57

CHAPTER 3

Rethinking Repetitiousness

To the uninitiated, there are a number of features of the moro-moro that may

seem irrational. One such feature is the overwhelming repetitiousness of moro-moro

performances. Repetitious is the delivery of dialogue, uttered audibly first by a

prompter-director who reads from the script line by line, then by the actors who

follow his lead, so that everything is heard twice. Repetitious too, is the manner in

which the dialogue is intoned: in a nasal, high-pitched, rhythmic, constant monotone.

Repetitious are the ideas conveyed, as a single idea may be paraphrased a dozen times

into a dozen stanzas, even if a single quatrain would have sufficed. Repetitious are the

scenes, involving stock characters in stock situations that always seem to lead to

battle scenes that are inserted liberally into the performance. And repetitious are the

fantastic plots that are told and re-told from year to year. These repetitions are what

make moro-moro plays invariably long, lasting from as "short" as five hours, to as

long as nine nights of performance, or even more.

Scholars have often commented upon the repetitiousness of the moro-moro,

seeing this as a negative feature or weakness of the genre. Yet these repetitions do not

exist by accident, nor are they just random and mindless insertions. They fulfill

practical functions. Both in form and content, repetition was an important literary

device wielded by the moro-moro playwright, which enabled him to cater to the needs

and tastes of his audience. This chapter examines how the repetitiousness of the

moro-moro is pleasurable and useful for authors, actors and audiences alike. I will
 58

highlight here the traditional mode of consumption of performing arts, one that is

founded on native habits of gathering as well as local aesthetic sensibilities. My aim

here is to describe and understand the moro-moro audience's distinct ways of sensing,

hearing and feeling the performance. The playwright's decisions on how to craft a

performance make sense when seen from the standpoint of his audience's particular

mode of consumption. It may not be immediately apparent to a modern observer (and

one much influenced by Western notions of art) how an overwhelmingly repetitious

performance could be enjoyed as such. In many ways, modes of consumption of the

past have all but become incomprehensible to the present. Today, the question still

begs to be asked: have we fully understood the appeal of the moro-moro for the

audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?

To make sense of the moro-moro 's form and content, we cannot simply rely

on the extant scripts and outsider accounts and confine our analysis to these

documents. Rather, we must be sensitive to the socio-literary context in which the

moro-moro thrived. More importantly, we must remember that it is a performing art

and we must have a firm grasp of the dynamics of performance, of how the different

parts of the moro-moro come together, of what is entailed in the presentation and

consumption, as well as the composition of the plays. Fortunately for us, there are still

some villages today where moro-moro performances can be observed. True, many

changes have taken place in how it is presented and consumed, but still, we can get a

better sense, a better inkling of performances of the past by observing what remains in

the present. This practical knowledge of performance dynamics can fruitfully be used

in the reading of extant scripts and outsider accounts and help us make sense of the

moro-moro then and now.

 59

Repetition as Distribution: Consumption in Bits and Pieces

As far as we can tell from available documents, the way the moro-moro was

consumed in the past was very different from the theatergoing experience in any

modern venue or concert hall where one is ushered to a numbered seat and is expected

to observe proper etiquette. In a modern theater, one has to keep quiet and refrain

from standing up, not even to visit the restroom, unless it is at the designated time. In

contrast, the situation of audiences at traditional moro-moro performances, may be

described as very informal, regardless of whether the venue is an urban theater house

in nineteenth-century Manila or on a makeshift outdoor stage on the village green

during the town fiesta. The moro-moro was consumed in a very relaxed manner, with

people freely moving about, and with a lot of background noise. In the past, the

prominent members of the community had specially constructed sheds or palcos that

were either located near the stage or elevated in some strategic vantage point. In their

palcos they entertained guests, ate, and even slept as the play progressed.1 The rest of

the villagers brought their own benches from their homes, while spectators who had

come from far away also brought their own food provisions and fruit.2 The gathered

crowd continuously ate, drank, and chatted, or even left for a few hours, and returned

later in the day, or even the next day, for performances could last for several days or

nights. From certain vantage points, the dialogue may be partially or even completely

inaudible, but the audience would not mind, for if one felt like listening to the words,

one could simply come closer to the stage, or even sit on the stage itself.

The consumption of a moro-moro performance can be likened to eating lechon

served at fiesta time. The lechon is a whole roasted pig that is the celebrated highlight

at the fiesta buffet table. It is displayed prominently and everyone eagerly awaits the

1
Resil Mojares. 1985. Theater in Society, Society in Theater. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. p.
91.
2
Isabelo de los Reyes. 1906. Ang Comediang Tagalog.
 60

moment when the pig is chopped up and all can line up to take a few bits and pieces,

walk away, return for a bit more, and leave again. The roasted pig will stay on the

buffet table the whole day ready for waves of visitors that come at will, and at various

moments it will either be mobbed, or abandoned, only to be mobbed again when a

new group arrives. And even when it is already half eaten, with the crispy skin gone,

the bones showing, and only a few fleshy sections left, visitors who come to the feast

at a later hour will still find it impressive that there's a lechon, and will approach the

mangled remains with gusto because they have in their heads the image of the whole

roasted pig in its glorious, shiny entirety.

Just as everyone wants to have a piece of lechon so, too, do villagers want

their piece of moro-moro action at fiesta time. In the nineteenth century, the folk who

lived in the outskirts of town and in the mountains would go to great lengths to come

to the town center during the fiesta, to participate in Catholic rites, visit family and

friends, partake of the feasting, and watch the moro-moro. Director-playwrights who

crafted moro-moro plays employed repetition, both in form and content, in order to

"distribute" the story in a somewhat equitable manner so that at any given time, a

viewer may enjoy the "bits and pieces" of performance that will give him a taste for

the whole. After all, a playwright would have used plot structures that the audience

was familiar with, so that even if a play was viewed in a discontinuous manner -- like

the partially-eaten lechon -- it could still be imagined as a whole, and the bits and

pieces would still be delicious.

By considering "distribution" of the story as germane to the playwright's

purpose, the repetitiousness of a moro-moro play can be understood in a new light.

Repetition has, unfortunately, been viewed negatively as something of a weakness.

Quite understandably, since to the modern observer the repetition of a single idea in a
 61

dozen stanzas of verse, and the repetition of the same sub-plots over and over

throughout the play, may seem superfluous, and tedious to watch. For the native

playwright and his intended audience, however, repetition played an important

distributive function.

To illustrate this notion of repetition-as-distribution let us examine a lament

from the play entitled Abdal y Miserena written by Balagtas. Labindalawang Sugat ng

Puso (Twelve Wounds of the Heart), enumerates a dozen "wounds" that love has

inflicted upon a suffering lover:

Hirap, Kalungkutan, Dalita't Hinagpis

Pighati at Dusa, Dalamhati't Sakit
Panibugho't Sindak, Bagabag, Ligalig,
Umiiwang lahat sa aba kong dibdib.

(Weariness, Melancholy, Suffering, and Dejection,

Grief and Sorrow, Depression and Affliction,
Jealousy and Fear, Worry and Axiety,
All these stab my miserable heart.)

In the next twelve stanzas, each of the twelve wounds enumerated above, which are

practically synonymous to each other, are elaborated upon one by one. This strategy

of "repetition of a single idea into many verses" abounds in moro-moro plays.

Bienvenido Lumbera, who has analyzed this play, interprets the lament as a

manifestation of "intoxication with language". That Balagtas interrupted the narrative

line of his play to make room for a speech like this is read by Lumbera as an

indication of the growing sophistication of his audience who had outgrown the

"primitive interest in narrative as a series of incidents, each one of which whets

curiosity for the final outcome of the plot". Lumbera sees this as a positive

development in that it "confronted the poet with the fact of language" and led him to
 62

the "exploration of the expressive possibilities of language", but he lamented that "this

was not necessarily conducive to the production of better drama".3

If we factored in the audience conditions and the mode of consumption of the

moro-moro in our analysis of Balagtas, we may arrive at an alternative reading, and

we could see the practical necessity for his repeated quatrains. Our reading does not

necessarily negate Lumbera's explanation but adds another dimension to it. Imagine

the moro-moro stage, a makeshift, open-air stage made of bamboo and nipa,

surrounded by an audience on both sides as well as front and center. In the following

photo is shown (Illustration 3) a typical nineteenth-century outdoor stage made of

nipa and bamboo erected on a open field.

Illustration 3. A Moro-Moro performance in Taguig. 1899.

From the National Library Filipiniana Collection.

3
Bienvenido Lumbera. 1986. Tagalog Poetry 1570-1898: Tradition and Influences in Its Development. Ateneo de
Manila University Press. pp. 110-111.
 63

In this situation, to make themselves audible to the entire audience, actors would

deliver their lines at all the four corners of the stage, to equitably distribute access to

the unfolding story. In between spoken dialogue, dance movements to musical

accompaniment would be performed to allow an actor to artfully move from one end

of the stage to the other. We can imagine the playwright to have been aware of the

choreographic treatment his writings would receive, so that he allows the same idea to

be repeated in a dozen stanzas each of which would be heard by a different segment

of the audience as the actor makes his rounds of the stage. The playwright, after all,

was usually also the director-prompter called diktador or apuntador, who was in the

thick of things and thus would have had an intimate knowledge of the space of

performance and an intuitive understanding of the needs of his audience within that

space.

I was alerted to this relationship between audience location and repetition in

composition when I observed a moro-moro performance called Arakyo in the village

of Sinasajan in Neuva Ecija in 2005. That particular performance will be the subject

of analysis in a later chapter in this study, but for our current discussion, suffice it to

say that I was quite frustrated at how I could not record the dialogue well because

whatever vantage point I chose, and from whatever location I set up my tripod and

video camera, actors always alternated between being very audible one moment, then

slipping out of hearing range the next. Much later, when I was at home trying to

watch my inadequate footage and trying to match the script to the action on stage,

after watching many replays in a futile attempt to make out words from vaguely

recorded sounds, I began to "see" the point of that which I could not hear. I began to

consider the possibility that inaudible moments are organic parts of the moro-moro

viewing experience. I noticed the orchestration of the dialogue, how the actors moved
 64

in a precise and intricate manner around the stage, and how strategically their

blocking was executed; as if on purpose, they meant to turn their backs on certain

sections of the crowd as they addressed another section on the opposite side. I began

to recognize and appreciate what I describe as the "choreographic logic" of the moro-

moro script, that is, the dynamics of performance embedded in the specific

arrangement of dialogue. Through the choreographic interplay between repeated

verses and rotating blocking, access to dialogue is more or less equitably distributed

to an audience that is conditioned to take turns in hearing parts of the play.

Foreign observers accustomed to Western habits of consumption of the

performing arts may have attempted to follow all the speeches delivered in a moro-

moro performance in their entirety, and quite predictably, they may have found the

experience laborious (since the moro-moro could last for several days). Juan Alvarez

Guerra's account in 1887 of his experiences in a town in the Bicol province illustrates

this point quite well. Guerra arrived from Manila two months before the town fiesta to

observe the community process of producing a comedia. He rented a house next door

to the town’s gobernadorcillo, so he could closely watch the village leader spearhead

the preparations for the 10-day long performance. An entire chapter of his book is

dedicated to sharing anecdotes on the townspeople and their comedia, and his account

culminates in this description of the final day of the long fiesta:

The next night, which was the last, I attended the spectacle, just as I
have done the previous nine nights, and being tired…[from] too much
pasa doble, too much martial music, too much moro-moro, and too
much monotonous and nasal declamation, without much variations, I
listened to the final loa.4

It is not surprising that Guerra found himself tired after watching the whole

show. Just as no one is supposed to consume an entire lechon -- for to do so would

simply be crazy -- a traditional audience was not expected to watch everything, but

4
Don Juan Alvarez Guerra. Viajes por Filipinas De Manila a Albay. Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1887. p. 175.
 65

only to enjoy it in bits and pieces. Their style of watching alternated between

moments of intense concentration at the actors' performance, and moments of

complete disengagement from the proceedings on stage, moments that are devoted to

other pursuits such as conversing or eating. We must not dismiss this behavior as

irreverence, or lack of "theater etiquette" but rather, consider it as a different mode of

consumption of performing arts, a mode which could also be seen elsewhere in

Southeast Asia. Writing about the way a Sumatran audience listens to a hikayat

recital, James Siegel notes: "During the recitation, which can take a whole night and

sometimes two or even three nights, people wander in and out, chat quietly, and then

at certain times, not necessarily when the action is most exciting, listen intently."5

Likewise, in his study of audiences at traditional professional storytelling and literary

recitals in Kelantan, Patani, Trengganu, Pahang and Kedah, Amin Sweeney explains

how "the listeners would be seated or reclining on mats, and one might expect to hear

a whole range of background noises, from babies screaming to old men pounding

their betel chew. Consequently, the audience was not likely to catch every word, nor

would it expect to do so."6

The informal and relaxed atmosphere, and the consumption of the play in bits

and pieces, was not limited to outdoor moro-moro performances in the village setting,

but was also experienced in permanent theater houses in Manila's port district, where

moro-moro performances were available commercially. One might think that a

"theater house" would offer a more formal viewing experience, but whether held

indoors or outdoors moro-moro performances were characterized by informality,

casualness, and the din of background noises.

5
James Siegel. 1979. Shadow and Sound: The Historical Thought of a Sumatran People. p. 205
6
Amin Sweeney. 1980. Authors and Audiences in Traditional Malay Literature. Center for Southeast Asian
Studies. University of California.
 66

A few words are in order here about the nature of the theater houses in which

the moro-moro was shown. During the nineteenth century, many theater houses

sprouted in the port area, catering to different audiences. Quite a contrast existed

between comedia español or Spanish plays, and comedia tagala or the moro-moro.

The former, which was patronized by the elite and upper social classes were staged in

the better theaters, which were constructed of strong materials and more opulently

decorated. One such building, the Teatro de Binondo, was described as "magnificent".

It had a vestibule crowned by a high gallery, and two wings with two rooms below,

which housed two cafes. Comedia tagala, of which the moro-moro is a sub-species, in

contrast tended to be staged in theaters made of flimsier materials such as nipa and

bamboo where, as Retana put it, "natives raised a platform wherever they could."7

One such native theater house was set up in the owner's backyard, while another

called Teatro Guiñol, was a roofless structure, six by fourteen meters in size, which

was frequently dismantled, transported, and re-assembled at the sites of fiestas.8

An American observer, John Foreman, who saw comedia tagala theaters in

the suburbs of Manila and described their condition as being the type of theaters

"none of which a dramatic company of any note would consent to perform",

complained that in one theater called Teatro Filipino, the performance could be partly

seen from the street. The Teatro de Tondo, meanwhile, was situated in a dirty

thoroughfare in a low quarter. Yet another theater house called Teatro Zorilla "was

built without any regard to its acoustic properties such that only a third of the

audience could hear the dialogue."9 Foreman, of course, was unaware of the

traditional mode of consumption of the moro-moro, of consumption in bits and

7
See Retana, Noticias, p, 71.
8
Christina Laconico Buenaventura. 1994. The Theaters of Manila 1846-1946. DLSU Press. p. 24
9
John Foreman. The Philippine Islands. 1906. 1980 reprint by the Filipiniana Book Guild. p. 349.
 67

pieces, which allowed audiences to enjoy performances despite their having many

moments of inaudible dialogue.

The physical arrangement inside a moro-moro theater house bore semblances

to the village open-air set-up. In his recollection of a 19th century native theater,

Atayde describes a structure made of nipa and bamboo with a huge theater barn

composed of two parts: a stage and a patio where the audience gathered. Hanging

coconut oil lamps provided lighting under which the audience either sat or stood in

the patio where unnumbered long benches accommodated as many people as could be

squeezed in. A fee was paid at the entrance, and once inside, the audience was free to

choose from which vantage point to watch the show. This was similar to the situation

out on the village green where spectators brought their own benches.

In Manila theaters, access to a performance was not limited to paying patrons,

as there was a practice of giving those who could not pay a chance to see part of the

show for free. Just before the last act, the management would shout, a la verde!, and

those waiting outside for this go-signal would rush in.10 The late entry of spectators is

not a hindrance to their enjoyment of the performance, accustomed as they are to

consuming the moro-moro in bits and pieces just like at a fiesta. And the paying

patrons are not likely to cry foul, either, when the non-paying patrons arrive because

by then, they would have firmly established themselves at the more advantageous

viewing points and the latecomers would have to settle for less favorable locations.

In both the indoor setting in Manila or the outdoor setting at a village fiesta, an

infinite number of people turn up at a performance, and questions about "seating

capacity" (or standing capacity for that matter) are not asked, for as long as there is

room, spectators are accommodated, and even when there seems to be no space left,

10
Buenaventura. p. 4.
 68

somehow, more room is created in unorthodox ways by the resourceful spectators. In

the village of San Dionisio in Manila, young boys were known to climb on top of the

church roof to have a bird's eye view of the moro-moro stage erected on the plaza

below. Another favorite habit is the encroachment of the audience on the stage itself.

Avid listeners would seize the opportunity to be within hearing distance and would

climb up the elevated stage and sit on the floor, or stand at the sides, or even next to

the musicians and prompter. A modern playgoer who is accustomed to a comfortable

aesthetic and physical distance between actor and spectator may find this

encroachment peculiar and somewhat disconcerting. This was not limited to

nineteenth and early twentieth century audience, however. In the performance

pictured below, which took place in 2003 in a village in Gapan, Nueva Ecija, we can

identify the same practice of the audience occupying the stage.11

Illustration 4: The audience sitting on the stage at a

moro-moro performance in Gapan City. 2005.

We can see here that the stage is already made of concrete, with a permanent roof

made of corrugated iron sheets. For the performance, a platform made of wood was

attached to extend the playing space. In the past, however, the stages were made of

11
Photo Credits: Ramon Valmonte. 2003. Taken from the Nueva Ecija Journal “Arraquio”. Net:
http://www2.mozcom.com/~mic55/arraquio/index.html
 69

flimsier materials: a wooden frame and base; roof and walls made of bamboo and

nipa.

The common practice of audiences perching on the stage posed a serious

threat to the safety of performers and audiences alike as makeshift stages were not

designed to carry too much weight and were likely to collapse. This was recognized in

1920 by a certain Francisco Labrador, who headed the committee responsible for the

stage on which the play Eureana would be performed during the fiesta of San Nicolas

in Cebu. As the anecdote goes, Labrador attempted to order the audience to get off the

stage, but was repeatedly ignored. In frustration, he put a stop to the performance and

ordered policemen to remove stubborn spectators from the stage. One man resisted

vigorously and was taken to the police station. As it turns out, he was the uncle of the

lead actress playing the role of Princess Eureana, who subsequently walked out of the

play in protest. The remaining actors had to proceed without her, as it was the sixth

night of the scheduled seven-night run. What Labrador feared, but successfully

prevented, did happen at the nearby locality of Pasil where, in May of the same year,

at the height of the estocada or sword fight, the stage went crashing down taking

actors and audience with it.12

This habit of unorthodox maximization of space reminds one of another

Filipino cultural icon -- the jeepney or local mini-bus -- and how it is made to carry

far more people than it should. Passengers are squeezed onto two, long, built-in

benches, then more passengers are plunked on their laps, while others "stand" hanging

onto rails outside the vehicle. Even more passengers can be accommodated on the

jeepney’s rooftop. Such a packed jeepney would stop frequently to pick up and drop

off a passenger anywhere along its route, making for a very long and uncomfortable

12
Wilhelmina Q. Ramas. 1982. Sugbuanon Theater From Sotto to Rodriguez and Kabahar: An Introduction to
Pre-war Sugbuanon Drama. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. p. 19
 70

ride. For frequent jeepney users, however, the flexibility of the "seating

arrangements" means that they are guaranteed a ride and everyone gets to enjoy the

convenience of being dropped off where they need to be, rather than at designated

stops. There is a casual nonchalance over safety, and rarely are there signs of

impatience about keeping to a schedule in order to arrive on time at a destination. The

audience of the moro-moro can be likened to jeepney passengers who can get on and

off the vehicle as they please, and can occupy whatever space they find, in contrast to

the modern theater where the audience is expected to take the whole journey from

start to finish as if strapped to their designated seats.

Like a jeepney ride, a moro-moro performance would also have many "stops"

along the way, and there was a great deal of flexibility in its "schedule". Consider the

following observations by Edith Eberle, an American teacher, at a fiesta in 1927:

Eberle noted that an open-air theater was erected in the public square where programs

were rendered throughout the several days of the fiesta. There were oratorical

contests, school programs, patriotic speeches, plays sponsored by different groups,

and "always the moro-moro" which may "run for a couple of hours, then give way to

some other program only to later continue its performance. So at various times

throughout the two- or three-day festival, the moro-moro occupied the stage." 13

From Eberle’s account we get the sense that the space of performance is

shared, and not dedicated exclusively to the moro-moro. The performance is delivered

in installments, with long intervals, such that a continuous flow was not to be

expected. Decades later, in the 1960's, another American researcher, Richard Soller,

observed that the incremental mode of presentation continued to be the practice. He

reported how in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, the performance "began on Sunday evening, did

13
Edith Eberle. 1927. Palm Tree and Pine; Stories of the Philippine Islands. Cincinatti Ohio:Powell & White. p
132.
 71

not play at all on Monday, resumed performance on Tuesday afternoon, and played

again Tuesday evening. After Wednesday the play continued for the next four

evenings . . ."14

From the conditions discussed above -- the noisy and crowded venues,

partially audible dialogue, flexible nature of the audience's attendance; and the

irregular schedule of the performance -- one may wonder how the moro-moro stories

were intelligible at all. The repetition of ideas is a means of distributing the story

more or less equitably so that a spectator who watches the show only at a certain point

in the story would have a more or less similar experience to another spectator who

gets to watch another part of the performance at another time. moro-moro stories tend

to have similar plot structures and every playwright's "new" composition was likely to

be familiar. moro-moro plays constantly repeat the same themes, and follow expected

formulae. The playwright draws from a standard set of stock situations and

stereotyped characters, such that a viewer would have a conceptual map of the

proceedings and would be able to anticipate events even if the dialogue is partially

inaudible and the performance is periodically interrupted. This situation can similarly

be seen in classical Javanese theater where, as one scholar points out "typology serves

as the backbone of theatrical performances as it helps the audience to understand what

is happening on the stage even if the spoken word is not clearly understood".15

Repetitious Plots: moro-moro Malleability and Elasticity

Each moro-moro play involves standard scenes that occur repeatedly, namely:

there is the typical palace scene where kings discuss with their councilors the subject

of war with other kingdoms; the embahada or scene depicting an ambassadorial

14
Robert Soller. Moro-Moro. Sunday Times Magazine. May 22, 1960. p. 19
15
Clara Brakel-Papenhuyzen. 1995. Classical Javanese Dance. Leiden: KITLV Press. p. 51.
 72

mission to a foreign kingdom where haughty verbal exchanges take place; the

courtship scene where a prince and princess meet by chance and immediately fall in

love, usually in a forest or a garden (called palahardinan or palasintahan); and the

torneo or tournament scene where knights battle for the hand of a princess. Other

stock scenes include abductions, ambushes by bandits, fighting off wild beasts,

rescues, and miracles. Nothing, however, rivaled in popularity the battle scenes

between Christians and Muslims, where Christian kingdoms invariably emerged

victorious over Muslim kingdoms; and the romantic encounters between Christian

and Muslim lovers, princes and princesses that usually culminated in marriage after

the Muslim had converted to Christianity.

The repetition of these standard scenes over and over again throughout the

course of a lengthy performance plays an important function. It allows the playwright

elbow room to contract and expand the story as the situation dictates, thus giving the

moro-moro a great deal of malleability and elasticity. A town that has a huge budget

for the moro-moro may want the show to last for nine nights to coincide with the

nine-day novena in honor of the town's patron saint. To accommodate such a

schedule, several kingdoms may be included in the story, in which case the palace

scenes, battles, speeches, tournaments to win the hand of each princess, and so on,

will be repeated in each of the kingdoms. A playwright may add or decrease the

number of kings, princes, and princesses in the story, depending on what the fiesta

committee requests. On a particularly prosperous year with abundant harvest, there

may be more characters or personajes included in the story since there are funds to

provide for the costumes. The more personajes added, the more repetition of scenes is

required, as each pair of lovers would be given its mandatory set of scenes.
 73

A town with a lesser budget might be able to stage a play for only two nights,

and the budget might provide for only a few costumes for a few characters. The

playwright commissioned to write a play for such an occasion would likely shorten

the story by including only a few kingdoms, which would then lead to fewer

repetitions of the standard scenes. A cruder method for shortening plays would

involve recycling an existing script and simply cutting out sections. As we can see,

the repetition of scenes was hardly considered boring or redundant. More repetition

would have been a sign of prestige, reflecting an abundance of wealth and resources

while, conversely, a shorter performance involving less repetition would have

signaled hard times and belt-tightening in the municipality.

The elasticity of performances is not unique to the moro-moro, but can also be

seen in other forms of theater of an episodic nature. Take for example an operatic folk

theater called mendu found in the Riau district of Sumatra. It also has an episodic

structure, with each lakon or story being elastic or stretchable, such that performances

can be as short as one night, or as long as forty-four nights. The flexibility applies to

the whole play as well as individual episodes and scenes. For example, a scene

showing the heroine, Siti Mahadewi, relaxing in her garden can be shown briefly or

developed into a half-hour sequence with the inclusion of songs and dances by her

companions and attendants, and to lengthen the episode even further, comedy can be

introduced.16

A fiesta committee would usually demand that an "original" play be composed

specifically for their fiesta. To create an "original" play, a playwright would flesh out

stock situations in different ways, such that an audience will see something new each

time they watch the familiar scenarios. The moro-moro had an enormous, practically

16
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof. 1994. Dictionary of Traditional South-east Asian Theatre. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press. p, 176.
 74

inexhaustible, capacity to incorporate diverse elements and accommodate insertions.

A playwright may draw inspiration from various sources, such as romances, folk

tales, or biblical stories, and inject them into his play. Let us take for example the

standard scene where the hero "encounters a beast", which may be performed in many

unique ways. In the play Prinsipe Reynaldo (Prince Reynaldo) the protagonist would

wrestle with lions, perhaps inspired by the biblical story of Daniel who was thrown in

a pit full of lions, or even Samson who was mentioned in the bible as having killed a

lion with his bare hands. Later in the play, the "encounter with beasts" scene is

repeated, but the "beast" this time is a giant, perhaps inspired by the bible story of

David and Goliath. In another play, Haring Villarba (King Villarba), the hero is

swallowed by a whale, just as Jonah was in the bible.

Despite the infinite number of ways in which innovations are introduced,

moro-moro plays are firmly anchored in a particular theater tradition and practice. As

theater historian Doreen Fernandez puts it, every element in the moro-moro is

"standard and expected", and since scripts have been played and replayed, "the

playwright simply fleshes out, rearranges, and bridges them differently".17 In this

respect the moro-moro playwright had much in common with his theater counterparts

in the rest of Southeast Asia. In her study of the shaping of Javanese plays, Bosnak

reports how the playwright-directors of kethoprak, loddrok, and topeng pajegan

prepare their performance by combining and recombining different elements of their

repertory. This structured process of improvisation results in a “play schemata” that is

unique in form and content, but at the same time resembles its predecessors.18 Theater

anthropologist John Emigh calls this manner of script-building "an act of bricolage",

17
Doreen Fernandez. <Princesa Miramar and Principe Leandro: Text and Context in a Philippine Komedya>.
Philippinr Studies 39 (1991): 418.
18
Judy Bosnak. 2006. Shaping the Javanese Play: Improvisation of the Script in Theater Performance.
Netherlands: Universiteit Leiden. p. 39-40
 75

referring to Levi Strauss's discussion of "bricoleur" in The Savage Mind. The

bricoleur constructs his bricolage in a retrospective way. He chooses elements from

his already existing oeuvre, restructuring them into a “new” assemblage.19

In his study of Southeast Asian theater, James Brandon notes a pattern in the

mode of production of plays in the region: "the aim of production is not to produce

one play, or even ten or a hundred separate plays, but to stage examples of a specific

genre. The genre, not the play, is the unit of production". In the West, says Brandon,

each play was "hand-crafted" while in Southeast Asia, they were "pre-fabricated". But

this does not mean that all plays are the same. Brandon clarifies this further by

likening the many plays produced to the "patterns of a kaleidoscope, all the

combinations are regroupings of the same elements. No two patterns are exactly alike;

none are totally different."20

As bricoleurs, Southeast Asian playwrights have been viewed as poor writers

by foreign observers who interpreted the penchant for using second-hand plots as a

sign of lack of originality and creativity. They failed, however, to take into account

the mode of consumption of the performances, the habits of gathering, and the

specific audience conditions – all of which made repetition in both form and content

necessary for the plays to be rendered intelligible.

Habits of Orality in Composition and Consumption

In his study of traditional Malay authors and audiences, Sweeney explains

how habits of oral composition persisted in the writing process of authors of

traditional Malay literature. Written works made use of schematic composition in the

19
John Emigh. 1996. Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theater. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 177-180.
20
James Brandon. 1967. Theater in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 147
 76

manner of orally composed narratives performed by professional storytellers. In fact,

various genres of traditional written Malay literature, such as romances, were meant

to be recited out loud and heard communally, rather than read in private for individual

consumption. As such, written works were geared towards the mental set of a

"listening" rather than a "reading public", and since a listening audience did not have

the opportunity to revert back to the text to pause and ponder on intricacies, plots

tended to follow prescribed patterns with which the audience was familiar. Schemata

were necessary not only to the composer in structuring his narrative, but also to the

audience in comprehending it, so that "it was important that the writer should adhere

to patterns conforming with his postulated listener's level of expectation." For as long

as the schematic pattern was adhered to, the audience would be familiar with the

general contours of the story and would not be confused even if there are inaudible

passages, because in such cases they could "project meaning into the missing part,

and any such meaning would be likely to conform to the composer's intention".21

We can gather that habits of orality persisted in the composition of moro-moro

plays, and that playwrights employed schematic composition not only from his use of

schemata, which are manifested in abundance in extant scripts, but also from

anecdotes about the "writing" process involved in producing plays. The image of a

moro-moro playwright at work was less like a scribe bent over a piece of paper

scribbling away in private, and closer to a storyteller orally composing and narrating a

tale in a communal setting. Take for instance the anecdotes about two great Tagalog

poet-playwrights, Francisco Balagtas and Jose Corazon de la Cruz. Balagtas was

known to have the habit of dictating the verses for his plays to scribes who wrote

them down. His children, who have witnessed him at work, relate that he could work

21
Sweeney, Amin. Authors and Audiences in Traditional Malay Literature. Center for South and Southeast Asian
Studies, University of California Berkeley. 1980. p. 22.
 77

on different projects at the same time, dictating to two scribes. This was his usual

practice because of the large number of people commissioning him to "write" poetry.

He was also known to compose plays orally -- that is, extemporaneously -- even

during show time, dictating the dialogue directly to the actors.22 Jose de la Cruz,

likewise, was reputed to have composed in this manner. According to biographer Jose

Maria Rivera, De la Cruz had an itinerant company of actors and one time his group

was invited to stage a moro-moro at a fiesta in Batangas. When they arrived in the

town, the parish priest gave de la Cruz a book he wanted to be turned into a play. The

following day, he had completed part of the play, and composed and dictated the rest

as the play progressed.23

This mode of composing plays orally was not limited to the great professional

poets Balagtas and De La Cruz. It seemed to be a common practice even among

lesser-known village playwrights. Arcadio Marquez from San Dionisio, Parañaque,

who composed moro-moro plays in the 1920's, relates how he learned the art from his

grandfather. The old man, he recalls, would blurt out lines for a play as he spat out his

betel nut chew and someone else would write it down for him.24 Vivencio Rosales,

from Bohol province, recounts that when he was writing moro-moro plays in the

1930's he had no stable job and was engaged in "manok-manok" or peddling poultry-

related merchandise. He would compose verses while on his boat plying his trade and

write them down in a notebook when he arrived home.25

Closer to our time, at a rehearsal in Southern Leyte in the 1960s, the

researcher Robert Soller reported how the cast, which had already been in rehearsal

for 11 consecutive days was informed that there would be no rehearsal the following
22
See Hermenegildo Cruz. 1906. Kung Sino ang Kumatha ng Florante. Santa Cruz, Maynila: Libreria Manila
Filatelico. p. 179-180.
23
Lumbera, p. 73.
24
Fernandez., 1991 p. 413
25
See Primitiva Salera Veloso. 1975. "A Study of the Moro-Moro Elements in Five Plays by Vivencio Rosales, A
Boholano Playwright". MA Thesis. University of San Carlos.
 78

evening because the author-director needed that time to finish the play.26 We have

heard this type of story before, of playwrights still working on the script close to

performance time, if not during actual performance.

Balagtas and De La Cruz have left behind anecdotes about this habit, but

stories also abound of humble playwrights whose poetic feats have not been recorded

in print. To compose in this manner a playwright, drawing from stock knowledge and

relying on conventional formulae must versify spontaneously. The skillfulness of

moro-moro playwrights as oral composers (and less as "writers") is hardly surprising

when we consider the long history and the embeddedness of oral versifying in

Philippine society.

In his account of 16th century Visayan culture and society, the Spanish

missionary Francisco Alcina reports that to gain community respect a man must have

been able to participate in the spontaneous versifying that accompanied social

gatherings. The really skillful were practically professionals and were eagerly sought

after for weddings and other festive displays of prestige. Alcina writes that many

natives were reputed to be more articulate in verse than in ordinary conversation, and

all were able to perform for hours at a time and even whole days or nights "without

dropping a syllable or fumbling a word."27

Walter Ong explains that skilled oral art forms preceded and predetermined

the style of written works. Oral narrative is more directly connected with the totality

of the social world than literary narrative needs to be, making orality itself continuous

with social existence. Writing may have transmuted oral performance into new

26
Robert Soller. "Three Centuries of Moro-Moro" in Sunday Times Magazine. May 22, 1960. P 19
27
Taken from Francisco Ignacio Alcina. 1668. Historia de las islas e indios de Bisayas. Part 1, Book 3:30. Victor
Baltazar transcription. University of Chicago Philippine Studies Program 1962. In William Henry Scott. 1994.
Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. p. 98
 79

genres, but oral mindsets and ways of expression have persisted, and while these

habits of orality may have diminished, they never entirely disappeared.28

One obvious manifestation of the persistence of oral modes of expression, or

habits of orality, in the composition of moro-moro scripts can be seen in the lexicon

of stock phrases that are used repeatedly. The word lilo (cruel) for instance, appears in

various combinations and phrase settings, and is used recurrently in a single script to

convey villainy. It can be used to describe either Christians or Moros, thus the

common appellations lilong Heneral (cruel General) and lilong Moro (cruel Moro). It

can also appear in combination with a plethora of unflattering adjectives: lilo at sukab

(cruel and traitorous); lilo't palamara (cruel and ungrateful); lilo't tampalasan (cruel

and deceitful); lilo at taksil (cruel and impudent); lilo't sinungaling (cruel and liar).

In her analysis of the moro-moro script, Doreen Fernandez opines that the

many terms for villainy "seem to be chosen and placed by folk poets largely for

reasons of line length and rhyme, or for variety, and not for accuracy of meaning".

The way these stock phrases are employed by the moro-moro playwright in his

writing of scripts is similar to the way an oral composer relies on stock phrases in oral

versifying. This does that mean however, that they are inserted mindlessly for "they

do have nuances of meaning, and reveal an unspoken roster of traits that are not

acceptable to the komedya ethic". It is worth noting that these words are no longer

used in everyday conversation; they are old words that appear in one of the earliest

dictionaries compiled by the Spanish which is believed to contain orally transmitted

folk material dating from the initial period of interactions between the native and

Spanish cultures.29

28
Walter J. Ong. "Orality, Literacy, and Medieval Textualization" in New Literary History, Vol. 16, No. 1, Oral
and Written Traditions in the Middle Ages. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 1-12.
29
Doreen Fernandez. 1991. "Princesa Miramar at Pricipe Leandro: Text and Context in a Philippine Komedya" in
Philippine Studies 39(1991). pp. 426-427.
 80

When the Spanish first arrived in the archipelago, they found a people who

had their own writing system and rich oral tradition. Spanish chroniclers are

unanimous, however, in their observation that writing was used not for producing

literature but for records and short letters. The missionaries replaced the native

writing system with the Roman alphabet and burned a lot of indigenous writings, and

the surviving texts were eventually lost as they were written on highly perishable

materials. The natives lost their proficiency in their own writing system, but oral

tradition continued to be preserved in singing. Spanish missionaries attempted to

compose new songs in the local languages so that the natives would "forget the

ancient songs reeking of their past paganism," but their lack of skill (being primarily

clergymen rather than poets) produced awkward verses that failed to meet the

aesthetic standards of their intended audience. In San Agustin's Compendio it is

reported that the natives were shown various poems written according to the rules of

Spanish riming but these did not please the natives, who said that they were not

poems.30

The anecdote just mentioned can lead to exciting new ways of viewing and

understanding the moro-moro audience as aural connoisseurs with an ear for poetic

recitation. As pointed out earlier, many native ilustrados, taking after their Spanish

mentors, looked down on the moro-moro as backward and its audiences as "pobres y

ignorantes" or the "poor and ignorant". With the introduction of reading and writing,

highly skillful oral composers and performers were thus transmogrified, from being

experts to being ignorantes. They were “illiterate”, however, only in the sense that

they could not directly read printed material, though they could still access it

indirectly. Indeed, the bulk of the moro-moro audience was made up of the masses

30
Lumbera, pp. 52-53.
 81

who had no schooling and may not have learned to read nor write, but from another

angle of vision, we could make the case that this audience was composed of aural

connoisseurs who were raised in oral poetry and were thus peculiarly "literate" -- an

audience that was well versed in literary fare despite their print illiteracy. The nature

of "reading" was such that access to written works was not limited to those who were

lettered but extended to everyone else who could listen. For both the educated

ilustrado and the illiterate indio alike, literature was an aural experience. Written

works were chanted and sung, or intoned audibly rather than read in silence, which

also meant that literature was consumed communally, rather than individually, and

libritos (booklet) often passed hands. As such, printed material were accessible not

only to the literate few who could read, but also to the wider majority, a "listening

public" that not only consumed stories but also recalled, reconstructed, and relayed

them from memory. For this orally-inclined audience, the kinds of written works that

tended to be appealing were those that lent themselves to oral transmission.

The written artistic forms that did became popular from the mid 1700's

onwards were the texts called pasyon, awit, and corrido, and the dramatic forms

sinakulo and moro-moro. These made use of poetic conventions from the folk

tradition, including stanza forms and riming patterns, and were thus geared towards

the mental set of their audience. The use of folk stanza forms allowed for popular

reading materials to be sung to traditional melodies, a fact which aided in their

popularization. In the section that follows we shall discuss these written literary

genres that enjoyed wide circulation alongside the moro-moro to provide a socio-

literary context that will aid us in our understanding of the appeal of the moro-moro to

its audience.
 82

Theocratic Literature from the Spanish Colonial Period

Penned by a native of Batangas, Gaspar Aquino de Belen, the Mahal na

Pasion (Holy Passion of Christ) was the first published narrative poem in Tagalog and

dated from 1704. Unlike the awkward earlier attempts by missionary poets to write in

the Tagalog language, the pasyon was vivid and evocative. The Tagalog Pasion is

akin to a huge family of Spanish writing on the passion, death, and resurrection of

Christ, but it is not merely a translation of its Spanish counterparts. When Bienvenido

Lumbera compared the Vita Cristi from Spain and the Tagalog Pasion, he noted that

although both used the same measure (quintanilla: a stanza of 5 octosyllabic lines),

the Tagalog version made use of a different rhyme scheme: the monorime of Tagalog

folk poetry which allowed it to be set to folk melodies.

The pasyon's dramatized version is called sinakulo. Parts of the long narrative

poem were turned into dialogue, and recited by actors in between re-enactments. The

pasyon and sinakulo were performed during Holy Week and animated village life

with calendric predictability. The pabasa or the reading sessions of the pasyon,

which took several days or nights to complete, involved the coming together of

villagers, to gather around for the communal consumption of poetry. The staging of

the sinakulo, likewise, required the coming together of the community, to participate

in the procession, to build the stage, to produce the costumes, and to coordinate actors

and musicians. We mention the pasyon and sinakulo here, not only to provide a sense

of the socio-literary climate in the early 1700's, but also to make the argument that

these two religious genres cultivated among its audience modes of oral presentation

and aural communal consumption, and established the habits of gathering that would

exert a strong influence on the shape and form of the moro-moro plays which

emerged not long after the pasyon was first published.

 83

While the pasyon text and the dramatized sinakulo were centered on the story

of Christ, and were performed during Holy Week, three new poetic genres that

emerged in the mid 1700's were of a more secular nature. The metrical romances

awit and corrido, and the dramatized moro-moro dealt with tales of chivalry set in

faraway medieval kingdoms. While the story of Christ could not be altered too much,

tales of chivalry could, such that these three genres offered poet-composers who were

skilled versifiers, ample opportunity to unleash their full creative impulse to compose

epic narratives.31

All three literary genres dip from the same wellspring of chivalric tales of love

and honor set in faraway medieval kingdoms. The plots and characters were adapted

from Spanish ballads which dealt with knightly pursuits of the Crusades. As such, the

conflict between Christians and Moors was a central feature of these stories. It is

believed that they made their way from Spain to the Philippines via Mexico. Prior to

1766, the lucrative Manila-Acapulco trade route brought many Mexican natives in

contact with locals. Soldiers and sailors, or guachinagos, who intermarried and settled

in the Philippines are the most likely transmitters of the plots of the Spanish ballads,

which in turn supplied skillful local poets with exciting new themes, characters, and

settings.32

The theory of this Mexican connection is supported by both literary and

iconographic evidence. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Franciscan missionaries

31
It must be mentioned here that the pasyon readings also offered an opportunity for composition and spontaneous
versification, though in a more limited way when compared with the secular awit, corrido, and moro-moro which
poets composed in their entirety. During pasyon readings, recitation often strayed mischievously from written texts
which is why Spanish priests regularly condemned pabasa gatherings as sites of sin and superstition. Another
manifestation of how the pasyon was siezed by local poets as a venue for expression of their poetic impulse is the
manner in which the "literary" version of the pasyon penned by Gaspar Aquino de Belen in 1704 over time,
through constant copying, memorizing, and passing of hands, had evolved into the Pasyong Pilapil which contains
many new sections. The deviations of the Pilapil version from the earlier Pasyon offers a window into popular
consciousness. The Pilapil version was in fact the most popular version of the pasyon among the rural folk, even
though (or perhaps because) it was the least polished.
32
Rafael Bernas. 1965. Mexico en Filipinas: Estudio de una transculturacion. Mexico: Universidad Autonoma de
Mexico. pp. 109-25.
 84

brought to Mexico a type of drama called Moros y Cristianos, to represent the

superiority of their race and religion. Moros y Cristianos has its roots in the chivalric

epics and dramatizations of medieval Christian communities of the Iberian peninsula.

The period's literature and drama was closely linked to the Reconquista and the cult of

Santiago de Matamoros. It is believed that Santiago (St. James), one of the original

apostles of Christ who proselytized in the Iberian Peninsula, would descend from the

skies astride a white horse to provide divine assistance to Christians fighting Moors.

He is said to have appeared to Charlemagne in a dream and instructed him to build an

army and enter Spain. Santiago's aid was instrumental in Charlemagne's bid to unite

Christendom. Anthony Shelton, in his study of chivalric literature and Moros y

Cristianos explains:

The close association of the two warriors the one divine, the other
temporal, may have encouraged a close, even confused, identification
between them, which stimulated many of the Mexican versions of the
Dance of the Moors and Christians to be based on acts of Charlemagne
rather than Santiago…The Charlemagne association encouraged the
development of another common dance drama with a similar
theme…the Doce Pares de Francia. Furthermore, the conflation of the
two parallel traditions may be responsible for the mixed and sometimes
confusing iconography found in many contemporary dramatic
performances, such as that between the dress of the Moors and Romans
found in Mexico and the Philippines.

Shelton suggests that it was oral traditions rather than written epics and their

associated literature that exerted a stronger influence on the popularization of the

structure and content of these conflict-based dramas. Spanish ballads and chivalric

tales were transmitted by pilgrims who traveled along the Jacobean trail, and the

various stories, as they were repeated, melded through time.33 It is perhaps for this

reason that the stories transmitted to Mexicans and later to Filipinos were garbled

plots that deviated greatly from the Spanish ballads as sung at their point of origin.

33
Anthony Shelton. "The Performative Lives of Narratives: European Chivalric Literature and the Dance of Moors
and Chirsitians" in Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof. 2004. Reflections on Asian-European Epics. Singapore: Asia-Europe
Foundation. pp. 266, 278.
 85

The content of the awit, corrido and moro-moro, like the pasyon, may have

originated from foreign sources but in the process of being transplanted were

reconstituted within a literary grammar that grew out of the Filipino social world. And

while the moro-moro has a performance text, and the awit and corrido are metrical

romances, the most popular stories like Don Juan Tiñoso, Doce Pares, and Bernardo

Carpio are not only read as romance, and acted out as moro-moro, but are also told as

folk-tales and in a sense take on the characteristics of oral lore.

An examination of pasyon, sinakulo, awit, corrido and moro-moro verse

structures can give us a "feel" for how these complementary genres sounded, and how

they were enjoyed. They were all written in stanzas of four lines each, following

traditional folk quatrains. They differed in meter, tone, melody, and length of time

required performing them. The corrido makes use of the octosyllabic meter, and is

sung allegro, to lively melodies and thus is quicker to complete. The awit makes use

of the dodecasyllabic meter, is sung andante, or in a more serious, somber tone, and

takes longer to finish.34 The pasyon also followed the octosyllabic meter and was

sung to various melodies. Ileto describes how the pasyon sounded thus: "Although the

Spanish melodic influence is dominant, one particular style called tagulaylay, in

which a complete stanza is completed in one breath with fancy curls and trills, harks

back to pre-Spanish modes of singing."35

As for the dramatized pasyon, the sinakulo, there were two modes of delivery:

the hablada (recited) and the cantada (sung). The hablada requires that the lines be

spoken in deliberate manner so that the rhythmic measure of each verse and the

riming scheme of each stanza may be shown for the purpose of giving the impression

of the dignity of the theme. The cantada requires that the lines be sung in much the

34
Damiana Eugenio. 1995. Mga Piling Awit at Korido. pp. xvi
35
Reynaldo Ileto. 1979. Pasyon and Revolution:Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. p. 20.
 86

same way the pasyon is chanted during the Lenten season. The hablada version can

be completed in one presentation, while the full-length cantada takes longer, as much

as three nights, to complete.36

In contrast to the other written genres mentioned above, the moro-moro verses

were not set to folk melodies, but rather were intoned in a monotone allowing

playwrights to make effective use of both the octosyllabic and dodecasyllabic meters.

The audience would hear the director-prompter and actors in alternation, creating a

rhythmic discontinuity that allowed for transitions of meter that are not possible in the

sung pasion, awit, and corridor, which are set to fixed melodies. In the play entitled

Principe Baldovino for example, the celebrated poet Jose de la Cruz makes use of the

octosyllabic meter for a quarrel scene. The brevity of the lines coupled with the

splitting of the lines of the quatrains between the two actors, their alternating

dialogue, and the allegro beat, effectively captured the excitement of growing tension

between the two warriors.37 De la Cruz then shifts to the dodecasyllabic meter for a

love scene much later, which would have most likely been delivered andante style.

In watching the moro-moro the native audience saw something both familiar

and extraordinary. It was familiar in that it made use of conventional schemata,

narrative motifs, stock imagery, and riming patterns found in the pasyon, awit,

corrido, and sinakulo - the delivery of dialogue may have even sounded very similar.

In many ways, however, it was extraordinary, a visual and sensory feast quite unlike

other literary fare available at the time: it had magic effects, elaborate stages that

resembled castles; it had awesome props such as paper mache giants, and mechanical

birds, and beasts and dragons manipulated with bamboo poles, and pyrotechnics! The

moro-moro made audiences giddy with courtship scenes between handsome princes

36
Francisco G. Tonogbanua. A Survey of Filipino Literature. Manila, Philippines, 1959. p. 80
37
Lumbera, p. 72.
 87

and beautiful princesses. Most importantly, the moro-moro had the exciting war

dances, and rousing battle scenes. In the moro-moro we find the convergence of two

artistic impulses: the impulse to versify, and the impulse to dance. In the lengthy and

repetitious moro-moro these two impulses find full expression.

The Pleasure in Repetition

The lechon that makes it to the fiesta buffet table will have had months of

preparation behind it, starting with the selection of a most promising piglet, that will

be fattened up with care. Come fiesta time, it will be skewered, and then roasted

whole. Lechon get its unique flavor from being turned constantly over hot coals, in a

pit located in plain sight, in some common space where it can be shown off and

collectively anticipated by everyone who will later have a share of it. We can think of

the process of publicly roasting a pig as a sensory feast in itself, before the actual

feast.

Just as the lechon was roasted in plain sight, so too were moro-moro

rehearsals held in public to be watched before the actual show. So writes an American

observer in 1906: “Rehearsals took place daily in the grass-grown streets, and might

be witnessed by any who wished. Even the moonlit nights were dedicated to practice

in the wide street in front of the presidencia.”38 This was also the case for the Ermita-

Pahina district in Cebu, where in 1920, the linambay (local name for moro-moro)

entitled Trasmonte de la Fortuna, was held for nine evenings. A day or so before the

opening night, the cast held their final rehearsal on stage and a huge throng of

spectators flocked to the stage to watch, filling the Plaza to full capacity. Ambulatory

vendors exploited the opportunity and set up an impromptu fair on the plaza

38
William Bowen Freer. 1906. The Philippine Experiences of an American Teacher; a narrative of work and
travel in the Philippine Islands. New York: C. Scribner’s sons. p. 74.
 88

grounds.39 I saw this myself in the village of San Dionisio in Parañaque City in 2006,

when rehearsals were held outdoors, in the plaza fronting the church in plain sight of

everyone, complete with lapel microphones and loudspeakers (they were after all

conducting a technical rehearsal which included a sound check).

This practice of rehearsing in plain sight, of showing ahead of time what will

be shown during the actual performance, signals to us that the element of surprise,

which is so valued in the West, may not be as important for a traditional audience that

anticipates the familiar. It also indicates to us the pleasurability of repetition. And to

take this point even further, on top of the lengthy and repetitious rehearsals and the

lengthy and repetitious performance, the audience extends the joys of watching by

even asking for encores once the performance is done. It was a common practice for

an actor to be implored upon to repeat a particularly pleasing scene several times

over.

In one striking example, documented in 1917 in the locality of Tehero in

Cebu, an actor endearingly nicknamed "Prinsipe Onsot" so regaled the audience in

one of his scenes that they applauded him vigorously and called for encores. As the

anecdote goes, Onsot obliged the crowd by repeating the scene. Again, the audience

asked for another encore, and he repeated the scene a second time. Yet again the

audience asked for a third encore. This time the actor declined to repeat the scene, and

the playwright, who thought the audience had the right to an encore and who felt so

insulted by the refusal to repeat the rousing scene, slapped him in the face. This

caused the actor to draw his sword, and he would have probably struck the playwright

if others hadn't intervened.40

39
Ramas, p.18
40
Ibid., p. 16
 89

The amount of time spent on enjoying the moro-moro before, during, and after

its performance has been noticed by foreign observers, and this has sometimes led

them to make unflattering conclusions about the Filipino character. This was perhaps

the case with Navarro Chapuli, whose comment about the "dormant intelligence" of

the Filipino we cited earlier. Chapuli made the following observation about the

nineteenth-century native audience:

Nothing enlivens this sorry lot more than the staging of the moro-moro in
open air. . .There they often stray, they have arms for tilling the fields, but. .
.spend a great deal of time practicing for their parts for the moro-moro, in this
they never fail. Like little children, indios need a great number of hours of
play every day…The indio is happy because he has not grown up, and
infancy – unlike serious occupations – requires much happiness and
merrymaking.41

These observations read the amount of time spent on the moro-moro, and the love for

happiness and merrymaking, as indicative of the infantile and indolent nature of the

natives. There are, however, alternative interpretations for the amount of time spent

on the moro-moro. The devotional angle is one, or the lengthy performance as a

worthy offering to a patron saint. Elsewhere in the Hispanic world performances

during fiestas patronales are carried out in fulfillment of a devotional vow called

panata in the Philippines, promesa in Spain, and manda in Central America.

Participation in the performance is a privilege as well as something akin to a tithing -

giving time, treasure, and talent whether in supplication or in thanksgiving for an

answered prayer. We can imagine that a lengthier performance involves more

sacrifice and more resources expended, and thus could be considered a better offering

than a shorter one.

Another explanation, this time beyond the religious devotional frame, may

have to do with the projection of a town's power and prestige. This is similar to an

41
Antonio Chápuli Navarro. Siluetas y Matices Galería Filipina Madrid: Impr. De la Viuda de M. Minuesa de los
Ríos, 1894. p. 168-169.
 90

observation made by Matthew Cohen regarding the popular theater form called

komedi stambul in nineteenth-century Indonesia. Says Cohen, "hosting komedi

troupes was often represented as a part of what made a town or city ramai (lively), it

was seen as a sign of prosperity and health (ramai harja in Javanese) of the civic

body. This ramai quality was also highly valued in komedi performances for the signs

of activity and life onstage osmosed into everyday life. A stage that is ramai

guarantees a society that is ramai as well."42

The panata angle and the ramai quality of the plays suggest that a lengthy

performance is considered meaningful. But even beyond considerations of meaning,

there was something about the repetitiousness and lengthiness of the moro-moro that

was deemed aesthetically pleasing by the audience. It must be clarified here that the

manner in which dialogue was delivered was done less "dramatically" and more

mechanically, even artificially, in a repetitious monotone. The acting in the moro-

moro, inclusive of the language and movement, is highly stylized. An American

spectator of moro-moro in 1906 that “the acting consisted in strutting about the stage

and declaiming what sounded like blank verse in a monotonous, unnatural and high-

pitched voice, with very stiff gestures and little or no facial expression. . ."43

Earlier, we mentioned how since the nineteenth century realism had become

the yardstick against which all literary works were measured. As such, the stylized

moro-moro was (and perhaps continues to be) seen as inferior. Realism, however, is

but one among many yardsticks and what it enshrines as desirable need not be viewed

as universally valued. Who is to say that more natural ways of acting and speaking,

and verisimilitude are inherently better? In her study of classical Javanese dance,

Clara Brakel-Papenhuyzen argues that in the Javanese context, the opposite may be

42
Cohen. p.17.
43
William Bowen Freer. 1906. p. 80
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the case. She makes the point that the more stylized an art form, the more highly

regarded it becomes. In Javanese theater, many rules have to be mastered with

diligence and care in order to achieve the expected harmonious and beautiful result.

If an art form is not stylized it will be considered inferior and lacking in

craftsmanship.44 From this angle, it is entirely plausible that the stylized delivery of

dialogue, which has been described by outsiders as a "blank", "monotonous",

"unnatural", and "high pitched", was valued by the traditional moro-moro audience as

a hallmark of craftsmanship.

Again we turn to Sweeney's study to enlighten us in this regard. For the

traditional audience of classical Malay literature, likewise, a stylized recitation using a

rhythmic monotone, which may be unbearably tedious for a modern audience, was

both engaging and functional. Sweeney claims that the notion of a monotonous chant

as being "boring" is "absurd" for the Malay audience, and is akin to saying that the

letters and words on a printed page is boring. Says Sweeney, "the monotony of the

chant, far from being a negative feature, is a sine qua non for effective

communication" since a "richly melodic rendering of a tale would distract the listener

from the words and relegate them to a position of secondary importance".45

Though Sweeney's analysis is based on a performance genre that involved

recitation, and the moro-moro is after all a form of drama, we can still apply his

analysis to our study. One could make the argument that moro-moro acting was less

of a "dramatization", and more of a recitation combined with "stiff gestures and little

or no facial expression", such that the viewer had to imagine for himself, or had to

reconstruct in his mind, what was being relayed by dialogue. The repetitiousness of

the delivery of dialogue -- that is, the monotone -- aids the viewer in his

44
Clara Brakel-Papenhuyzen. 1995. Classical Javanese Dance. Leiden: KITLV Press. p. 51.
45
Sweeney. pp. 21-22.
 92

reconstruction, and helps to draw him deeper into the story. From this, we can better

appreciate what yet another observer, Forbes-Lindsay, said about the audience:

The native spectators indeed, enter into the action of the play with, as it were,
a grim earnest, as if all their mental faculties were judging the complex
emotions and nice situations. Nothing indeed, on the native character is more
remarkable that its unwavery decorum. Here the happy crowd has been
standing for three hours agape with delight… Here, too, they would be
willing to stand for several hours longer…46

The remark about "remarkable unwavery decorum" made by an American in 1906,

resonates with an observation by the Spanish chronicler Alcina in 1668, nearly two

and half centuries earlier. Alcina reports the existence of a sixteenth century oral art

form called siday or kandu, which was a difficult and noble literary form and which

may correspond with what we refer to as “folk epics”. They were long, sustained,

repetitious, and heavy with metaphor and allusion. The subject matter was the heroic

exploits of ancestors, the valor of warriors, the beauty of women, or even the

exaltation of heroes still living. It might take six hours or the whole night to sing

through, and might even be continued the next night, during which rapt audiences

neither yawned nor nodded "though the frequent repetition of long lines with only the

variation of a few words struck Spanish listeners as tiresome".47

What we see here is a pattern of continuity between the native habits of

presentation and consumption at the point of contact - and presumably before contact

with colonizers - and well into the colonial period. That the Spanish listeners found

the repetitiousness of the native oral art forms tiresome, or tedious, is a very

significant fact. It indicates to us a discernible angle of vision: the repetitiousness and

lengthiness of the moro-moro betray native sensibilities, rather than those of the

46
C.H. Forbes-Lindsay. 1906. America’s Insular Possessions. Philadelphia: J.C. Winston co. p. 548
47
See William Henry Scott. 1994. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Manila: Ateneo
de Manila University Press. p. 98
 93

Spanish friars who first introduced drama in the country. This may lead us to make

exciting new interpretations about the role of the moro-moro in Philippine history.

If we were to go by popular accounts, the moro-moro was a kind of theater

brought by the Spanish to the Philippines, and it was used as a "tool of the

establishment" to instruct the natives on the superiority of the Spanish race and

religion. This suggests to us that it was a creation of parish priests, a kind of

theocratic literature imposed by colonizers "from above" and accepted by natives

"from below". This view has attained near orthodoxy, and has led to a negative

assessment of the moro-moro as colonial baggage, and of Christianized Filipinos as

being "culturally damaged". If the conventions of the moro-moro are any indication,

however, this genre developed "from below", and is a result less of colonial

imposition than of the native population's own creative inertia. The lengthiness and

repetitiousness of the moro-moro must be read in this light -- as a means for

skillfulness (both in composing orally, and listening at length) formerly expressed in

pre-Hispanic oral art forms, to find expression in a new dramatic genre that emerged

under Spanish colonial conditions. That this genre flourished and was much loved by

natives is largely due to the fact that it developed in the hands of local poet-

playwrights who ably catered to the oral mindset of their audience of aural

connoisseurs. Repetition, far from being boring and tedious, was to moro-moro

enthusiasts -- authors, actors, and audiences alike – useful and pleasurable.