How Great Thou, What?

The STAinEd's First Show last March 6 is mission accomplished. I can simply say a succesul one as it finally delivered a "Teatrong Walang Takot sa Halimaw at mga Chihuahua na sumisira sa Sining ng Dula". The audience composed mostly of STA students had great shouts and applause, agreeing to the message on the rotteness of STA system.

Even though the production suffered from financial difficulties as none of the STA graduates we approached supported us, we found ways to have "STAinEd" be performed onstage. And now we are happy to annouce that the Second Show will push thru this coming June with a better plan, having learned our lesson.


Personally, I feel discouraged if not nutty to some STA graduates which were part of our play parade during college days, who were so eager to stage a play yet now not so interested to the craft anymore. So, I accepted their apathy as indication of the "TRUE REASON" on taking a course not designed to their blood type.

"Just-in-Need-of-a-Degree" or "Just-want-to-be-Famous-in-School" or "I-want-to-be-called-Artist" or "I-want-to-be-a-BU-student"

How's that?

Quite simply, it's more of staging rather than doing.

Arvin, my co-theater-worker, told me about a reaction of one of our classmates from STA Class 2005 upon knowing that our group is going to stage a play, as we ask her or him to be part of the play by being a donor or sponsor or whatever.

The Reaction?


- "Di ba matapos-tapos yan?"


Whew! Nice. Very Nice. So uncanny an answer from a graduate of Theater Arts. He/She should know our "drive" - the very thing that fuel the mind to create, to work, to juggle imagination into form. He/She should know that our craft is incessant in nature. (So dogmatic if I call it "passion" eh, so drive na lang). Well, no wonder why it is just right to stage a play, like STAinEd, that tackles pointless STA student minds, clueless on the taken course.


I was so stupid. I should have never asked help if I only knew the comformist thoughts of our former classmates. Wika nga ni Arvin, "makakamundo". Yup, so sad indeed. Well, maybe they are just practical in life now. What can a stage play do to them in the first place? Does it have something to contribute to their already-rich-senses? Does it answer the TRUE REASON of taking Speech and Theater Arts course?


So stupid Emil, so stupid.


By the way, where are the 7 Aces? Oh my! Maybe in deep slumber, suffering still from hang-over brought by Buwan at Baril. Peace Bros! Hahahahaha

"STAinEd" a stage play

"STAinEd"

a stage play for the STA students

When: 2nd Show - April 2008

Where: Naga City

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We are not satisfied to utterly accept things as they are, be they a collective convention or in any way man perceives. We tend to develop a habit of thinking, reacting, imagining, creating and re-creating. A self that continuously thinks, continuingly responds from the heart and perceives with soul is a self that will not straightforwardly conform orders and agree to colorful propaganda. As artists, we use our own medium to show our stance. Art serving as antennae of the social order is tuned into every coming chapter of social drama that is yet to be produced. As such, art now becomes a force for the transformation of the social order.

But how can we be sure of our oeuvres to show strong force? As we take art as a catapult for social change, the process of its utilization should begin on the training ground. Bicol University, my Alma Mater, is one of the few institutions that offer art courses in the region. The University’s College of Arts and Letters, to be particular, is regarded as a hub of arts and culture. This is the place where I learned and understand the world of Aeschylus; the place where I drank the precious wine of Dionysus; the very place I built my heart for theatre arts. However, I now see this "prestigious" college as obedience school for students to learn how to beg, fetch, roll over, and play dead; where the art program is in mind-numbing attempt to teach the proper art techniques; where most of their paid arts teachers cannot even define what art really means. The so-called "home of Arts and Culture" teaches students to perform to please parents and “babyluvs”, shoot for fame as well as provide entertainment through street dancing competitions. It is on this college that you are forced to dance in the streets just to earn a flat-1 grade from a subject clearly not related to dancing - a subject on speech communication with terpsichorean theme. Wow. Can we call it creative fusion? Nope. Label it as “Puppet Theatre” where the marionette students have all the strings attached onto their necks.

BU-CAL needs a genuine art education - an edification that starts by challenging the tameness of rote learning and pushing the students to dig deeper to find the answers to the unanswerable questions that fuel the engine of creativity. With a good academic program and valid-compelling teachers, the students can develop practices of astute observation, creative interaction, and clever juggling of imagination into form.

BU-CAL can be the place where we can see stories that the mainstream media fails to show or hear the tales that are kept out of the history books, or meet the characters whose physical attributes and upbringing are so totally different but the convictions and dreams are so astoundingly the same. Through BU-CAL we can lift art out of its mediocre perception as entertainment, hobby, diversion, and the likes, and put into a level where it will become a force of social transformation -- a hard hammer to pound the plastic key of liberty, a purified water to quench the inferno of confusion. But, in order to fully experience the soothing arms of art; one has got to fall down and skin a number of knees. This means risk, reservations, and questioning – the forms of artistic investigation and not only learning art for art’s sake.

Our care is on art and may not concern politics and prefer not to be entailed in a group act – a group that is susceptible to creating its own stifle type of conformity and mass mindedness that an artist by temperament might incline to defy. However, we must consider that art exists to question, to provoke, to stimulate. And that holds back the development of consent that politics and rotten art education heavily depend.

We should now go out in the open and show our principled creativity. Lets us now challenge the social order through our impeccable writings and guileless stage shows. Let their breaths interrupted by our panache dance moves. Make the world stopped with a philosophical painting or have their lives turned up side down by a pulsating piece of music. Let us now test the water of truthful arts where we can also know who among us has strong knees to withstand its unbearable torrents of consequence.

Let us start with the play “STAinEd” and show our shared orientation and conviction. What about the consequential sufferance? Just don't mind. Remember this old adage: “It takes a wound for an oyster to produce a pearl”.

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"STAinEd" (STA in Education) is an experimental stage play about the sickening system of the Bicol University College of Arts and Letters’ Speech and Theater Arts program. It directly tackles without hesitation the perplexed curriculum, cold-hearted administration, invalid teachers as well as the confused students. Through the use of different methods such as Viola Spolin’s Improv Theatre, Breacthian Theatre, and Boal, the show clearly and vigorously states the hypocrisy, confusion, and despondency that wreck the meaning and true purpose of theater arts.

As STA graduates, we always believe that our hope for change can be shown effectively through a stage play like "STAinEd" - where our disgust to the rotten art education system molded during our years of stay in Bicol University is delivered loud and clear. It is not just an opportunity but a clear theater of artistic impetus. Let's get it on!

- HARING TSINELAS

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