Ateneo Experimental Theater are completely his vision. In his production of Oedipus Rex, he replaced the Greek costumes with modern renditions made primarily of metal pipes supposedly to express the thought of industrial 20th century.

“PARAISONG PARISUKAT”

BY: Orlando Nadres

Paraisong Parisukat (A Square Piece of Paradise) is a play in one-act, written by Orlando Nadres in 1974. First staged on 1974 by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) at the Dulaang Dambana in Fort Santiago, Intramuros, Manila. In 1975, it was made into a tele-movie under the direction of Lino Brocka. Published in the 1989 Script Series Program of the Coordinating Center for Dramatic Arts, CCP.This play in Filipino is a story of the masses-- the inhabitants of the world, the human being. It portrays the "ambitious and ambitionless, virtuous and vicious together, the simple, the common, the unknown, the popular and the poor, the rude. It is centered on Isya who is simple and content with her job together with the people in her environment. “Paraisong Parisukat” is about the employees who work in the stockroom of Mirashoes: Simplicia or Isya, a simple girl, as her name suggests; Tomas, the happy-go-lucky janitor; Belen , the drama queen by today’s standards; Emy, the “palengkera”. They are all under the supervision of Ate Pastora, the tyrannical store manager. Their aimless lives are disrupted by the arrival of Alberto, the new stock boy.

Orlando Nadres (born November 1938 in Tayabas, Quezon - died July 14, 1991) was a stage, film, television writer, director and actor. He is the son of Igmideo Nadres and Tecla Reobaldo. He attended the Lucena and Tayabas Elementary School and then went to Luis Palad High School where he published his first story in Liwayway. He spent four years in Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary and a year in the St. Paul Seminary in Pasay. He took a secretarial course and enrolled in Journalism and later in Foreign Service, major in French in U.S.T. Nadres first wrote professionally for Komiks, together with Mars Ravalo doing layouts and writing stories for the publication and in 1968 became the managing editor of the same publication. In the 1960s, he worked for G. Miranda and Sons Publishing Co. which later inspired him to write Paraisong Parisukat. Later he became the editor of “Sixteen Magazine” the job which introduced him to the world of Film. He became involved in theater because of his involvement with the infamous Lino Brocka, who introduced him to PETA.

After Martial Law was declared, he helped sustain PETA, as an actor, playwright and Trainer in CITASA.

In the late 1980s, when he decided to stay in his hometown Tayabas, Nadres formed the theater group SUSI (Sanayan at Ugnayan sa Sining), which revived the traditional performances of Carillo, Santacruzan and Sarswela.

“PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST FILIPINO”

BY: Nick Joaquin

Known as the Philippine national play, Nick Joaquin's Portrait of the Artist as Filipino from 1952 is currently onstage at Vineyard's Dimson Theatre. The play's immense popularity in its homeland is due as much to the author's loving look at the multiple cultural components of Philippine high society as to the reassuring ending for the Marasigan family conflict, which is the main plot.

Summary:

Set in pre-war Manila, it tells of two spinster sisters who stay on in their ancestral home with their frail artist father, in spite of conflicts that arise among family members to abandon the old house.

Candida and Paula, Don Leonardo's two unmarried daughters, are barely able to maintain the sprawling family house except through the contributions from their "successful" brother and sister Pepang and Manolo. By taking in male boarder Tony, they survive in the face of their father's artistic drought. The daughters resist the temptation to sell father's self-portrait, which could fetch a small fortune, and ignore their siblings' coercion to dispose of the family house. Personal liberation begins when Paula briefly elopes with Tony, destroys the painting and the two daughters apologize to their father for their ill treatment of him. Imminent war, practice blackouts and sleazy figures from Manila nightlife make a colorful context.

“FOREVER”

BY: Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero

Forever is a play about the love, unfaithfulness, heartbreak, pride, regrets, pity and absolution.

Summary:

The story revolves within the characters of Maria Theresa, Ernesto, Ernesting, Consuelo and Oscar. The action takes place in Manila around 9pm when Ernesto went back to the house of his wife Maria Theresa so they could talk and settle things that is left in the past. Ernesto pleaded for forgiveness, a second chance to settle things right and to be recognized by his son Ernesting which he left 8 long years ago when he was caught having an affair with other woman and told to leave the house and to never come back by Maria Theresa. Despite the persistence of Ernesto for having a last chance to Maria Theresa he wasn’t given any right to have. And he also failed to be recognized by his own son. That concluded him that it is best to leave his family after.

“FOREVER WITCHES”

BY: Estrella D. Alfon

Summary:

FOREVER WITCHES

by Estrella Alfon

“Having what one wanted could be so deadly!”

This was a line of the very impulsive young girl named Marrise when her two equally beautiful spinster aunts Lourdes and Andiya proved to her when asked them to teach her witch craft just to make Julius fall in love with her. But because of the aunts undying love to their niece the old maidens gave way to teach Marrise their powers and reminds her to use it for good. But of course, as a spoiled Marrise, she made Julius her obsessed willing slave. Just when everything was going right into her plan she realizes something. Her affection to Julius has long gone and it’s starting to put her into oppression.

For the second time she asks her aunts help but this time for the opposite wish, it’s the wish to get Julius off her back and to unleran everything that she knew, but unfortunately it was too late. Her aunts cannot get back what they had given to her and so the obsession of Julius grew stronger until it led to his attempt of ending his own life if Marisse will not marry him.

Estrella D. Alfon (1917 – December 28, 1983) was a well-known Filipina author who wrote almost exclusively in English. As a Filipino writer, Estrella Alfon lived her life of being a prolific writer who hailed from Cebu. Because of unwavering and poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of the Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and earned and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. She died in the year 1983 at the age of 66. She was a nude storywriter, playwright, and journalist. In spite of being a proud Cebuana, she wrote almost exclusively in English. She published her first story, “Grey Confetti”, in the Graphic in 1935. Alfon died on December, 28 1983, following a heart attack suffered on-stage during Awards night of the Manila Film Festival

Alfon was born in Cebu City in 1917 to a couple who were shopkeepers. Unlike other writers of her time, she did not come from the intellectual elite. She attended college and studied medicine. When she was mistakenly diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanitarium, she resigned from her pre-medical education, and left with an Associate of Arts degree.

Alfon has several children: Alan Rivera, Esmeralda "Mimi" Rivera, Brian Alfon, Estrella "Twinkie" Alfon, and Rita "Daday" Alfon (deceased). She has 10 grandchildren.Her youngest daughter, was a stewardess for Saudi Arabian Airlines, and was part of the Flight 163 crew on August 19, 1980, when an in-flight fire forced the aircraft to land in Riyadh. A delayed evacuation resulted in the death of everyone aboard the flight.

She was the only female member of the Veronicans, an avant garde group of writers in the 1930s led by Francisco Arcellana and H.R. Ocampo, she was also regarded as their muse. The Veronicans are recognized as the first group of Filipino writers to write almost exclusively in English and were formed prior to the World War II. She is also reportedly the most prolific Filipina writer prior to World War II. She was a regular contributor to Manila-based national magazines; she had several stories cited in Jose Garcia Villa’s annual honor rolls.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Definition of drama X. Philippine DramaII. Author’s insight about drama HistoryIII. Origin of drama OverviewIV. Dramatic Structure of drama: XI. Categories of Philippine Drama:a. Exposition a. Katutubong Dulab. Complication b. Dula sa panahon ng kastilac. Climax c. Dula sa panahon ng d. Resolution AmerikanoV. Elements of Drama and Sub-elements: XII. Famous Filipino Authors:a. Structure/plot Nick Joaquin b. Conflict Wilfredo Ma. Guereroc. Theme Rolando S. Tiniod. Setting Jose Rizale. Character Francisco Balagtasf. Audience Estrella D. Alfon VI. Types of Drama Orlando Nadres a. Tragedy XIII. Ten Famous Foreign Playwrights b. Comedy XIV. Eight Filipino Playwrightsc. Modern Drama: Tragic/comedy VII. Performance of a play VIII. Kinds of Stage Setting a. Thrust Stage b. Round Stagec. Proscenium StageIX. Scene Design, lighting, props and costume

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOK REFERENCES:George Bernard Shaw. The Drama.Great Britain , 1993

INTERNET REFERENCES:

www.wikipilipinas.org.ph

www.e-stylistics.com

www.thefreelibrabry.com

www.panitikan.com.ph

www.up.org.ph

www.ncca.gov.ph

www.alibata-artist.blogspot.com

www.globalpinoy.com

DRAMA

Prepared by:Sarah F. Evangelista