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Class, gender, and the contours of nationalism in the culture of Philippine radical
theater
Bodden, Michael H . Frontiers 16.2-3 (1996): 24.

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Bodden examines the ways that three plays, Malou Jacob's "Juan Tamban" (1979), Nicanor Tiongson's "Pilipinas Circa 1907" (1982) and Lualhati Bautista's "Lorena" (1989)
present a look at how Philippine radical nationalist writers attempt to represent, in their works, the problems of class and gender within Philippine society.

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"No, Papa] Pa, do you think it's easy for me to say this and talk to you this way? I'm scared but I've got to say it. I've learned far more from my dealings with Juan than from
observing our life here at home ... Dad, I've just come from Juan in Santa Ana. Their house was so small, with everything right there, they had to make it serve as a living
room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and when I came they were eating dried fish, a single fish head, but were they ashamed? No] They offered it to me, wholeheartedly] I've learned
a lot more from my dealings with Juan, from my dealings with simple folk like Mang Tino. Their life is so simple, you know. And your vested interests are so complicated
and obscure]"

Marina in Malou Jacob's Juan Tamban

"It's divisive, they said, to still have a women's bureau. The issue is national independence. Let's not get diverted from that by the women's question."

(At this point, two people conversing can be seen.)

"Comrade, the women's question is important too. There are countries which have passed through bloody changes, but declined to change the condition of women."

"But comrade Lorrie, women have hardly been left out of the movement."

"But the point is that we have a lot of problems which are particular to us, comrade. There are the laws of the household, of society and tradition, of church and state, which
deny us our rights."

"It's the same for us, comrade Lorrie] It's the same for us]"

"With you it's as a citizen. With us, it's as a citizen ... and as a woman."

Lorena in Lualhati Bautista's Lorena

Radical nationalism in the Philippines served as the backbone for much of the resistance to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, and radical nationalist culture clearly
made an important contribution to such opposition, particularly in the field of theater. Yet as can be seen from the passages above, taken from two well-known radical
nationalist plays, the radical nationalist movement contains within itself serious areas of disagreement and social division, particularly in relation to issues of class, gender,
and ethnicity. Such conflicts are potentially explosive, but they may also present an opportunity for dialogue, joint struggle, and provisional resolutions capable of releasing
previously untapped social power. The works I examine here all attempt to bridge disagreements and divisions centering on class and gender, in one way or another,
through their strategies of representation. How well they succeed in building bridges, or whether they chiefly expose the barriers to constructing interclass alliances and
incorporating feminist concerns into the radical nationalist movement, are the primary concerns of this investigation.

The plays I have selected, Malou Jacob's Juan Tamban (1979), Nicanor Tiongson's Pilipinas Circa 1907 (1982), and Lualhati Bautista's Lorena (1989), present an interesting
cross-section of the products of preeminent radical nationalist cultural workers and the groups with which they collaborate. Accordingly, these dramas offer us a way to
gain a provisional understanding of the forms in which Philippine radical nationalist writers attempt to represent, in their works, the problems of class and gender within
Philippine society.

In discussing nationalism, I take as a starting point Benedict Anderson's definition of a nation as an "imagined community." According to Anderson, nationalism and a sense
of national identity are first and foremost cultural artifacts.(1) Anderson attributes the emergence of these artifacts mainly to structural factors: the rise of print capital and
standardized languages, and educational, bureaucratic, and political "journeys" that make it possible to imagine the existence of a more or less coherent national
community. Partha Chatterjee has critiqued Anderson's work for precisely this reason. Chatterjee feels that Anderson attributes too much to the structures of colonialism
and not enough to the creative acts of nationalists formulating, propagating, and defending the "new possibilities" of nationalism. Consequently, Chatterjee has devoted
more attention to the actual "imagining" of national communities -- how discourses and ideologies of nationalism are articulated in specific texts at specific historical
moments as interventions in struggles to make certain versions of a nationalist project prevail. Chatterjee is interested in how nationalist ideology operates: What does
nationalist discourse presuppose? Where is it located in relation to other discourses? Where are its tensions and contradictions? And what does it reveal and suppress?(2)

One of the key components of nationalist discourse is its recourse to the trope of family in order to "naturalize" its particular constructions of community and belonging.
According to Anne McClintock, the image of family attached to national narratives presupposes the subordination of women to men, and therefore works to legitimate
notions of the nation as something that should naturally involve hierarchy as well. Further, the trope of family is also connected to notions of genesis and chronological
development, ideas that imply that those in authority within the family have a right to formulate, direct, and control that development. "Nationalism is thus," McClintock
argues, "constituted from the very beginning as a gendered discourse, and cannot be understood without a theory of gender power."(3)

Chatterjee's questions and McClintock's notion of the importance of family and gender in constituting nationalism are useful in examining the "imagining" of national
communities at occur in dramatic representations. This is particularly true insofar as plays are seen as attempts to represent current conditions to a specific audience, in
order to suggest the most plausible solutions to the conditions thus represented. Such representations will always be positioned in relation to a perceived audience, and
will reveal certain things while suppressing others. In noting the salient features as well as the omissions of nationalist literary works, we may be better able understand the
dynamics, problems, and contradictions of nationalist thought in relation to issues of class and gender. All of the plays I examine in this article were written and performed
for primarily urban audiences consisting mainly of students, professionals, and members of the economic middle class.(4) As such, they speak to an audience that is
relatively privileged, though still distant from the real foci of economic and political power in the Philippines. And yet, these plays were written to varying degrees in
response to events and pressures that had an impact on other, broader sectors of the Philippine population -- the urban poor, workers, and to a lesser extent, peasants. They
are, then, in part, an attempt to bring those other events, pressures, and constituencies to the attention of the primarily middle-class audiences with whom the cultural
workers (writers, actors, directors) concerned are most familiar. This should be clear at the start, before we consider the textual strategies for engaging and positioning the
intended audience around which these plays are constructed. Equally important, in order that we may fully comprehend the context for these attempts to resolve issues of
class and gender in specific cultural products, is an understanding, however schematic, of the development of recent Philippine nationalism.

Recent Philippine nationalism is a complex and diverse phenomenon. Its roots reach as far back into Philippine history as the late nineteenth-century elite propaganda
movement, the rebellion of the 1890s against Spanish rule, and the war of resistance against occupation by the United States. Early resistance was hardly unified, however.
Elite rebels sought marginalize the influence of more socially humble, and more populist-oriented, leaders such as Andres Bonifacio during the rebellion against Spain.
Under American rule, local elites and their politicians benefited from colonial strategies for ruling the Philippines. Politically, the landed elite were elevated to positions of
power under the Americans through electoral politics controlled by limited franchise(5) (elite women's movement efforts were encouraged by the prewar nationalist leader
Quezon in so far as they were directed mainly towards obtaining the vote and legal equality and as long as they did not question women's subordinate social status).(6)
Economically, American markets were opened to the agricultural produce whose trade was dominated by the Philippine landed elites. These factors produced an elite with
interests tied to those of the United States, yet one that at the same time used nationalist discourses and sentiments as leverage against their colonial masters and
assuage restive local populations.(7)

Another strand of Philippine nationalism can be linked to the collaboration of radical socialists and communists with peasant and worker movements in the 1930s and
1940s. Building from these movements during the Japanese occupation, the Huk guerrilla army was formed to resist the new imperialist regime. Following the conclusion
of the war, Filipino elites and the United States fought to disarm the Huks and to neutralize radical peasant resistance to elite economic domination.(8) Thus, elite
nationalism -- embedded in an electoral system engineered by the U.S. colonial administration and with financial interests tied to those of US. businesses and government -
- and the kind of nationalism that began to be associated with popular struggles for economic justice and broad, participatory democracy developed antagonistically.

A complex set of factors following the second world war created a political and economic crisis in the Philippines and led to an attempt on the part of the Philippine
governments of the 1950s to diversify the economy by promoting import-substitution industrialization. Sections of the Philippine elite thus began to turn toward a new kind
of nationalism, one less amenable to U.S. economic and political domination, since national industry would have to compete with the cheaper US.-made products that had
been imported to the Philippines for several decades. These new elite nationalists desired a more equal relationship with the United States, and they favored import tariffs
and currency controls as a means of ensuring that Philippine industry would not wither before stronger foreign competition.(9) The limitations of the Philippines' internal
market, dependence on imported goods and raw materials, and pressure from the United States led to the end of this import-substitution experiment and the introduction of
an export-oriented regime favored by U.S.-dominated international lending agencies. This mainly profited foreign investors and traditional elite agricultural exporters at the
expense of Philippine industrialists.

These changes created a historical juncture during the 1960s in which elite, reform-minded nationalist industrialists could temporarily flirt with the idea of making common
cause with a much more radical young breed of nationalist.(10) These young radicals, mainly university students, also connected the Philippines' economic and cultural
dependency on the United States to the deteriorating state of affairs within their own country. Yet the common ground between the two groups was hardly solid. Many of
these younger radicals felt that a evolution was needed in order to lift the Philippines out of the increasingly dire economic and political situation in which they perceived it
to be. In their opinion, the moderate, elite nationalists of the 1950s, interested mainly in promoting their own interests in industrial expansion, were incapable of creating
significant change.(11) Influenced by Mao and the Cultural Revolution as well as by early Philippine nationalists, they called for an end to U.S. imperialism, feudalism,
bureaucrat capitalism, and the fascism that they felt the Philippine government mobilized to support all of the aforementioned practices.(12)

In the late 1960s, these young activists began to articulate their own radical nationalist agendas, stressing social justice and socialistic notions of social organization, in
relation to the dislocations and deprivations of large segments of the rural peasant and urban working class populations.(13) At one edge of this broadly democratic and
socialist movement, though quite influential, Jose Maria Sison launched the new Communist Party of the Philippines in 1969 and began prepare for a protracted people's
war in the countryside, according to Mao's blueprint, in order to overthrow the existing system. Other radical nationalists believed in a more peaceful transformation of the
Philippines to a socialist society.(14) Yet whether the radical nationalists advocated armed struggle or more peaceful avenues of change, members of the elite who favored
the national industrialist position were hardly inclined to support such activities, nor did they particularly object to the low-wage regimes dictated by IMF and World Bank
programs.(15) Their resistance was waged at the level of intra-elite, constitutional maneuvering.

In keeping with the radical nationalist trend, cultural workers of the "First Quarter Storm" period of social protests (roughly 1969-1972) had begun to construct new types of
theater that could be used to "educate" and hopefully, to further mobilize various mass constituencies.(16) The Declaration of Martial Law by Ferdinand Marcos on
September 22, 1972, brought to an effective halt all such activity. Many of the nationalist elite had reluctantly supported Marcos' move, fearing mounting mass discontent
in conjunction with radical nationalist and communist organizing. Yet by the mid-1970s, the martial law government, though still in control, began to witness an erosion of
both obedience and loyalty among the population of the Philippines. This loss of legitimacy grew more serious as failed land reform led to substantial growth in the
communist New People's Army,(17) repressed wages fostered more desperate and sustained union organizing, a faltering economy created uncertainty,(18) and eventually,
dissatisfaction among the economic elites.(19) Under these circumstances, brutal use of the state's repressive apparatus gave birth a broad-based justice and human
rights campaign.(20)

Radical cultural activists had also begun to regroup by the mid-1970s and to advance cautiously, due to the tenacity of the forces arrayed against them, a radical nationalist
cultural agenda. Given the incomplete and interrupted nature of the mass mobilization that had begun in the 1960s, as well as the widespread, growing discontent with the
Marcos regime, one of the first tasks with which cultural groups such as PETA (The Philippines Educational Theater Association) found themselves faced was that of
building a broad-based cultural coalition in opposition to the repressive practices of the Marcos regime. This meant not only forging links with worker and peasant groups
through cultural work, but attempting as well, at key junctures, to once more make "common cause" with beleaguered national industrialists. The domination of the
Philippine economy and cultural life by the United States, whose agencies supported and dictated, to a large extent, many of the programs carried out by the Marcos
government, continued to occupy a central position in the analyses of the problems of the Philippines advanced by many activists(21) This made the notion of alliance with
elite nationalist entrepreneurs seem all the more necessary.(22)

Malou Jacob's Juan Tamban was conceived, written, and performed in this atmosphere of growing protest against social inequities and human rights abuses in the
Philippines. Briefly, the play is the story of a middle-class social work student, Marina Torres, who is assigned to the case of a young street child named Juan Tamban. As
an ambitious, career-minded woman, she is first frustrated, then ultimately challenged, by the seeming intractability of the destitute boy who has landed in a hospital after
performing for a street audience by eating lizards, rats, and cockroaches. Such behavior, we learn, was simply Juan's attempt to earn enough money to survive. As Marina
struggles to understand, and then attempts to help Juan surmount his problems, she becomes aware of the ways in which society's rules are stacked against the poor.
Interestingly enough, her growing commitment to Juan also pits her against a series of male authority figures (her advisor, her fiance, her husband, and the judge of a court
to which Juan's theft case is assigned creating a scenario that clearly demonstrates the efficacy of the second passage cited at the beginning of this paper.

As stated above, one of the radical nationalists' main concerns was to form an alliance with the broad masses of the Philippine population (peasants, workers, and in the
Manila of the 1970s, an increasing number of squatters living in makeshift shanty towns). The cultural activists of the "First Quarter Storm" were greatly impressed with
Mao Zedong's "Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art,"(23) and aspects of the "vanguard party" attitude towards the "masses," which are clearly discernable in
Mao's nuanced talks,(24) were also present in the thinking of such activists in the Philippines of the early 1970s.(25) Juan Tamban represents, in part, an attempt to
articulate the problems of the poverty-stricken masses of Manila's slums, and by so doing, it shows its historical connection to the radical nationalists of the First Quarter
Storm. Still, in its construction as a cultural product that was performed mainly for a middle-class audience, it demonstrates a rather different project than the "vanguardist"
agit-prop or exemplary sectoral plays of the earlier period. This can be seen most clearly in the play's attempt to represent the possibility of, and the need for, dialogue and a
more egalitarian kind of cooperation between middle-class intellectuals and the masses of poor Filipinos .

Such a project is directly related to the nature of PETA's audience. After all, the central character of Juan Tamban is not the destitute street child of the play's title, but the
middle-class student/social worker, Marina, a character whose background is similar to that of the major portion of PETA's audiences. Thus, Marina provides a point of
emotional identification, particularly for middle-class women who saw the play, but more generally, for all middle-class audience members who felt concerned about the
state of Philippine society. As Marina attempts to understand Juan's problems so that she can "solve" his case, parlay that success into a good grade in her courses, and
advance another rung on the career ladder that she is climbing, she begins to realize that the concepts of justice, equality before the law, and the benefits of hard work,
concepts she has used justify and make sense of the existing system, are of little help to Juan and others who have been similarly marginalized. Furthermore, the
consequences of her increasing commitment to truly helping Juan and his family begin to alienate her from all of the male-dominated institutions that have helped to
define her life: family, school, heterosexual love relationships, the legal system. Marina is chided by her advisor for becoming too emotionally involved in Juan's case; by her
father for risking all the social advantages that he has secured for her through his own sacrifices; by her boyfriend for not making him the absolute and undisputed "first
priority" in her life; and by a courtroom judge for not observing the proper deference.
>

Through such experiences, Marina undergoes a kind of marginalization of her own. This marginalization comes in the form of an attempt to brand her newly born social
conscience as useless, but it is effected, as well, through argument that bring to light a connected marginalization: that of Marina as woman.(26) The reproaches of father,
fiance, and teacher all attempt to circumscribe her ability to maneuver socially through invoking her "place" or her "weaknesses" as a "woman." Through following Marina's
struggle (while also being prodded by a koro

chorus

that at every step of the way attempts, in Brechtian style, to critically distance the audience from the events of the play by directly questioning why things are the way they
are) the audience is invited to understand the social marginalization of not only the poor, but also of women.

Ironically, Marina herself seems unaware, at least insofar as she does not respond directly to such issues, of the sexist elements in the arguments used by the men in her
life. She continually justifies her actions by stressing the need to address the desperate situation of the poor. And, in fact, many radical nationalist critics have hailed the
piece as a classic play of the "politicization" (or "radicalization") of a middle-class social worker when confronted with the problems of slum-dwellers,(27) or as a
"passionate plea" for the relief of slum children trapped by poverty.(28) However, it is not a simple matter separate the issues of class disparities and gender oppression in
this play. This becomes more than apparent if we examine the way in which arguments about gender roles and class politics are intermixed by those figures who try to keep
Marina "in her place."

Mike, Marina's fiance in the course of one argument, first accuses her of forgetting him, then reproaches her for going to the squatter settlement alone (without a man --
himself -- to accompany her), then shows a lack of sympathy for the suffering of the squatters by attempting to "naturalize" their inhumane treatment at the hands of the
government by referring to the government's right to relocate them from land that is not officially theirs. When Marina rebuts his arguments on the last point, he attempts to
take refuge by returning to the terrain of the heterosexual relationship, chiding Marina for bringing such external, distressing issues into the sacred sphere of their precious
free time together. Such time, he implies, is for making wedding and honeymoon arrangements, and for relaxing. us, Mike first endeavors to rein Marina in by faulting her
behavior as a fiance. Failing in this, he then tries to frighten her about her carelessness as a "vulnerable" woman in a rough men's world. Again falling short, he tries to
counter her political concerns. Finally, he returns full circle by criticizing her behavior as a romantic partner.

Marina's father performs in a rather similar fashion during his climactic confrontation with Marina toward the end of the play. He begins by accusing her of creating trouble
in the court and trying, in general, to make life difficult for herself. When he shifts to the problem of her failing relationship with Mike, warning her that Mike is her first
priority, not her work, and that she will lose him if she does not act accordingly. Finally, he concedes that her actions could lose him contracts and money. Both of these
confrontations demonstrate the way in which political-economic issues and gender issues are always closely linked in this play -- are in fact used as interlocking discursive
supports by the male establishment.
Ostensibly, issues of gender inequality seem secondary to issues of political economy (addressing class disparities) in this play if we look only at Marina's justifications for
what she does, yet they a crucial in that the discourse of traditional gender roles is continually mobilized to keep Marina from "rocking the boat." By attempting. to put
Marina back "in her place," Marina's father, fiancee, and advisor all demonstrate that they subscribe to the notion that women occupy a subordinate social position -- they
should behave themselves and make men their first priority, helping them relax. Such attitudes exhibit the rhetorical justifications for the hierarchy of power that is
constructed between men and women, a hierarchy that is also connected discursively in the text with maintaining the hierarchy of classes. The two issues -- Marina's "sins"
as a woman, and the danger of social change that threatens economic privilege -- seem completely interlocked here. The attempts to put Marina back in her place in the
traditional family, marriage, or teacher-student relationship are moves always undertaken in relation to Marina's increasingly threatening social activism. Thus, the play
suggests that the dismantling of the hierarchy of gender and the destruction of a social hierarchy of classes are closely interrelated projects. And in fact it is precisely this
interrelation that gives the play its tremendous force as a play of "radicalization." For in Marina's commitment to work with and for the poor, she does not yet clearly
articulate a radical program (though even the commitment, itself, is frightening to the established system where women of her class do not engage in such activities), yet
her breaks with father and fiance are portrayed as extremely difficult, even gut-wrenching. It is these latter gestures, the breaking free of a male-dominated tradition at great
emotional cost, that ultimately make us understand that Marina is truly being "radically" politicized. And, since gender issues and issues of political economy are so closely
related in this play, the radical nature of her break with father and fiance also amplifies the radical potential of her commitment to the squatters, a potential as yet vaguely
defined.

There is, in addition, one more important implication of the play's pairing of gender and class politics. Eventually, as Marina's individual efforts to protect Juan from a biased
and unforgiving legal system fail and in the process, deprive her of the support of her loved ones and base institutions, her marginalization as not only an idealistic activist,
but also as a woman, shatters her class-based feelings of superiority. This allows her to recognize and point to, in the play's climax and conclusion, the need for a more
egalitarian relationship of pint learning and struggle between herself and the impoverished members of the squatter settlement in which Juan's family lives.

Marina, though most specifically a representation of the dilemma of middle-class, professional, and activist-oriented women, can also be said to be a figure for all idealistic
middle-class intellectuals who, the play urges, must become aware and committed, but must also be humble. Collaboration, not leadership, is therefore the implied
relationship of radical nationalist intellectuals to the masses. The genesis of the structure of the play underscores this point. Juan Tamban is characterized structurally by
a number of Brechtian-style techniques for critically distancing the audience from the events of the play. Yet the play's techniques owe as much (if not more) to the
development of a set of specific grassroots theater practices in the Philippines during the 1970s as they do to the direct appropriation of Brechtian ideas. These grass roots
practices, pioneered by Catholic workers in Mindanaoan Basic Christian Communities and further developed by PETA, rely on several non-hierarchically-oriented systems
including the creative dramatics methods of Viola Spolin, Jearnine Wagner, and Kitty Baker, as well as the co-intentional, problem-posing educational practices of Paolo
Freire. Taken as a whole, they are intended to activate the creative potentials of the peasants, workers, and students to whom they are introduced in the course of theater
workshops, and are intended to help the members of these groups become more critically aware of the existing social structures. Ultimately, such skills would enable them
to confront the problems associated with these structures. The material used for the plays created in such workshops is always drawn from the everyday environments and
experiences of the participants. In such a way, PETA's workshop facilitators learn more about what is occurring in social sectors other than their own, and the experiences,
creativity, and critical abilities of the participants gain validation in both the participants' own eyes and those of workshop facilitators.(29)

Elements growing out of these practices give Juan Tamban its distinctive form. For example, the koro, a choral grouping that interrupts and punctuates many of the scenes
with questions about why society has produced so many "Juan Tambans" and that points to the class-specific nature of the different characters' experiences and
understanding of reality, was a key element in PETA's grassroots theater workshops and one with which writer Malou Jacob and director Joel Lamangan were certainly
familiar.(30) Secondly, the way in which the play repeatedly poses questions about the social problems that it represents is linked to the Freirian problem-posing
educational methods that inform much of workshop approach. This point becomes clearer when PETA members refer to the process Marina undergoes during the course
of the play as one of conscientization,(31) a word that is one of the key terms in the Freirian vocabulary.
>
Thus, Juan Tamban represents, in part, an outgrowth of a grass roots practice in which PETA and its members, themselves, learned how to dialogue with the masses, the
longtime object of attention for radical nationalists. But though the play attempts, through the problem-posing interventions of the koro and Marina's conscientization,
conscientize the audience and argue for an egalitarism alliance between the middle-class and the subaltern populations of Philippine society, it cannot be said, by any
means, that the play solves the problem of interclass alliance. The play concludes, after all, with a scene in which Marina has committed herself to work alongside the
urban poor, but it hardly delineates exactly what the nature of the relationship will be. Much, obviously, remains to be worked out in the actual doing of things. And there is,
in Marina's defense of the activities before her father (as quoted at the start of this article), a note of over-idealization of the poor that can be heard in the longing for a
"simpler," less "complicated," less "obscure" and confusing way of living. This longing can be read as a revolt against the complicated, "corrupted" relations of modern,
urbanized, commercialized society, but it is also, I would argue, the mark of a lingering doubt, on the part of the wrier, and PTA, that the case for egalitarian collaboration has
been sufficiently proven. Such doubt forces them to have Marina over-valorize the poor in her self-vindicating speech. It is in such gestures that the strain of the effort to
imagine and to realize interclass alliances is most surely revealed.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lorena Barros and other activist women formed a revolutionary women's activist movement (MAKIBAKA) in response to the failure of
male activists to take women's special concerns seriously.(32) As could be expected, feminist activity, only in its incipient stage, was arrested by the onset of martial
law(33) As resistance to the Marcos regime reemerged, women had not generally felt that male activists were willing to devote increased attention to their problems.
Activist women often found that their husbands and partners, also active in anti-Marcos and radical nationalist movements, expected them drop out of movement
involvement once they became pregnant and bore children.(34) Marra Lanot, now considered an important Filipina poet, recalls that increasing numbers of women poets,
journalists, and fiction writers generally failed to receive due recognition during the late seventies and early eighties. In fact, because feminism was not generally accepted,
Lanot wrote on women's issues under a nom de plume.(35)

Juan Tamban signals in a remarkable way the initial stirrings of a reawakened feminism. Though many nationalists read the play primarily in terms of Marina's politicization
with regard to issues of class, the manner in which it chose to attack the oppression of women in the institutions of everyday life, and related those themes to the issue of
class disparities, marked it as a daring new step in Philippine radical nationalist theater. Malou Jacob recalls that she herself was not yet involved in the feminist movement
at the time, and was somewhat worried about how the audience would react the play's questioning of women's roles in the home, family, and society.(36) Two years later, in
1981, Marra Lanot and others organized WOMEN (Women Writers in Media Now), with one of its objectives being to help liberate women "through conscientizing readers
(both men and women) on women issues which could be connected to other political or national concerns."(37) Also, by the early eighties, Lualhati Bautista had begun
writing a series of Tagalog novels for publication in the mass media that clearly foregrounded feminist issues.(38) A new women's organization, GABRIELA, began to form
at around the same time and went on to enroll some 40,000 members by the end of the decade.(39)

In 1982, PETA produced another play, Pilipinas Circa 1907. The work was written by Nicanor Tiongson, one of the radical nationalist cultural movement's leading advocates
for the creation of a specifically national culture. Tiongson, who traces his political activation to the First Quarter Storm years, felt that it was essential for the radical
nationalist movement to search and reappropriate traditional forms of theater if they wanted to reach a truly mass audience, since traditional forms of theater informed the
most popular products (mainly soap operas) of television, radio, and film. Tiongson's hope was that these traditional forms could be transformed to give contemporary
Filipinos a more radical nationalist message and to create the conditions for the building of a truly "nationalist" economy.(40) He thus set out to create a contemporary
zarzuwela, a form imported to the Philippines during the waning decades of Spanish colonial rule.

In the early twentieth century, the zarzuwela was chiefly supported by urbanized elites and intelligentsias who sought moderate reform of semi-feudal relations of
agricultural production based on patron-client relations and tenant fanning. Its early audiences also included, however, many from the agricultural elite whose livelihood
depended on such relations.(41) The zarzuwela was characterized by a set of stereotypical characters, large numbers of songs in each act, the valorization of traditional
moral behavior, and the condemnation of gambling, sloth, infidelity, and usury.(42) Tiongson felt that such plays always sorted to a facile, happy ending that did not properly
reflect the actual difficulties involved in resolving the problems depicted.(43)

In order to "modernize" his zarzuwela, Tiongson set the story in 1907 and deepened the central love plot so that it would relate to the struggle for control of the Philippine
economy being fought out in that era between American and Philippine capitalists. That Tiongson chose this as the theme of his play reflects the situation in 1982, when
the nationalist elite were increasingly disillusioned with Marcos' economic policies. The national industrialist wing of that elite were particularly hard-pressed to survive in
the face of IMF and World Bank-dictated economic reforms.(44) Thus, Tiongson's play was an attempt by PETA to argue for a stronger alliance between radical nationalists
and elite industrialists with nationalist leanings.

In the play, Nora Pilar owns a major share of stock in the Germinal Cigar Factory. Her brother, Don Pardo, wants to help an American, Robert, gain control of those shares
and the factory. In return Pardo is to receive American political patronage. Pilar's daughter, Leonor, is in love wit a nationalist youth named Emilio. Pardo, however, schemes
to marry Leonor to Robert in order to ensure that Robert will eventually control the factory. Emilio and Leonor have a misunderstanding, and Leonor spends tie with Robert
at her uncle's request. Meanwhile, Pura, Nora Pilar's niece, and Andres, a proletarian risen to the position of Germinal foreman, are also in love. They are united in their
national patriotism and a well aware of Don Pardo's intentions. Impatient, Don Pardo tries to force Nora Pilar to sell her shares by attempting to slacken sales through
sabotaging production. The workers, however, resentful of his attempts to impose his authority on behalf of the foreigners, resist, leading Pardo to call in the police to arrest
Emilio, Ands, and the rebellious workers. Andres decides to leave for the hills to join the anti-American armed resistance, while Pura stays to help on the home front. Emilio
is arrested and a worker is brutally slain by the constabulary. To gain Emilio's release, Leonor agrees to marry Robert, but just as the ceremony is about begin, Robert's
American wife appears to expose his planned bigamy. Pardo is disgraced, Emilio is released from jail, and the day is saved.

As should be clear from the summary, Tiongson has indeed fashioned a melodramatic love story closely resembling the pattern of the traditional zarzuwela, with the
important difference that the love story is now a field of contestation where U.S. imperialism and Filipino nationalism, broadly portrayed, square off in competition for the
hand of Leonor. This plot is closely tied to the struggle for control of the Philippine economy as symbolized by the cigar factory. In setting up these conflicts, Tiongson has
retained the traditional "good guy versus bad guy" opposition of the zarzuwela, but such categories are no longer determined solely by adherence to traditional reality.
Instead, allegiance to the "interests of the nation" becomes the chief criterion, though significantly, a correlation between nationalism and conservative rural codes is still
retained. Accordingly, Don Pardo, the native collaborator, becomes the major focus of the play.

The native traitor also appears in another theater tradition that Tiongson drew upon: the Tagalog "Seditious" plays of the early American occupation. In these plays, the
native traitor is frequently seen as the main danger to Philippine independence. This is certainly the case with Pardo. In a play directed primarily at Philippine elite and
middle-class audiences, Pardo, the elite traitor, is the character who makes the plot. We see him scheming to marry off Leonor to the American, Robert, trying to meddle in
the affairs of the cigar factory in order to bring it under American control, and leading the soldiers to Nora Pilar's house in order to arrest the nationalists. By contrast, the
other villains of the play, Robert and the Americans, seem remote and unaware, even ineffective at times. All that the Americans can do for Pardo happens offstage. Pardo
is merely informed by Robert about what he can expect in return for his services, while Pardo is continually shown in action to the audience. Pura, one of Pardo's most vocal
opponents, remarks that such a " Filipino bootlicker" is the greatest threat to Philippine independence. >

Tiongson has used this motif effectively to conflate, in the brutal, scheming, and authoritarian figure of Pardo, popular images of Marcos as well as those of Philippine
industrialists, technocrats, and politicians who were perceived to be "selling out" the interests of Philippine capital to foreign lending agencies and multinationals. Yet
Tiongson also effects another conflation in order to heighten the audience's emotional identification with the nationalist position. By tying the love story so closely to the
story of a predatory corporate takeover attempt, Tiongson hitches the essentially conservative notions of family and home, and romantic notions of love (all of which
populate the stages of the traditional zarzuwela) to general nationalist arguments about political economy.

The traditional zarzuwela's handling of women is of particular interest here. Usually, the conventional social ideology to which these plays subscribed cast women in a
passive role: they were "shy, virginal, soft-spoken, and addicted to tears."(45) Lapena-Bonifacio suggests that the virtue most characteristic of zarzuwela heroines was the
ability to endure suffering.(46) In Pilipinas Circa 1907, this representation of women is left primarily intact. Leonor and her mother are always depicted as reacting to events,
while men control the action (Emilio's initiative in resolving his misunderstanding with Leonor; Emilio's and Robert/Pardo's fighting over the right to possess Leonor).
Among the play's "villains," the men are seen as serious opponents, while the "Americanized" women are merely ridiculous and annoying. These "Americanized" women are
seen as slavishly worshipping American fashion trends, clownishly lusting after American men, and foolishly displaying their imperfect English in an attempt to appear
modern and sophisticated. The play's "nationalist" women are cast in a generally conservative mold, in contrast to the negatively portrayed pro-American Filipinas. They are
always seen in the home, which the men come to visit and over which they fight for control. Similarly, the "nationalist women are always dressed modestly and behave with
tact and circumspection. The image of the conservative, culturally pure woman thereby becomes something of a fetish object.

By identifying Pardo with the crass and brutal Americans, as well as through Pardo's actions the "merchandises" Leonor in order to curry favor with the Africans; he strikes
his own niece and sister), Tiongson's play is able to supply a doubly emotional force to the condemnation of Pardo: he is both an economic traitor, and one who does
violence to pure love and traditional domestic bonds and norms of behavior. Similarly, the play has retained the singularly patrician point of view of the zarzuwela and the
"Seditious" plays. Since the primary foci lie in the love story of Emilio and Leonor and the factory takeover attempt, a large majority of the chief characters can be seen to
come from well-to-do elite families. Only Andres comes from a humbler origin. the role of the elites remains central, reflecting, perhaps, the fact that the play was performed
predominantly for urban elite and middle-class audiences and aimed at convincing them to ally themselves with the radical nationalist cause, despite Tiongson's stated
intentions to reach the "masses." This patrician point of view keeps the play's project within the bounds of a struggle against foreign control of the economy, while glossing
over potential class disputes within Philippine society. Thus, the story is not one of struggle between rival economic elites, but between oppressive American rulers and
their local collaborators, and benevolent Philippine capitalists whose militantly nationalist workers remain consistently loyal to them.

Yet Tiongson's play is not so simply dismissed. Tiongson himself was obviously aware of such problems, as can be seen by the gestures he makes to redress the structural
sexism and elitism of the play. Such gestures show, I would argue, the impact of the need to build alliances with the peasants and workers, as well as the growing
momentum of the feminist movement in the Philippines. First, he has created a proletarian character, Andres, who is rather more perceptive an Emilio or the other elite
characters in political matters. Andres is portrayed as a militant nationalist who comes from socially and economically humble origins, but who has managed to work his
way up to the position of factory foreman. It is he who is the first to decide to go into the countryside to join the armed resistance, since this is the only way to fight the
imperialists (the play suggests). Andres' presence within the play also permits the physical suggestion of a kind of egalitarian class alliance between the elites and the
nationalist workers since he and Emilio seem on familiar, rather equal terms. In addition, this class alliance is further embodied by Andres' engagement to Pura, an
engagement to which Pura's aunt, Nora Pilar, happily agrees. Andres and Pura thus come to be the chief figures for linking radical nationalist notions of political
transformation with elite nationalist social conservatism.

The character of Pura is the second gesture that Tiongson makes. This intelligent, sharp-tongued woman is an ardent nationalist who dares to argue directly with her uncle,
Don Pardo, and to denigrate the Americans, when others remain sheepish. Her decision to marry Andres is based on their mutual commitment to the nationalist cause. And,
she is willing to accompany Andres into the countryside to join the fight against the imperialists. However, Andres dissuades her from carrying out this intention, ultimately
showing Tiongson's inability (within the bounds of his reworking of the zarzuwela) imagine a revolutionary erasure of sexual divisions of labor.

Despite the rather partial nature of the gestures that Tiongson makes to these subaltern groups of Philippine society, it is important to note that they are at least attempted.
More important, however, are the facts that the political subplot of corporate takeover relies on the romantic competition subplot and the discourse of domestic behavior to
fully realize its emotional impact, and that the interclass alliance that the play argues for is also symbolized in the trope of marriage -- the engagement of Andres and Pura.
Tiongson, in adhering too closely to certain elements of the zarzuwela tradition, has ended by redeploying conservative social stereotypes of family life in order to help
justify nationalist commitment and represent interclass alliance. This pairing would appear to support McClintock's argument regarding the importance of family imagery
and gendered divisions to the construction of nationalism The pure, subordinated, nationalist women, including ultimately even the more independent Pura, are fetishized
as bearers of traditional culture and family norms. They, in accordance with feminist analyses of the ways women are implicated in nationalism, are figured as producers of
the boundaries of national groups, as symbolic signifiers of national difference.(47)

Though this valorization of the traditional family places Pilipinas Circa 1907 in stark contrast to the handling of the same theme in Juan Tamban, both plays graphically
demonstrate not only how discourses of family, love, and domestic custom are structurally mobilized to give emotional power to the plot of a drama, but also how they are
always invoked to support, refuse, or even symbolically embody specific political projects. Ultimately, Pilipinas Circa 1907's linking of political issues and domestic gender
relations once again suggests the possibility of constructing a somewhat different agenda for social change than the one that the characters of the play are allowed to
consciously articulate.

These ideas were, however, being articulated by Philippine feminists, whose emergence in the early and mid-1980s, amidst the rapid growth of numerous women's
organizations, coincided with a period of heightened radical nationalist, anti-Marcos activism following the 1983 assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino. Feminists such
as Delia D. Aguilar began to theorize the connections between gender relations and the system of Philippine politics and society as a whole. As though speaking of the
system of gender relations presented in Pilipinas Circa 1907, Aguilar noted, with reference to her radical nationalist brothers:

. . my bitter frustration in the mid-seventies over the refusal of Filipino comrades to constitute gender relations as a legitimate site of struggle.

Dispatching letters documenting women's active involvement in the New People's Army as proof of their deliverance from sexual oppression, revolutionaries took a view of
women's liberation that was class-reductionist, mechanical and instrumentalist. More personally annoying than their denial of sexism as a problem among Filipinos were
innuendos about how prolonged stay in the U.S, exacerbated by affliction with the individualist character of bourgeois feminism, results in estrangement from one's native
culture, an ad hominem fallacy difficult to take.

Propelled by such a dismissal to seek alternative avenues, I launched into a project investigating Filipino women's position through an examination of the politics of gender
at the heart of the family. At this point, too, I had become convinced of the necessity for problematizing family relations and the indispensability of Marxist-feminist theory
>
for undertaking the task.

Held sacrosanct by revolutionaries and the popular mind, the family, perceived as the repository of all that is of value in Philippine life, has been exempted from critical
scrutiny and interrogation. I recorded interviews with a sampling of Metro-Manila women . . whose narratives to me revealed unmistakable male domination over household
arrangements . . .

But despite the vitality of feminism, the gravitational pull in analysis toward the material sphere of the productive structure indicative of Marxist dogma remains
overpowering. Relying on the momentum of the economic crisis and underground warfare to accelerate the revolutionary process, the left has paid little heed to the
importance of ideology as a crucial ingredient in any program for radical social reconstruction. As a result a popular consciousness that is disturbingly retrograde exists
side-by-side with a potent left insurgency.(48)

In 1990, Aguilar's husband, E. San Juan, Jr., described the problem in another way when he asserted that in the struggle to determine what a nation was and whose
interests should define it, the gender issue was extremely crucial:

Given the patriarchal and authoritarian East of our families and institutions, the women's fight for equality assumes center stage in the democratizing process we claim to
have reinstated after the EDSA revolution ... It is fast overdue for us to criticize the sexism of our institutions and everyday practices, for the kind of nation we are in the
process of constructing will be seriously compromised if it simply reproduces the oppression of women in more subtle and insidious forms by giving priority to political and
economic issues.(49)

In fact, the strategy of Philippine feminists, a strategy prefigured in Juan Tamban and apparent in the program of WOMEN when it began in 1981, was to insist on the
importance of the "women question" while remaining within the nationalist movement militating for sweeping structural change in Philippine society. After WOMEN
foundered, Lanot and her collaboration pushed to start a women's desk within the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) organization, and this desk continued to
attract membership long after the test of the organization had ceased to expand.(50) The same strategy has been apparent within the PETA organization beginning in the
late 1980s. Following a umber of plays that dealt with women's issues (mail order brides, Philippine domestic workers abroad, and Filipinas lured into sex and
entertainment work in Japan) in connection with the disarray of the national economy and international imbalances of power (June Bride

1986

, Amah: Maid in Hong Kong

1987
, and Konnichi wa Piripin

1987

), an experimental women's theater collective was formed within PETA, which later conducted workshops in conjunction with the national women's organization, GABRIELA.
A greater emphasis on women's issues became noticeable in subsequent PETA plays.(51) Sister Mary John Mananzan summarizes the strategy of feminists within the
nationalist movement in the following way:

The has been an attempt to clarify the concepts and principles of the women's movement from a third world perspective. The context of the women's movement is societal
transformation which involves economic, political, socio-cultural, religious, structural changes. The women's movement sees the societal transformation as a necessary
though not sufficient condition for women's liberation. On the other hand no struggle for total human liberation can be considered a success if half of society remains
unliberated from gender oppression.

This integrality of the women's movement in societal transformation is not only in the final goal but in the very process of the struggle. There are examples of countries
where the women struggled with the men for the liberation of their society but were later on put back to the kitchen. Gender equality must be initiated and consciously
posed in the very process of struggling for justice and equality in society.(52)

This strategy becomes wen more clear when we examine the final drama that I will discuss, Lualhati Bautista's monologue, Lorena. Lorena is noteworthy for the very reason
that its performances in early 1989 came about through the collaboration of several women, all cultural workers who had achieved some degree of notoriety in their
respective fields. Lualhati Bautista was a much-lauded novelist whose best known works, as I have already mentioned, foregrounded feminist issues. The director of the
play was the author of Juan Tamban, Malou Jacob. The actress who played the role of Lorena was PETA member Dessa Quesada, well known for her work on a children's
television series, as well as for her singing on behalf of various progressive causes. The music was composed (with the help of PETA's Lutgardo Labad) by Susan
Fernandez-Magno, an established radical nationalist folk singer, and Fe Mangahas, a noted feminist who also worked for the Cultural Center of the Philippines Women's
Desk, while Julie Lluch Dalena, a sculptress, created the sets.(53) Most significantly, by 1989, all of them could freely identify themselves as feminists, or as involved in the
"women's movement." In addition, it is important to note that the play was first performed at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), whose director, since shortly after
Corazon Aquino took office, has been Nicanor Tiongson. It is certainly significant that feminists such as Jacob and Mangahas have been given important positions within
CCP programs by Tiongson.

Lorena is a monologue in which one of the founders of the modern Philippine women's movement, Lorena Barros, is portrayed in the midst of the last days before her death,
which occurred during a military ambush of her New People's Army squad. Lorena describes her childhood, dominated by the inspirational influence of her strongly
nationalist mother; remembers her time as a student activist, including debates over women's issues with male activists; and recalls the founding of MAKIBAKA, a fledgling
women's group. Interwoven with reminiscences of her mother, Lorena then proceeds to recount her experiences as a guerrilla, the death of her lover, the birth of her son by
her husband, who la betrays the cause, her capture, torture, and escape. Throughout, Bautista inserts fragments of what appear to be letters written by Lorena to her
mother into the text, giving the play the feel of a true documentary. The play ends with Lorena's oath that she will continue the struggle that her husband has betrayed,
followed by a matter of fact passage in which the details of Lorena's death a reported.

Based on extensive interviews with Lorena's mother,(54) the play's heart quickly becomes the relationship between mother and daughter. It is through her mother that
Lorena learns to be nationalistically oriented, since her mother once served as a courier for the Huks, the peasant guerrilla army that arose during the Japanese occupation
to resist the invaders. As Lorena recalls, her mother recognized no foreigner as her lord. This nationalism is closely linked to Lorena's mother's concern for women's social
position. At one point Lorena relates that her mother was overjoyed when Lorena and her comrades formed MAKIBAKA, because she herself had long felt that "The >
exploitation of worn can't be separated from the problems of the nation.."(55) Still, the daughter is quick to add that though her mother was a nationalist, she was also a
mother who worried about her child. This theme introduces a crucial gesture used over and over in Lorena.

Lorena's mother is not only the source of nationalist convictions, but she represents the family, the personal ties that give us emotional support and strength. This twofold
function of the mother is reflected in the poem with which the monologue begins and ends. The poem is divided into two sections, each of which depicts how the mother
offers nourishment, care, and strength. The first section, however, enumerates the everyday, physical ways in which the mother nurtures her infant. The second section lists
the ways in which she helps them through their later struggles of a more public nature. The constant interweaving of these two functions, through Lorena's meandering
recollections of her own mother's dual role, binds the two aspects together to create a portrait of a mother striving to make a better future for her children. This image
reproduces itself in Lorena's struggle, which is a "revolution ...of the people, and ... for the people." Included in that "people" is Lorena's own son, Emil, whose care she has
entrusted to her mother.

Thus, the mother towers above all the other figures described by Lorena. Her first love, Felix, is described in one instant, then quickly reported killed in the next. Ramon, the
husband by whom she has Emil and who later betrays the NPA cause, does not receive much attention either in comparison to Lorena's Ina. Furthermore, what attention
Ramon does receive serves to demonstrate the fact that Lorena is more loyal to her convictions (the radical nationalist cause, here) than to her traitorous husband. This is
a bold statement for women in the Philippines, and yet in this instance, perhaps, feminist concerns can be more safely articulated within the discourse of radical nationalist
commitment.

Both of these episodes, however, also serve further bring out the human, emotional side of this determined revolutionary. Such a project, is of course, one of the main points
of the play (showing the audience that a radical nationalist-feminist is not cold and calculatingly heartless, but is radical precisely because she is a sensitive, loving human
being), but its trajectory is much more securely and consistently established by the exchanges of letters, memories of shared moments, and common concerns of mother
and child. The heterosexual couple is here pushed, for the most part, into the background.

What emerges from all of this is, first and foremost, the attempt to construct a continuity of commitment between contemporary Philippine radical nationalist-feminists and
their mothers, the previous generations. If for Lorena's mother, feminism and nationalism are inseparable, then the efforts of contemporary feminists are justified as a part
of the nationalist tradition with roots at least as far back as the era of the Hukbalahap peasant guerrilla army's resistance to the Japanese. Such a continuity, once
established, offers radical nationalist-feminists one more weapon in their struggle to place women's issues on an equal footing with issues of national autonomy and the
class problem.

In a sense, this key relationship duplicates a common nationalist resort to women as nurturing mothers of the nation. In so doing, Lorena's nationalism shows itself to be in
a dialogic relationship with the kind of nationalism that seeks to mobilize the image of family in order to legitimize its cause and naturalize its vision of social organization.
Yet there are differences. As I have noted, husbands and lovers do not figure prominently in the image of family constructed here. Women, accordingly, gain some freedom
to define their lives outside of patriarchal family relations. Second, by fusing the image of nurturing mother with references to Lorena's mother's concern about Philippine
sexism and her role as a courier for the Hukbalahap, and adding a portrait of Lorena's own increasing activism and participation in the revolutionary struggle, the play
attempts to open up a much wider representational space for women. One need only compare Lorena to Pura in Pilipinas Circa 1907 to understand that there is a
significant difference.

Interestingly enough, issues of class are seldom touched upon in Lorena. Lorena's background is one of "genteel poverty," in which her mother attempts to conceal their
modest economic situation by teaching her daughter how to walk like a queen," how to maintain her dignity. The play thus proposes strength of character as a potential
alternative to economic wealth, as a criteria for evaluating the worth of human beings. However, the specific language used is still a feudal, hierarchical term -- how to walk
like a "queen." Elsewhere, Lorena uses the rhetoric of a "people's revolution" as cited above. Yet the nature of this people's revolution, or, or that matter, the exact meaning of
and reasons for the valorization of the radical nationalist struggle, are never spelled out in any detail. It is as if all of this is taken for granted, referred to as a given, so that
gender issues may finally take their place in the spotlight for a moment.

What I have demonstrated, using three radical nationalist plays mounted between 1979 and 1989, is the way in which such plays also reveal tensions, questions, and
contradictions in the nationalist projects that they seek to represent. Some of these tensions demonstrate existing difficulties in reconciling radical nationalism and its
discourses with issues of class and gender. Whether through overidealization of the urban poor, papering over class tensions with an overly simplistic sense of shared
patriotism, or simply invoking class issues as "understood," the plays analyzed indicate their relationship to middle-class and elite audiences whose social locations and
discourses of authority must be countered or, as in Pilipinas Circa 1907, compromised with for the sake of coalition building. Still, plays such as Juan Tamban also suggest
new configurations for social relations between classes and in so doing, point the way towards a more just socialist society as envisioned by many radical nationalists.
Similarly, the plays all indicate the way in which issues of gender and nationalism are intertwined at a basic level. This is particularly true of Juan Tamban and Pilipinas
Circa 1907. In the former, the difficulty, and the necessity of, constructing an interclass alliance between middle-class activists and the urban poor is illuminated and
amplified by Marina's struggle against dominating patriarchal discourses and institutions. At every step of the way, Marina's efforts to work with Juan and the squatters is
opposed in the name of class boundaries and properly familial gender roles. In Pilipinas Circa 1907, both elite nationalism and interclass alliance are embodied in the trope
of marriage, circumscribed by conservative family values and gender roles. That this is not simply a concession to elite nationalists on the part of the play's radical
nationalist author is indicated by the difficulties radical nationalist-feminists have experienced in their relationships with spouses and male comrades. These plays thus
show that both class society and nationalism have been constituted based upon the social subordination of women to men. In so doing, they imply tat the abolition of
gender inequities is absolutely central to the creation of a truly socialist society, one that transcends, or at least radically transforms, nationalism itself. Lorena is important
precisely because it is an effort to represent such possibilities.

Philippine feminists have begun to struggle, with some success, for the recognition of the importance of gender issues within the radical nationalist movement. This
success can be measured in radical nationalist theater by the inclusion, limited though it is, of the independent-minded Pura in Tiongson's Pilipinas Circa 1907, as well as
by the increasing number of plays staged by PETA that focus on women's issues, and plays such as Lorena or Merlinda Bobis' more recent Kantata ng Babaing Mandirigma
(Cantata of the Warrior Woman Daragang Magayon

1993

,(56) which consciously seek to articulate feminist perspectives on gender relations and national struggles. To be sure, serious problems remain. Marra Lanot has
described the fractures that occurred in the mid-1980s between feminist women's groups and nonfeminist highly political" women's groups, as well as between NGO
women and women within the Government.(57) Furthermore, feminist cultural workers, despite their important and ground-breaking efforts in introducing and defending
feminist ideas on the stage and in the media, still face an enormous media industry where financial success is based in large part on sex-ploitative and patriarchal images
and structures.(58) Yet the confidence embodied in the production of Lorena was echoed by a member of PETA who told me, in 1991, that in the years following the
overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos, when many nationalist political organizations lost some of their direction, often bogging down in factional disputes, the women's >
movement sustained her. Some PTA members felt that other members' work in feminist groups and environmental organizations was deleterious, diffusing PETA's energy.
But my friend argued that such work would eventually help nationalist groups such as PETA by contributing fresh perspectives and renewed strength. As the analysis of the
three plays above suggests, such strength is absolutely crucial to the success of a revised radical nationalist project.

Notes

1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 4-7.

2. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 19-22, 39-43.

3. Anne McClintock "Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family," Feminist Review 44 (Summer 1993): 62-65.

4. Lutgardo Labad interview with the author, Quezon City, June 26, 1991.

5. On this point see Ruby R. Paredes, "The Origins of National Politics: Taft and the Partido Federal"; Michael Cullinane, "Playing the Game: The Rise of Sergio Osmena,
1891-1907"; and Alfred W. McCoy, Quezon's Commonwealth: The Emergence of Philippine Authoritarianism," in Philippine Colonial Democracy, ed. Ruby R. Paredes (New
Haven: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988), 41-160. See also James B. Goodno, The Philippines: Land of Broken
Promises (London: Zed Books, 1991), 34.

6. Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed Books, 1986), 163-166.

7. Paredes, "The Origins," 49-66; Cullinane, "Playing the Game," 103-104; and McCoy, "Quezon's Commonwealth," 117-118, in Philippine Colonial Democracy.

8. Goodno, The Philippines, 34-47.

9. Goodno, The Philippines, 47-48; David Wurfel, Filipino Politics: Development and Decay (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 15-16; Gregg R. Jones, Red
Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 20-21.

10. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 16. See also Robert Stauffer, "The Political Economy of a Coup: Transnational Linkages and the Philippine Response," Journal of Peace
Research 11:3 (1974): 168; and Robert Stauffer, "The Political Economy of Refeudalization," in Marcos and Martial Law in the Philippines, ed. David A. Rosenberg (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), 192-193.

11. Jones, Red Revolution, 20-21.

12. Jose E Lacaba. Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm & Related Events (Manila: Asphodel Books, 1986), 20-21; Jones, Red Revolution, 13-32.

13. Jones, Red Revolution, 414; Gary Hawes, The Philippine State and the Marcos Regime: The Politics of Export (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 35-37; Wurfel
Filipino Politics, 60-61.

14. Goodno, The Philippines, 159-182.

15. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 21; Goodno, The Philippines, 62, 106-108.

16. Priscelina Patajo-Legasto, "Philippines Contemporary Theater, 1946-1985: A Materialist Approach" (Ph.D. diss., University of the Philippines, Diliman, 1988 227-240;
Bienvenido Lumbera interview, Quezon City, July 29, 1991.

17. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 155-175; Walden Bello, David Kinley, and Elaine s Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (San Francisco: Institute for Food
and Development Policy/Philippine Solidarity Network, 1982 67-68.

18. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 157-159.

19. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 126-133, 236-243.

20. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 280-281.

21. Nicanor Tiongson, "From Plaza Miranda to Fort Santiago," in The Politics of Culture: The Philippine Experience, ed. Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Philippine Educational
Theater Association and People's Resource Collection/Philippine Assistance for Rural and Urban Development, 1984), 6.

22. Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 244-247.

23. Brenda Fajardo interview, Quezon City, June 28, 1991; Lumbera interview, Quezon City, July 29, 1991.

24. Mao Zedong, Mao Tse-Tung on Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 39-40. In this passage Mao discusses a Lu Hsun poem, interpreting the word
"children," which the "I" of the poem claims he serves, as a symbol of "The proletariat and the masses."

25. Legasto, "Philippines Contemporary Theater," 239-240.

26. For an interesting discussion of Marina's marginalization as woman, and her rebellion against patriarchal structures, see Priscelina Patajo-Legasto, "Marina's Crossing
the Double-Cross in Juan Tamban," in Sarilaya, ed. Sr. Mary John Mananzan, Ma. Asuncion Azcuna, and Fe Mangahas (Manila: The Institute of Women's Studies, Santa
Scholastica, 1989), 153-165.

27. Nicanor Tiongson, What is Philippine Drama? (Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theater Association, 1983), 29; Doreen Fernandez, "Contemporary Philippine Drama:
The Liveliest Voice," Philippine Studies 31: 19.

28. Bienvenido Lumbera, "Philippine Theater 1972-79: A Chronicle of Growth Under Constraint," Journal of Osaka University of Foreign Studies 74:1-2 (1987): 109.
>
29. Eugene van Erven, Stages of People Power: The Philippines Educational Theater Association (The Hague: Centre for the Study of Education in Developing Countries

CESO

, 1989), 35; Brenda Fajardo, BITAW (Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theater Association, 1989 5; Malou Jacob interview, Manila, July 5, 1991.

30. Apolonio Bayani Chua interview, Quezon City, July 5, 1991; Malou Leviste Jacob, Juan Tamban (Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theater Association, 1984), 136-142.

31. Lutgardo Labad interview, June 26, 1991; Tiongson, "From Plaza Miranda," 5.

32 Marcelle Roa, "'Lorena' and the Women of FQS," in Sarilaya, 169; Benjamin Pimentel Jr., "Lorie by Lualhati, Dessa and Malou," National Midweek, April 5, 1989: 29.

33. Pimentel, "Lorie," 29.

34. Roa, "'Lorena,'" 169-171.

35. Mae Quesada, "Women Artists No Longer in Whispers," Makiisa 1:2 (Second Quarter, 1988): 30.

36. Jacob interview, Manila July 5, 1991.

37. Quesada, "Women Artists," 31.

38. Soledad Reyes, "Desire as Subversion in the Novels of Lualhati Bautista," Tenggara 25: 71-72.

39. Quesada, "Women Artists," 31; Sr. Mary John Mananzan, The Woman Question in the Philippines Manila: Daughters of Saint Paul 1991), 27.

40. Nicanor Tiongson, Pilipinas Circa 1907 (Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theater Association, 1985), 12.

41. John A. Larkin, "The Capampangan Zarzuela: Theater for a Provincial Elite," in Southeast Asian Transitions: Approaches Through Social History, ed. Ruth McVey (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 159-165; Alfred W. McCoy, "Zarzuela and Welga: Vernacular Drama and the Growth of Working-Class Consciousness, Iloilo City,
Philippines, 1900-1932," in Society and the Writer: Essays on Literature in Modern Asia, ed. W. Gungwu et al. (Canberra: Australian National University, 1981), 35-36, 52-53.

42 Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, The "Seditious" Tagalog Playwrights; Early American Occupation (Manila: The Zarzuela Foundation of the Philippines, 1972), 60.
43. Tiongson, What is Philippine Drama? 19-20.

44. Bello, Kinley, and Elinson, Development Debacle, 58-63; Wurfel, Filipino Politics, 244-247.

45. Nicanor Tiongson, "Sarsuwela," in The Cultural Traditional Media of ASEAN (Manila: ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information, 1986), 261.

46. Lapena-Bonifacio, The "Seditious" Tagalog Playwrights, 60.

47. McClintock, "Family Feuds," 62-63.

48. Delia D. Aguilar, The Feminist Challenge: Initial Working Principles Toward Reconceptualizing the Feminist Movement (Manila: Asian Social Institute, 1988), 19-20.

49. Epifanio San Juan, Jr., "Literature and Nationalism: Inscribing the Nation's History With the Blood of Workers and Peasants," Tenggara 27: 58.

50. Quesada, "Women Artists," 31.

51. van Erven, The Stages of People Power, 66-71.

52 Mananzan, The Woman Question, 28.

53. Pimentel "Lorie," 29.

54. Roa, "'Lorena,'" 173-174.

55. Lualhati Bautista, Lorena, National Midweek, April 5, 1989, 26.

56. Merlinda Bobis, "Re-inventing the epic: notes on adapting a traditional genre," Australasian Drama Studies 25 (Oct. 1994): 117-129.

57. Marra Lanot, "The Filipinas Have Come and They're Still Coming", in Essays on Women, ed. Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB (Manila: The Institute of Women's Studies, St.
Scholastica College, 1987), 76-77.

58. Goodno, The Philippines, 267-268; Pennie Azarcon, "Women in Advertisement," in Essays on Women, 145-159.

Word count: 11342

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