The pleasure principle

For the Sunday Lifestyle section of the Philippine Star, 20 September 2009.

This was intended for Art & Culture, but my editors decided to run it today in a section devoted to books and reading. The published version features minor paragraphing and stylistic changes. This article is one in a short series on reading I said I would try to write more than a year ago. I've finally managed to finish the first piece. I'll get to the other two, but I can't say when I'll be able to deliver them.

The photo is from book/daddy.

It’s the first semester of another schoolyear, which means I am trying to get my students to read. And just as in previous years, getting them to enjoy reading feels like engaging in something like mortal combat.

By the time they arrive in my classroom these teenagers (mostly 17-year-olds) have been forced to read literature the whole time they’ve been in school, more than ten years for most. They’ve become quite familiar with the pressure to read “serious” and “important” things, have been made to read many so-called classics (or exemplars of “high” literature), have been forced to read stories and poems and plays on serious and lofty subjects. Many of them have come to resent this. At the start of the semester I asked them if there’s a difference between what they choose to read on their own and what they are made to read in school. The answer this time was the same one I always get: the two are dramatically different.

I dwell on the experience of reading in school because I suspect many of us form our most important impressions of books and reading in our school days. If we remember the experience of reading with fondness, chances are we become enthusiastic life-long readers. (A handful are even crazy enough to become lit teachers.) If our memories of it are tinged with distaste, we probably won’t read much beyond light and entertaining fare.

Why the divergence between what students are assigned to read and what they choose for themselves? An obvious culprit is school itself. Something in the very nature of the school as a learning institution seems to work against the nurturing of pleasure in the reading experience. For one thing, students are forced to read what the school makes them, and how many of us attend to requirements with the same enthusiasm we do to things we do on our own? Too often students go to their books with glum resignation, not glee. Second, students know they will be tested on their reading; the eventual exam or paper hovers in the horizon of their minds, tingeing their reading with the real possibility of failure. Third, students often are made to read things they would not choose for themselves, readings probably more difficult than what they are used to. The “classics” still form a large part of literature curriculums across the land, and the experience of knocking heads with Shakespeare or Balagtas, James Joyce or Nick Joaquin can be a frustrating one. If students have the added misfortune of having a disagreeable teacher who makes reading feel like drudgery, their fates as future non-readers are sealed. No wonder they turn elsewhere for pleasure.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. I think one thing we teachers of reading have neglected to do is make the encounter with the written word a pleasurable one. We emphasize learning, we train them in textual analysis, and we reinforce this with testing. Well and good. Except understanding a text is not the same as enjoying it. In the extreme, we may actually foster the former by sacrificing the latter. The fact of grades compounds the problem: at the end of the day we need to hand out numbers or letters, our appraisal of student performance. Grades are measures, and what can we measure? Understanding, yes; analysis, yes; enjoyment, no. Reading comprehension can be measured, but appreciation of a book’s beauty and depth of insight can’t. Grades are a necessary evil that can get in the way. And if students learn that grades are the be-all and end-all of education, then what will they care how beautiful a book is?

It’s hard enough getting students to enjoy reading in school without outside distractions; what makes things worse is that the array of pleasures available to today’s student — and today’s adult, for that matter — are multifarious to a degree never seen before. The quick thrills easily available to them, accessed through increasingly sophisticated technological devices, make the act of sitting still with a book seem awfully dull. A friend who goes to Boracay every New Year’s told me that five years ago, many people would lounge around with a book; this year they toted laptops and other gadgets and spent their time on Facebook.

Beyond school and the seductive glitter of entertainment technology lies a third, and perhaps most insidious, culprit: a culture that does not value intellectual work. The culture that produces and nurtures our children is one that looks down on work requiring any degree of intellectual engagement. Celebrity is valorized, but intelligence is not. We gaze at the beautiful, listen to the glib; we don’t care for the thoughtful or profound. Our movie stars and pop singers become famous, but our thinkers, those commentators and artists with astute insights into political or cultural matters, do not. Everywhere our young look they find that surface sheen, not substance, is prized and rewarded. They take their cue.

What do we do then about the problem of reading? One thing we — teachers, parents, and everyone else concerned about reading — need to do is put pleasure back in the reading experience. Or rather, we need to validate it. We need to tell our students, children, each other, ourselves, that it’s fine to read primarily for pleasure. I know my students already do. “Read for pleasure” is advice I don’t need to give them, because they already believe it. One of the common gripes we teachers of literature make about our students is that they don’t read, but I’ve found that it’s not true. At the start of every schoolyear I give out, in all my firstyear lit classes, a survey sheet in which I ask what they like to read. I’ve found that they do read. It’s just that their tastes tend to be narrow. Some read only light fantasy. Others read only chick-lit. Still others read only manga (Japanese illustrated fiction, very much like comic books). This year the Twilight books were a frequent answer. They don’t need me to tell them to read for pleasure. What they need from me is to say it’s okay to admit it.

What they also need from me — and this is more important — is to expand their definition of pleasure. The problem is not that we value pleasure so much, it’s that we define it too narrowly. Most perniciously, we think that pleasure should come easily. If something is supposed to be fun, it shouldn’t have to make us work. It definitely shouldn’t have to make us think. And because we get our pleasures so easily now, we demand that they always be easy.

But pleasure comes in degrees and in wide varieties. There is the pleasure of figuring out “whodunit” (as any reader of Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler knows). There is the pleasure of trying to solve puzzles (as Dan Brown fans do). There is the giddiness of a romance novel, the fright of horror. But how about the pleasures we overlook? The pleasure of beauty, in language and in craft. The pleasure of characters rendered as if they were real people, of places vividly evoked. The pleasure of plumbing singular experiences, even sad and painful ones, of sharing the lives of the sorrowful, the lonely, the damned. There is the pleasure of insight, of ideas. The pleasure of contemplating the unfathomable evil and goodness in the human heart. But these pleasures often take some experience to arrive at, and some effort too.

Maybe that’s the most important thing I can do as a literature teacher: expand the sphere of pleasure. Get my students to try new works, new authors, new genres — new being what they would never choose for themselves. And if they make the discovery that beyond their previously narrow roads are many things wonderful and extraordinary, within reach if they would only take the time and effort, then perhaps they may turn into life-long readers who aren’t content to return again and again to familiar ground but who seek out new realms in which to venture. “The poem refreshes the world,” Wallace Stevens said. The book does too, its pleasures both common and sublime available to those able and willing to enter it.

Excuse me while I pull up my bra

For section ‘M’ of the Philippine Star, 16 September 2009.



This is how it went: I’m sitting in my cubicle with a senior, a girl of twenty-one years who is two months away from graduation. She’s sitting a few feet in front of me. We are having consultations, and the discussion is going well. I tell her how dramatically she, a creative writing major, has improved throughout the year that I have been advising her. As our fifteen-minute conversation is about to end, she does something I haven’t been able to forget since: she raises both hands from her lap, brings them near her blouse’s neckline (which hangs neither too high nor too low on her chest), then takes her thumbs and plunges them behind and beneath the hem of her blouse and, presumably, beneath the cups of her bra. With bra and blouse firmly pinched, she gives them a good tug upward. After it is over — it couldn’t have taken more than a second — she brings her hands back to her lap, then makes a casual gesture here and there to continue our conversation.

I sit there aghast, but she makes no sign that she has done something you don’t do in polite company. I fumble for words, then decide that it’s better not to remark on it at all. (Because, really, what do say after that?) After she is gone I go over to some female colleagues and ask them if what she did — I imitate the girl’s tugging motion — is normal. They smirk and giggle fizzily, like shaken soda bottles. She did that right in front of you? they ask. Yup, I say, just like that, without warning or apology. It was nothing to her. They give a look that says, what do you expect with kids these days? Over at lunch, in the company of other colleagues, I ask the same question, repeat the gesture. They react the same way — with surprise, dismay, and plenty of rueful laughter. Kids these days, they sigh, throwing their hands up.

I wonder: Is this a generational thing? I decide to investigate further. At a family gathering soon afterwards, I approach a cousin in her early twenties. I do what I now call the bra-tug. She shrugs and gives me a look that says, That’s it? What’s the big deal?

There’s another habit that I’ve found annoying: My wife and I are sitting in a theater. We arrived early and got aisle seats. To our left is a group of twentysomethings, one of whom stands and walks in our direction. When he gets right next to us, he hovers above us, gives us an expectant look and a thin smile but says nothing. We turn our legs to the side and let him through. He passes, again without a word. Later, when he returns, he does the same thing: stands wordlessly beside us, expecting us to let him through without a verbal prompt. We let him. I say to my wife, “Whatever happened to ‘Excuse me’?”

But I wonder: is he being rude? Or are my expectations just not aligned with his? Maybe many of his generation do it the way he does. After all, the same thing happens in queues. Someone wants to pass through the line to somewhere else, and they stand there right beside you without saying a word, hoping you move aside so they can walk through. “Excuse me” is passé, except I didn’t get the memo. (Such memos never seem to get to my desk anymore.)

And then there’s something I see in my very own classrooms: yawning. I remember being told growing up that it was rude to yawn in front of others, so if you felt one coming on, you hid your yawn with your hand or turned away. No way would you yawn right in someone’s face. Yet this semester I’ve already seen students sitting in the first row give me big, full-frontal, mouths-wide-open, head-tipped-back yawns while I’m standing in front in the middle of a sentence. I think they’re being rude.

Or am I just being prissy? (And defensive, too — my classes aren’t that boring, are they?) Could I be overreacting, making a mountain out of a mannerly molehill? Or am I on to something real? Have I put my finger on an important characteristic of this younger generation, one they aren’t aware of but which sticks out to me like someone picking his nose in the middle of a crowded room?

And then there’s the matter of texting. If I send my parents a text message, I know that they will acknowledge it with a reply, even if just an “OK.” If they text me, they expect as much of me. My siblings are the same; send them a message, and they let you know they got it. My students, though, are not. I send a message — maybe I’m sick and can’t come to class, or I’m running a few minutes late — and very few, if any, reply.

I’ve got a theory: these habits are a sign of a blithe uncouthness afflicting our young. They simply don’t value manners the way older generations did and still do. They are less sensitive to how their actions will be seen by others. In the age of the Daily Me, that apt term for the ego-stroking echo chamber we make for ourselves in these gadget-infested times, this should be no surprise. As we become better at surrounding ourselves with experiences that please us and at keeping away those that won’t (only the music we like on our iPods, only our friends as contacts on Facebook), we become far less attuned to the feelings of others. Especially to feelings of disapprobation. To those on the outside of such a cocoon, the person inside looks indifferent and apathetic, not to mention underskilled in the art of living with others. And who else would be more accustomed to living in such cushy virtual aeries than our technology-besotted youngsters?

But then again, all this could be hasty generalizing, my quick willingness to attribute the faults of a handful to an entire age group. Besides, rude and polite are terms made meaningful by context. We might want to think that these are objective qualities, but they depend on what people expect of each other, and expectations change over time, over generations. One example: The written invitation has become passé in the age of text messaging, but don’t tell that to my folks. They still prefer invites that you pull out of envelopes, that you can slip into your book to mark your place, that burn when lit. For my part, you need only text me if you want me at your party. I won’t think you’re rude.

Expectations depend on where you are, too. Just as I was explaining this theory of mine to another friend, cleverly linking the uncouthness of the young with a general degradation of good manners and hospitality in our society, she stopped me cold when she said, “But that’s only in the city.” Older and far wiser than me, she explained that people who lived outside the confines of our snarling cities still display the civility and kindness that is disappearing here. And since I’ve lived most of my life in the belly of the rude urban beast, I never noticed.

Ultimately, maybe I am making too much of all this. I think of my parents again. I love them, but sometimes I think they’re fussy old coots. It could be that I’m turning into one, too. Maybe the best thing to do is to shut up and accept this generation for what it is, full-throated yawns and all. Besides, things could be worse. Years from now kids might be fixing their wedgies in public and think nothing of it. (I hope to God I’m retired by then.)

And come to think of it, maybe it’s best that the girl who tugged at her bra right in front of me did so without any fuss. That showed a kind of grace, didn’t it? Imagine if she’d said, before doing so, “Excuse me while I pull up my bra.” Now how would I have reacted then? Some things should be done quickly and quietly, no? I’m sure the flabbergasted witnesses among us will be most grateful.

And now for something completely different 12

Only those who were around in the 1980s when MC Hammer was a star (but not for very long) will get a real kick out of this video. A flash mob of dancers wearing "hammer" pants invades a posh garment store on Sunset Boulevard selling skinny jeans. Hammer time lives!



And in case you want more, here are Darth Vader and his stormtroopers grooving to the same tune. (Chicks might dig Han Solo, but tell me, can he dance?)

Marking time

For section ‘M’ of the Philippine Star, 26 August 2009.

My editors changed the title of my piece, but I'm posting it here with the original title, which I much prefer.



Last year my fortieth birthday came and went, and just a few weeks ago my forty-first birthday whizzed past too. So far I am happy to report that I have not gone out and bought a shiny new saxophone or an expensive sports car, or hooked up with a skinny 22-year-old model.

I remember welcoming the arrival of the year in which I officially would become a fortysomething with the enthusiasm one reserves for visits to the dentist or to one’s in-laws, or to one’s dentist who also happens to be an in-law. In my mind I was okay with the arrival of the big Four-O. But as the weeks went by and the fateful day approached, I became increasingly anxious. What exactly was bugging me? I thought I had made my peace with one’s inexorable march toward old age (assuming I got there in one piece) and ultimately oblivion. Friends tried to console me. “Fifty is the new forty,” one said, which only made me anxious about one more thing, the big Five-O that loomed in the distance. “You don’t look a day over thirty-seven,” chuckled another, which should have been funny because it’s something I might have said. Nothing made me feel better.

My wife, sensing the arrival of one of my dark moods (during which I am absolutely no fun to be around), suggested a trip out of town. So just a few minutes after the clock had struck twelve on the inevitable day, we were on an express bus to Baguio, and I was trying in vain to get some sleep. We arrived at five in the morning, and I’d forgotten how cold it could be up in this mountain city. One’s amorphous angst is easily overcome by whip-slappingly cold air.

One of the images from that day that has stayed with me: sitting in a restaurant on Session Road looking out a window at a hazy, rainswept afternoon while the smell of bangus sinigang and sizzling pusit filled my nostrils. It was a Saturday in the middle of August. For someone who hadn’t been to Baguio in years, and whose trips always coincided with summer, the wet weather felt strange, as if I had walked into a house a day too late for a party. I wondered, as we ate our hot lunch in the middle of the afternoon (we napped from mid-morning till past noon), if this—the rain, the overcast sky, the sight of people huddled under the awning just outside the window to keep dry—meant anything.

In the weeks before this year’s Taboan, the first international Philippine writers festival held this past February, I remarked to a colleague how anxious I was at being invited to join a panel of writer-critics. I rattled off the names of the other panelists, saying I didn’t deserve to be in their company. “Exie,” she said, “you have to accept the fact that you’re no longer a young, up-and-coming writer.” I couldn’t think up a retort, but later I thought of what I should have replied: I’m a middle-aged writer who hasn’t quite arrived.

I suppose it’s a matter of course for us to mark these moments in our lives. A plump round number is convenient—forty, fifty, sixty—and we stop for a moment to take it all in, to take stock of our lives, glance backward and peer up the shadowy road ahead, wondering what lies beyond what we can see. For writers, it’s even become customary to turn such musings into a reflective poem or essay. The poet Donald Justice writes, in “Men at Forty,” lines that began resonating with me a few years ago: “Men at forty / learn to close softly / the doors to rooms / they will not be going back to.” What doors to which rooms have I closed softly, knowing I will not be returning to them?

Billy Collins mocks the practice in his poem “On Turning Ten,” in which the preternaturally self-aware persona says: “This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, / as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. / It is time to say goodbye to imaginary friends, / time to turn the first big number.” Such introspective gloom from a boy wearing sneakers! Funnily, the voice in that poem sounded like mine, when I was a teenager.

There is no drama to this, and the turn in this road is just one of many, just as a birthday is one of many days on a calendar, no different from the rest except that it happened to be when you came into this world. It would be great if each birthday, and the round ones especially, would coincide with some momentous event in our lives, something we can’t help but celebrate, something worthy of a fireworks display. But our experience tells us that such a thought is romantic. Our lives pass by in small waves, often too small for us to notice, though occasionally a far larger one comes by and rocks our little boats. Then the water settles, and it goes on lapping us gently but inexorably forward. When we notice, we see that we have moved on; there is no going back.

Later that day we heard mass at the Baguio cathedral then went looking for an Internet café. Early that evening I was checking my email and replying to birthday greetings. Afterwards we went to a bar and had a beer, then went back to our quaint hotel and watched a History Channel show on the Great Wall of China before going to sleep.

That was last year. This year we didn’t go out of town. We simply had lunch in a restaurant at a nearby mall, had coffee, then went to a bookstore. Then we went home to catch the Ateneo–La Salle basketball game on TV. (My team won handily.) I turned on my computer to find my Facebook page overflowing with greetings. That night I prepared for school the next day.

Again I wondered if it all meant anything. Now, more than a week later, maybe this is what I can take away from it all: I am in good health. I share a house with a woman I love and who loves me and who cares deeply about how I am doing. Just this past weekend I had lunch with my family; my parents had just celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary. My two siblings who are married brought their beautiful kids along, and we ate some really good Pinoy food. We talked about movies and TV shows we’d watched, how my youngest brother and his girlfriend were doing in their new apartment, how my older brother was putting on weight. It didn’t rain too hard that day. That night I prepared for school, work that I’ve found to be fulfilling and meaningful (when it doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out).

In other words, I live a charmed life. There, I feel better already. I have everything I need, and I think I’ll be fine. An electric guitar would be nice, though.

“We have a word for it—sayang”

Here's a New York Times piece on how Filipinos realize, in the wake of Cory Aquino's death, that little has changed in the country since the People Power revolution of 1986.

Filipinos Lament How Far They Haven’t Come

By Seth Mydans
The New York Times / August 20, 2009
News Analysis

MANILA — When former President Corazon C. Aquino died this month, Filipinos filled the streets in mourning and in celebration of the golden moment in 1986 when she led them in a peaceful uprising that some called a revolution.

The nation’s dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, had fled as masses of people faced down his tanks, and democracy was restored after 20 years of repressive rule. Mrs. Aquino, the opposition leader who became president, ushered in wide-ranging political reforms.

But the weeks since Mrs. Aquino’s death at the age of 76 have been a period of self-examination and self-doubt among many Filipinos, as they consider how little has really changed since then.

“The legacy is the mess we are in,” said F. Sionil Jose, 84, the nation’s most prominent novelist, pointing to continuing poverty, inequality and political disarray as evidence that the nation failed to capitalize on its moment of possibility.

“We have a word for it — sayang — ‘what a waste,’ ” he said.

In schools, coffeehouses, rice fields, churches and offices around Manila and in the countryside, there seemed to be a shared sense that the people of the Philippines had failed themselves. . . .

The rest of this sobering piece is here.

(Hat tip to Gibbs Cadiz.)

“This unbearable distance between us”

As a followup to that Penguin ad campaign for reading, here's another lovely one, this time a TV commercial. (I'm sure I got this from among one of many online contacts, but I've forgotten who. My apologies.)

Sticking to one genre means “missing a universe of marvels”

This article is from four years ago, but I read it just recently. It's from Emerald City, a web site that publishes reviews of fantasy and science fiction. In the piece the author recommends works of literary fiction to readers who don't usually read that kind of fiction (readers of sci-fi and fantasy, to whom the site is targeted). Some of the names are not familiar to me, but the larger points I agree with.

Here is how the piece starts, with boldface added for emphasis:

Literary Fiction for People Who Hate Literary Fiction
By Matthew Cheney

There is a stereotype of literary fiction shared by both science fiction readers and non-science fiction readers: that academically-sanctioned, "serious" contemporary fiction is all about dull middle-class people having affairs, and that the writers of this fiction do such things as use a couple hundred pages to describe events that could quite easily be described in a paragraph. This stereotype is not entirely inaccurate — such books do exist. But just as it is unfair to condemn all SF as clunkily-written space operas for people who are hiding from puberty, so it is unfair to dismiss all literary fiction as unimaginative hogwash for people who yearn to be seen as sensitive.

A reader only interested in a narrow type of writing (hard SF, for instance) is not going to find much pleasure from any literary fiction, but a reader who is interested in experiencing new realities, strange visions, visceral horror, and supernatural events has plenty to choose from. What follows is an introduction to some writers who might appeal to certain types of genre readers. It is not a comprehensive tour, nor does it focus on the same elements for each writer: some of these writers are worth reading because of their plot devices, some because of their fantastic imagery, some because their approach to language and structure creates a wonder of its own.

The weirdness literary fiction can offer is, in general, of a different sort from the weirdness offered by most genre fiction, but the differences usually are not as much between idioms of writing as they are between the goals and purposes of different writers. . . .

Literary fiction offers "weirdness" too, but of a different variety than sci-fi (or SF) and fantasy.

Cheney goes through a long list of writers and books, then concludes:

[J]ust as anyone who limits their reading to the literary mainstream is missing out on a lot of magnificent writing, so the reader who reads only what gets marketed as science fiction or fantasy is missing a universe of marvels beyond those borders.

Amen.

The full article is here. (And thanks to Kenneth for the link.)

They’re unputdownable, hands down

Now here’s an ad campaign for reading I like: “unputdownable” Penguin Classics.



More good stuff here.

“The real life is in writing”

It is very painful to become frozen with your poems, to gain too much recognition for a certain set of poems. The real life is in writing, not in reading the same ones over and over again for years. We constantly need new insights, visions. We don't exist in any solid form. There is no permanent truth that you can corner in a poem that will satisfy you forever. Don't identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.

— Natalie Goldberg, from Writing Down the Bones

The start of something big

For the Art & Culture section of the Philippine Star, 18 February 2009.

Photos by Hilda Abola of the My Manila photoblog.



In May last year I wrote about the Philippine Legitimate Stage Artists Group, or Philstage, and its effort to become the first awards-giving body focused solely on the performing arts. Well, these efforts have borne fruit. This past Wednesday, the 18th of February, Philstage held its 2008 Gawad Buhay! Awards for the Performing Arts at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The austere but elegant program was well-attended, and judging by the excitement it generated among the member companies, I expect an even more enthusiastic response in the years ahead.

Such a response is crucial, since there were moments last year, the first year of the awards, when I thought the group’s resolve seemed to flag. Mine did, too. Now I can say it: I served on the jury panel that chose the performers and creatives named in the quarterly citations and drew up the list of year-end awardees. We started as a fairly large group, but the demands of trying to watch all the productions caught up with some of us, and by the end of the year we found ourselves reduced to a band of ten. So I couldn’t help but chuckle when Fernando “Nanding” Josef, artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino and president of Philstage, commended the jurors in the opening remarks for serving “na walang bayad, walang pamasahe, at walang pang-merienda.”

Feeling the excitement in the Little Theater that evening, hearing the theater practitioners cheer for their fellows, seeing their sheer joy whether they ended up taking home trophies or not, helped dispel the gloom in my mind. There were times last year when I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Wednesday night I felt blessed, and ultimately grateful, to have been a part of it all. Here’s hoping the awards, now a year old, have a long and illustrious future.

My thanks to Philstage for inviting me aboard and to the individual member-companies for their unstinting hospitality. And my warmest congratulations to the winners of the first Gawad Buhay!

Here is the official press release from Philstage:

* * * * *
PETA and Tanghalang Pilipino plays dominate PHILSTAGE’s Gawad Buhay!

With four major awards each, Skin Deep (a production of the Philippine Educational Theater Association, or PETA), Golden Child, and Kudeta (both by Tanghalang Pilipino) won the most production, technical, and performance awards at the 2008 Gawad Buhay!, the PHILSTAGE Awards for the Performing Arts, held on February 18 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino. Ballet Philippines’ La Revolucion Filipina, Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet, and Tanghalang Pilipino’s Ang Kalungkutan ng mga Reyna each took home three trophies.

The bare stage moments before the show began.

Skin Deep, a musical comedy on ordinary people’s search for beauty and happiness, got the jury’s nod for outstanding musical production, original libretto (Vincent De Jesus), and male and female lead performances in a musical play (Robert Seña and May Bayot). Golden Child, winner for outstanding production of a full-length play, stage direction (Loy Arcenas), ensemble performance, and set design (Loy Arcenas), depicts the conflicts of introducing modern changes to a traditional Chinese household. Kudeta, a hilarious take on a coup that topples a country's president, won for outstanding translation or adaptation (George De Jesus III), lighting design (Dennis Marasigan), set design (Tuqxs Rutaquio), and featured male performance in a play (Bong Cabrera).

Among the big winners of individual awards were Floy Quintos, for Ang Kalungkutan ng mga Reyna, which won for outstanding production of a one-act play and original play; and Vincent de Jesus, whose work on Skin Deep and Batang Rizal (PETA) won for outstanding original libretto and musical direction.

Biag Gaongen performs an excerpt from Ballet Philippines’ ‘La Revolucion Filipina.’

The first-ever industry awards exclusive to the performing arts, Gawad Buhay! was juried by an independent panel of critics, scholars, artists, and theater enthusiasts who were deputized to watch all productions of Philstage member-companies for the entire year. Outstanding individual and group achievements in various artistic and technical aspects of play, musical, and dance productions and performances are honored based on quarterly citations drawn up by the jury.

In his acceptance speech for outstanding original play for Ang Kalungkutan ng mga Reyna, playwright-director Floy Quintos expressed appreciation of the performing arts’ unique quality as a form of creative expression. “We have become the source of talents of other industries like film and television.”

The PETA ensemble performing an excerpt from Batang Rizal.

CCP President Nestor Jardin, who was one of the awards presenters, praised the high quality of productions by Philstage member-companies. “There are many of these, and there can be no better proof of this than in the next category,” he said, referring to the thirteen nominees for outstanding ensemble performance.

“I am very happy that we are having this award while I am still dancing,” enthused Camille Ordinario-Joson who won for outstanding featured performer in a dance production for her work on Ballet Philippines’ Latin Heat.

The mostly theater-practitioner crowd cheered on approvingly as Jose Mari Avellana’s name was announced by presenter Gary Lim as winner for outstanding male lead performance in a play. Visibly moved, Avellana thanked the theater community and exhorted them to keep striving for quality and continue the traditions of professionalism and collegiality in the profession.

Willy Casero amuses the crowd as Mayor Rapcu in an excerpt from PETA’s ‘Batang Rizal.’

Philstage President Fernando Josef, concurrent artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino, expressed elation over the participation of a large number of nominees. “They came with friends and family,” he said. “This is a historic event as we are witnessing the maturity of an industry that responds to audiences, artists, and society.”

Directed by Dennis Marasigan and produced by Elmar Beltran Ingles, the awards ceremonies featured moving performances by Ballet Philippines’ Biag Gaongen, winner for outstanding male lead performance in a dance production (La Revolucion Filipina and Latin Heat), and the cast of Batang Rizal.

Winners, all : Front row, from left to right: Fernando Josef, Floy Quintos, Vincent de Jesus, Robert Seña, Shamaine Centenera Buencamino, Biag Gaongen, and Philstage Executive Director Elmar Ingles. Back row: Paolo Perez of Tanghalang Pilipino, Liesl Batucan, Susan Macuja of Ballet Manila, Dennis Marasigan, Jethro Joaquin, Bong Cabrera, Melvin Lee of PETA, Jose Mari Avellana, CB Garrucho, Max Luna III of Ballet Philippines, Camille Ordinario-Joson, and Alan Hineline of Ballet Philippines.

The categories, winners, and nominees:

Outstanding production of a full-length play: Golden Child (Tanghalang Pilipino). Other nominees: Batang Rizal, PETA. Hamlet, Repertory Philippines. Kudeta, Tanghalang Pilipino.

Outstanding production of a one-act play: Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna (Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4). Other nominees: Ang Bayot, ang Meranao, at ang Habal-Habal sa Isang Nakababagot na Paghihintay sa Kanto ng Lanao del Norte, Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4. Ellas Inocentes, Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4. Three Sisters: A Noh Play, Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4.

Outstanding musical production: Skin Deep (PETA). Other nominee: Altar Boyz, Repertory Philippines.

Outstanding dance production: La Revolucion Filipina, Ballet Philippines. Other nominees: Latin Heat, Ballet Philippines. New Beginnings, Ballet Philippines.

Outstanding stage direction: Loy Arcenas (Golden Child). Other nominees: Chari Arrespacochaga, Altar Boyz. Nor Domingo, Skin Deep. Jose Estrella, Three Sisters: A Noh Play. Floy Quintos, Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna. Floy Quintos, Kudeta. Tuxqs Rutaquio, Ellas Inocentes. Dudz Teraña, Batang Rizal.

Outstanding original choreography: Agnes Locsin (La Revolucion Filipina). Other nominees: Bam Damian, Latin Heat. Alan Hineline, New Beginnings. Alden Lugnasin, Latin Heat. Max Luna III, New Beginnings. Jason Zamora, Altar Boyz.

Outstanding original play: Floy Quintos’ Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna. Other nominees: Batang Rizal, Christine Bellen. Ang Bayot, ang Meranao, at ang Habal-Habal . . ., Rogelio Braga. Ellas Inocentes, Layeta Bucoy.

Outstanding ensemble performance: the cast of Golden Child (Tanghalang Pilipino). Other nominees: Altar Boyz, Repertory Philippines. Ang Bayot, ang Meranao, at ang Habal-Habal . . ., Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4. Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street, Tanghalang Pilipino. Batang Rizal, PETA. Coppelia, Ballet Philippines. Ellas Inocentes, Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4. Hamlet, Repertory Philippines. Kudeta, Tanghalang Pilipino. La Revolucion Filipina, Ballet Philippines. Latin Heat, Ballet Philippines. Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang, PETA. New Beginnings, Ballet Philippines. Skin Deep, PETA.

Outstanding male lead performance in a play: Jose Mari Avellana (Tuesdays with Morrie). Other nominees: Arthur Acuña, Golden Child. Dido de la Paz, Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street. Joe Gruta, Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street. Mario O'Hara, Kudeta. Joey Paras, Ang Bayot, ang Meranao, at ang Habal-Habal . . . . Arnold Reyes, Ang Bayot, ang Meranao, at ang Habal-Habal . . . . Jonathan Tadioan, Pamantasang Hirang, Tanghalang Pilipino/Virgin Labfest 4.

Outstanding female lead performance in a play: Shamaine Centenera Buencamino (Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna). Other nominees: Lovely Balili, Ellas Inocentes. Liesl Batucan, Golden Child. Tina Chilip, Golden Child. Jenessa Roque, Ellas Inocentes. Irma Adlawan-Marasigan, Golden Child.

Outstanding male lead performance in a musical: Robert Seña (Skin Deep). Other nominees: Red Concepcion, Altar Boyz. Juliene Mendoza, EJ: Ang Pinagdaanang Buhay nina Evelio Javier at Edgar Jopson (Tanghalang Pilipino). Jett Pangan, EJ: Ang Pinagdaanang Buhay nina Evelio Javier at Edgar Jopson.

Outstanding female lead performance in a musical: May Bayot (Skin Deep). Other nominees: Isay Alvarez, Skin Deep. Gail Guanlao Billones, Skin Deep.

Outstanding male lead performance in a dance production: Biag Gaongen (La Revolucion Filipina and Latin Heat).

Outstanding female lead performance in a dance production: Lisa Macuja Elizalde (Le Corsaire, Ballet Manila).

Outstanding featured performance in a dance production: no nomination.

Outstanding male featured performance in a play: Bong Cabrera (Kudeta). Other nominees: Riki Benedicto, Kudeta. Willy Casero, Batang Rizal. Nor Domingo, Tosca (PETA). Raffy Tejada, Tosca.

Outstanding female featured performance in a play: Cris Villonco (Hamlet). Other nominee: Mailes Kanapi, Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street.

Outstanding featured performance in a dance production: Camille Ordinario-Joson (Latin Heat).

Outstanding original libretto: Vincent de Jesus (Skin Deep). Other nominee: Vincent de Jesus, Batang Rizal.

Outstanding translation/adaptation: George de Jesus III (Kudeta). Other nominee: Dennis Marasigan, Golden Child.

Outstanding musical direction: Vincent de Jesus (Batang Rizal). Other nominee: Jojo Malferrari, Altar Boyz.

Outstanding set design: Loy Arcenas (Golden Child) and Tuxqs Rutaquio (Kudeta). Other nominees: Mel Bernardo, Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang (PETA). Gino Gonzales, New Beginnings. Mio Infante, Coppelia. Mio Infante, La Revolucion Filipina.

Outstanding costume design: Faust Peneyra (Hamlet). Other nominees: Ron Alfonso, Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang. Gino Gonzales, Golden Child. Jonathan Janolo, Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang, Ballet Manila. Victor Ursabia, La Revolucion Filipina.

Outstanding lighting design: Dennis Marasigan (Kudeta). Other nominees: Katsch Catoy, La Revolucion Filipina. Martin Esteva, Hamlet. Barbi Tan-Tiongco, Golden Child.

Outstanding sound design: Jethro Joaquin (Hamlet). Other nominees: Janice Dee, Kudeta. Jethro Joaquin, EJ: Ang Pinagdaanang Buhay nina Evelio Javier at Edgar Jopson. Shima Takesi, Tosca. Gidget Tolentino, Altar Boyz. J. Victor Villareal, Golden Child.

Philstage groups together the country’s leading and established performing arts companies which include Actors Actors Inc. (AAI), Ballet Manila (BM), Ballet Philippines (BP), Gantimpala Theater Foundation (GTF), Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit (OPM), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), Repertory Philippines (REP), Tanghalang Pilipino, and the Triumphant Peoples’ Evangelical Theater Society (Trumpets).