Community service

My friend, fellow lawyer and batch mate in the U.P. College of Law Eric (a.k.a. Rhoda) Santos invited my family to watch a stage play that he directed. We caught the last show on Sunday and we were prepared to enjoy a Filipino translation of Louise Bryant’s The Game.

To our surprise, it was a double treat. First onstage was Tagapag-Alaga ng Alaala, a play based on three of Eric’s own short stories – The Keeper of Memories, The Hands of the Keeper of Memories, The Memory Shrouds of the Keeper and The Mask of Joy/Sorrow: Let me Hear You Laugh and Weep – published in his Web log.

Tagapag-Alaga ng Alaala is an allegory about humans who can no longer create new memories. They travel where they meet the Keeper of Memories who wraps the Memory Shroud around the traveller so that he can enjoy past memories in a never ending loop of replays.

The Game is a one-act morality play about how Life and Death amuse themselves by playing a game of chance to determine the fate of two young people who have lost interest in living. If the name Louise Bryant sounds unfamiliar and you need to associate it with pop culture, the 1981 film “Reds” with Diane Keaton and Warren Beatty was based on Bryant’s romance with writer Jack Reed.

Last Sunday’s performance wasn’t a commercial production that required buying tickets. It was a community affair where everyone was welcome to watch. The actors and crew were residents of Purok Sampaguita in Antipolo, youngsters that participate in Eric’s Sunday morning English tutorials. A makeshift stage was erected inside a small open-air chapel in Purok Sampaguita and someone donated huge black plastic sheets that served as walls to prevent as much ambient lights and sounds from filtering in.

Last Sunday’s performance speaks of a different approach at community service. It was an interesting peek at how, with a little imagination and willingness to work, we can contribute to the development of our young citizens beyond the usual tactics of politicians to donate basketball goals and balls.

See, Eric’s family lives in a peculiar area of Antipolo. Along Taktak Road, that awesome part of the hill that overlooks Metro Manila, some developer bought tracts of land long ago, intending to convert them into residential subdivisions. The development was abandoned but not before some people had already bought lots. Three abandoned developments in all. The residents, Eric and his family among them, remained but each subdivision didn’t grow into more than five households each.

Instead of forming home owners associations (would you with three to five households within a subdivision?), the residents created the Sampaguita Foundation of Antipolo, Inc. and started a scholarship fund for the benefit of deserving but financially handicapped youngsters in the area surrounding the abandoned subdivisions. The actors in last Sunday’s performances were the scholars of Sampaguita Foundation.

Eric’s daughter and my younger daughter attend the same school. His daughter told my daughter about this Sunday school long ago so I had heard about it before. But I never realized the magnitude of the project until last Sunday. I’ve heard of community organized/sponsored affairs before. There is no shortage in barangay youth projects but rarely do they go beyond organizing basketball tournaments and singing or dancing contests.

I am sure that developing the competitive spirit and self-confidence among the youth can be achieved through sports, singing and dancing. But to take it a step farther, to introduce them to plays and books and short stories… That takes a lot more patience and dedication than any one-shot deal to mount a basketball tournament or a talent competition.

I don’t know why most Filipinos still think that plays and the legitimate stage are only for sissies and gays. I know a lot of fathers who will raise hell if they catch their teenaged sons performing in a stage play rather than sweating it out in a basketball game like it’s a mark of true manhood. Just as I know a lot of mothers who would consider such pursuits useless because it is singing and dancing, TV style, that can land them in the world of pop entertainment and big money.

I didn’t see a lot of parents and grandparents among the audience last Sunday. Perhaps, the adults in the neighborhood had seen the plays before. It was the last performance, after all, and they might have been there during previous performances. Perhaps.

The really interesting thing was how many of the neighborhood’s kids – teenagers and young people in their early twenties – flocked to watch the plays. The kids among the audience on Sunday evening, according to Eric, were kids who had been there on previous performances too. So, it can’t be true that the intellectual capacity of the average Filipino never goes beyond the basketball and Magic Sync lingo. Give them a chance, show them something new, introduce them to a new world and a new dimension of art and entertainment and they will devour the experience happily.

*All photos were taken with Speedy’s Olympus Stylus 720SW