A Shakespearean Fixation: D’Wonder Twins of Boac

Needs Thingking Skills. Archaic. Epistaxis.

                Have you ever been reluctant reading Shakespeare? I for one would volunteer to say yes. His sonnets and plays seem to be an undeciphered hieroglyph or even a riddle from the Middle Ages. But Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA) breaks down the Shakespearean stereotype. In their 45^th Theatre Season, Rody Vera offers a deconstructed Twelfth Night entitled D’Wonder Twins of Boac.

                Set on the 1960’s, the story circles around Viola’s effort to meet her twin Sebastian, after being tossed to the seas from a shipwreck. It also portrays film cinema crisis and how it becomes tempestuous and helpful to twin’s reunion.

                Vera’s deconstructive approach paints a more Philippine color of Shakespeare’s comedy. It even opens a different angle of the country’s Cinema industry which the camera lenses fail to convey. Viola’s attempt to find her lost twin digs not only Sebastian but a labyrinth world behind the film screens. It mirrors a societal hierarchy. The first estate is composed the Film Company executives who decide what films to produce. The second estate is occupied by scriptwriters and directors who plot the film stories. While the third estate belong to the masses who views the films produced by the first and second estate.

                “And the telenovelas, how utterly asinine, bizarre, foolish, insipid moronic and mephitic they are! And there are so many talented writers in our vernaculars and in English as the Palanca Awards show every year — why aren’t they harnessed for TV? Those TV moguls have a stock answer — the ratings of these shows are very high. Popularity not quality is their final arbiter.”

-F. Sionil Jose (Why Are We Shallow, 2011) 

When popularity becomes the final arbiter, it is therefore capital that serves as an absolute ruler. Sadly, art is not an exemption of the neo-dictator. Art which is naturally quantitative bends to quantity. So, most Philippine films lack catharsis. Why? They make the audience numb from the reality that they are facing such as poverty and other domestic problems. The masses then are directed by the first two estates to be escapists, providing only delight and a false hope.  It should always be a reminder to everyone that art has two functions: first is to entertain, and the other is to instruct. If one function is absent, it doesn’t really mean that it is not art. It is more of a lame art that doesn’t serve a greater purpose.

William Shakespeare knits every play from overlapping to blank and tangled to untangled. But it boils down to a critical interconnectedness- order out of chaos. This is highly manifested in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night.  He was able to insinuate his unconventional thoughts and anti-Elizabethan sentiments incognito. At the same time he revives the classic Greco-roman ideals (as a part of a conceptual-applied movement of Renaissance) with an English angle.

While in the play, I could hear murmurs of the play as a parody. I beg to disagree. The play presents a modern adaptation in a Filipino context not a parody.  It unravels a local industry where we could easily understand implications of the play. The setting of a recognizable context with Shakespearean identity justly extends a larger realm of audience.

Should I say Rody Vera is the New Shakespeare? Yes, but certainly he is not alone. There are a lot of shakespearses who remind us of the plight and reality we face. It is my fervent wish that there be more writers like Vera who alarms us from the notion of shallowness (As F. Sionil Jose and Letticia Shahani emphasized).

Such plays would bring Shakespeare to the modern world. He would conventionally be unconventional (pardon the oxymoron). To wrap up, PETA shares a senile artistry in a modern medium. Seldom does any play extend to such innovative feat.