INTRODUCTION

[Overview of Spanish Colonization in the Philippines]

 Spanish colonization in the Philippines began in 1565 when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi established
the first permanent settlement in Cebu. Over the next three centuries, Spain exerted control over
the archipelago, introducing Christianity, imposing tribute systems, and exploiting resources. The
Spanish rule led to significant cultural and societal changes, including the introduction of the
Roman Catholic faith, the establishment of a feudal-like system, and the fusion of Spanish and
indigenous cultures, ultimately shaping the Philippines’ socio-political landscape until the end of
Spanish colonial rule in 1898.

[Introduction to the influence of Spanish Culture on Philippine Art (Theatre)]

 Theatre (formal theatre), including the costume, the script, the stage, was really introduced by the
Spaniards during the colonization (because the natives did not have one, kanang formal maybe
before kay walay formal nga costume, and script, and stage)
 The Spaniards had two agendas when they arrived in the Visayas: (1) to conquer the islands, (2)
to convert the natives to Christianity
 The formal staging (theatre) had a very important role in the conversion narratives of the
islanders (natives) (the theatre became a useful tool in aiding the Spaniards to convert the
natives)
 Secular and religious plays in the Philippines bear the indelible mark of Spanish influence,
reflecting the colonial legacy deeply ingrained in the country’s theatrical traditions. Spanning
both secular and religious spheres, Spanish colonization left an enduring impact on Philippine
theater, shaping its themes, forms, and performance styles.

SPANISH INFLUENCE

 Secular
- A theatrical performance that is not primarily focused on religious themes or narratives
- It explores aspects if human life, society, relationships, politics, or other worldly subjects
 Religious Plays
- A theatrical performance that revolves around religious themes, narratives, or characters
- Typically depict events or stories from religious texts, such as the Bible, Quran, or other
sacred scriptures, and often aim to convey moral or spiritual lessons to the audience

POPULAR SECULAR PLAYS DURING THE SPANISH COLONIZATION

1. Komedya (Comedia)
- a theatrical genre heavily influenced by Spanish traditions but adapted to suit local tastes and
sensibilities

Themes and Motifs: Chivalry and Heroism, Romance and Courtly Love, Religious Allegory,
Social Hierarchy and Honor, Conflict and Resolution

Performance Space: Town squares, plazas, Makeshift Stages (Open-air Venues), Local
Theaters, and Community Hall (but uncommon lang sa mga rural areas)

Stage Design: Stage set for komedya were typically portable and easy to assemble and
disassemble, often utilized the natural environment as a backdrop. Platforms, ramps, and
backdrops might be used to suggest different locations or settings

Lighting: Natural light, torchlight and lanterns, bonfires and braziers, and candlelight

Audience: Spanish Colonial Administration, Local Elites, Commoners from the surrounding
communities, Upper Class (might attend in more formal settings: local theaters and private halls)
 Costumes: Elaborate and colorful, featuring intricate designs, patterns, and embellishments.
(Noble Characters: Elaborate gowns or suits or armor, Commoners: Simpler clothes)

Props: Certain props and scenic elements in komedya stage design carried symbolic significance
(Cross for religious settings, Banners or flags for noble characters)

Music and Dance:

Traditional Spanish Music: include zarzuela, flamenco, bolero, fandango, and

seguidilla

Filipino Folk Music: include indigenous musical styles, melodies, and rhythms from
various regions of the Philippines (adapted to suit the themes and atmosphere of the play)

Instrumental Music: include the use of guitars, drums, flutes, and brass instruments

Dance: featured energetic movements, graceful gestures, and synchronized routines. It is

influenced by both Spanish and indigenous Filipino tradtions.

Language: Spanish, Filipino Languages, Hybrid Language, and Indigenous Languages

1.2 Moro-moro
- a subgenre of the broader category of Filipino theatrical performances komedya (comedia)
- specifically focuses on the conflict between Christians and Muslims during the Spanish
colonization of the Philippines
- served as a means of cultural preservation (it celebrated and showcased indigenous marital
traditions, ensuring that these forms of physical expression were not only preserved but also
passed down to future generations) (The stories celebrated the cultural heritage and
resilience of the Moro people in the face of historical challenges)

Themes and Motifs: Colonial Encounters, Struggles for Independence, Cultural Preservation,
Political Dynamics, Legacy and Contemporary Reflections

Characters: Filipino characters coexists with Spanish-inspired heroes, villains, and historical
contexts

Heroic Protagonists (defenders of the community):

 embodies virtues and values cherished within the local communities

 represents resilience, bravery, and cultural pride of the Moro people
 central figures in the resistance against external oppression (defending against
Spanish colonial forces)
 possesses mythical or supernatural attributes
 faces dilemmas and ethical choices in the pursuit of justice
 served as symbols of cultural identity and pride, reflecting the aspirations and
ideals of Moro communities

Moro Villain Characters:

 often multidimensional, reflecting the intricacies of cultural interactions and

historical dynamics
 symbolic representations of perceived cultural conflicts during the colonial
period
 challenged stereotypes by presenting Moro villain characters with agency and
individuality
 Costume: The dancers/ actors wear flashy, bright-colored clothing

Male Christian: Wear pants with blue stripes

The Moros: Wear pants with red stripes

Christian Dancers: Wear sequins, beads, ribbons and buttons

The King: Wears long pants and crown

The Queen: Wears white or light-blue gown

Props: Integration of Weapons (Kampilan and Barong)

Dance: Incorporation of indigenous Martial Arts and Combat Sequence (Represented themes of
resistance, valor, and the prowess of indigenous warriors against Spanish or external forces)

2. Zarzuela
- A Spanish operatic form that blended elements of opera, drama, and musical theatre

Themes and Motifs: Revolved around romance, societal issues, and historical events

Performance Space: Open area, Community Hall, Local Theatre (Proscenium Stage Design),
Cockpit

Lighting: Utilization of candlelight and gas lamps

Costume: More elaborate and colorful costumes (productions began to prioritize the visual
aesthetics. Higher social status wears brighter, rich, vibrant hues. Supporting characters wear
muted or simpler colors. Villains wear darker colors like black and red)

Props and Accessories: Fans, swords, musical instruments, hats, jewelry, scarves.

Music: Showcased a fusion of dramatic storytelling with musical interludes, laying the
foundation for the integration of music

RELIGIOUS PLAYS

1. Panunuluyan
- A Christmas playlet
- A dramatization of Mary and Joseph’s experience in Bethlehem trying to find a place to stay
for the night
- Usually staged during Christmas Eve
- Features two floats with the images of Mary and Joseph
- The procession would actually stop y three houses where they sing their plea to stay the night
- ends at the church and the midnight mass begins

2. Pastores
- Also a Christmas Playlet
- a short play showing the journey of Bethlehem’s shepherds towards the infant Jesus when he was born
- presented as part of the town’s communal Christmas Eve event, or a few days before Christmas
3. Salubong
- a procession that commemorates the fourteen stations of the cross
- a dramatization of how the Sorrowful Mother meets the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday
- two floats on opposite ends of the town begin their procession at the crack of dawn until they eventually
meet
 4. Siete Palabras
- depicts the last three hours of the life of Jesus when he says his Seven Last Words, or his ‘siete palabras’
- usually more of a ritual than a performance
- beginning with liturgy and homilies about these seven last words, delivered by a priest from 12 noon to
3 PM
- Afterwards, a presentation of Christ’s death
5. Moriones
- Moriones is a Lenten festival celebrated primarily on the island of Marinduque in the
Philippines.
- It is known for its colorful processions, theatrical performances, and mask-wearing
participants known as "Moriones."
- commemorates the story of Longinus, the Roman centurion who pierced Jesus' side with a
spear during the crucifixion
- Longinus wore a mask to hide his identity while searching for Jesus' body
- Participants in the Moriones festival wear elaborate costumes and masks resembling Roman
soldiers, as well as colorful robes and helmets
6. Senakulo
- a traditional Philippine passion play that reenacts the events leading up to the crucifixion of
Jesus Christ
- usually performed during Holy Week, particularly on Good Friday
- includes scenes depicting the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, his trial, crucifixion, and
resurrection

The Hispanic annotators wrote in their reports to the Hispanic monarchy that if
not for their introduction of the theatre, the natives (the precolonial settlers in the
islands in the Visayas) would not have one. In a way, this is true because the
theatre (read here as formal theatre), meaning the staged, the costumed, and the
scripted, was really introduced by the Spaniards during colonization.
First in the list is the comedia or how drama was usually called in Spain at that
time.
The Spaniards had two agendas when they arrived in the Visayas: to conquer
the islands and to convert the natives to Christianity (remember Philippine
history, Spanish colonialism may be summed up in two symbolic categories of
the sword and the cross). The sword represents the social and political history of
Hispanic colonization while the latter refers to the Christianization of the islands.
And to talk about the theatre – the formal staging that colonial Spain brought to
the Philippines, is also a discussion of the conversion of the natives to
Christianity (and later Catholicism). This is because the theatre had a very
important role in the conversion narratives of the islanders. The theatre became
a useful tool in aiding the Spaniards to convert the natives. As the saying goes,
catechism involves a lot of theatre!

In the early days, two types of comdia became popular: those which narrated the
stories of the bible and those of the saints.
To communicate the “good news” or the Holy Bible, the Spaniards (well, the
accompanying friars of the conquistadors) dramatized the Scriptures. Philippine
traditional theatre scholars such as Doreen Fernandez and Nicanor G. Tiongson
explain that this dramatization had strong effect on the people. These
performances were really ingenious ways of catechism. There were annotations
telling us that after a performance, conversion to the new religion (Catholicism)
became so easy such as the Bohol conversion: Boholanos immediately were
converted into Christianity after watching a comedia performance based on the
story of Saint Barbara in the language of the islanders.
According to Fernandez, the annotations revealed that the natives became very
afraid of how the performance represented heaven and hell. There was an
implied message that if the natives would not stop venerating idols (precolonial
Gods), the Lord God (the Catholic God) would punish them and would bring them
in hell to be damned. Whether or not this story is to be believed as factual,
the comedia performed in Bohol was the very first comedia performed in the
island translated into the vernacular.
In her seminal work Palabas, Fernandez explains that the Jesuit friars were
responsible for the coming of the first comedia in the Philippines. During the
inauguration of the first grammar school in the island of Cebu in 1598, Fernandez
narrates that the program took the form of a comedia. In 1609, the first comedia
written by a Spaniard in the local language was staged in Cebu’s neighboring
island of Bohol. Unsure whether actors were locals or members of the Spanish
authority, the first comedia in the vernacular was about the martyrdom of St.
Barbara with an aim to draw the natives away from idolatry.
Anyhow, when the islands were already Christianized, comedia was no longer
needed for evangelization. The next most important concern then of the
Spaniards was to control the natives politically (okay, here comes the sword part
vis-a-vis the “divide et impera” project of Hispanic colonialism).
I have discussed elsewhere that as a form of popular entertainment,
the comedia introduced in the Philippines were the capa y espada (cape and
sword), which featured the adventures of nobilities in quests for love and honor
and later became more popular as the moro-moro or moro y cristianos.
Usually, a Christian princess falls in love with a Muslim prince, and/or a Muslim
princess with a Christian prince. The romance is opposed by the parents, who in
the plot are the leaders of warring kingdoms. But more importantly, the
opposition is based on one thing: religion. War is, most of the time, intensified
between the two kingdoms. However, in the end, amor vincit omnia (love
conquers all) – someone gives up his or her religion and the other kingdom
follows suit. As a rule of thumb, the Muslim is converted into Christianity. After
conversion, not only the prince and the princess are reunited in Matrimony, but
also the two kingdoms.

Then, there was also the comedia based on the passion of Christ, which
eventually became what we call in many Catholic communities as the sinakulo. In
the contemporary Philippines, the sinkulo is performed during the Cuaresma or
the Lenten season of the Catholic Church. But performances of it are dominant
during the Semana Santa or the Holy Week of the Lenten calendar.
There are historians who argue that the origin of the sinakulo is the pasyon, an
epic narrative on the passion and death of Christ, especially Gaspar Aquino de
Belen’s first Tagalog Pasyon and Pasyong Henesis written in 1814.
The narrative of the Pasyong Henesis is not a direct dramatization of the Bible. It
is a reinterpretation in a sense that the last part is the epic adventure of Queen
Helena and her son Constantino, in search of the “Holy Cross.” This part is the
popular text of the Tibag, the inspiration behind the santacruzan. Other scholars
argue that Pasyong Henesis is not necessarily be the origin or the source of the
sinakulo for there are playwrights (sinakulista) who wrote their versions of it
which did not include Queen Helena’s epic adventure. Others argue that
thinking Pasyong Henesis as the main source of the sinakulo suggests
ethnocentrism (Tagalog to be superior over other cultures). Other regions may
have composed their own pasyon and sinakulo independently from the Pasyong
Henesis and inspired by the narratives of the Bible.
In the early days, the sinakulo was usually presented on a proscenium-type of
stage, a make-shift actually made of bamboo-and-wood or cement and steel;
under light bulbs that cast an unyielding light instead of creating a mood and
against painted cloth or paper backdrops, called telon.
But going back to comedia, how did it become the komedya?
To be continued. . .