Most of the dramatic troupes in the islands came from Spain through the Galleons. Since the colonial era, actors or performers are what we call human resources. Human resources were (and still are) expensive. Back then, performers of comedia were the celebrities of the time. They were the KathNiels or the JaDines or LizKen of the colonial…
Tag: Komedya
A Simplified History of Traditional Theatres in the Philippines (Part 1)
The Hispanic annotators wrote in their reports to the Hispanic monarchy that if not for their introduction of the theatre, the natives (the precolonial settlers in the islands in the Visayas) would not have one. In a way, this is true because the theatre (read here as formal theatre), meaning the staged, the costumed, and…
Throwback: Komedya Fiesta 2008 at the University of the Philippines Diliman
To celebrate the centenary of the University of the Philippines (UP), the College of Arts and Letters at the Diliman Campus held the Komedya Fiesta 2008. For the whole month of February, the campus was dressed with traditional fiestas culminating with performances of komedya, a traditional Hispanic theatre form that has been Filipinized. Conceived in…
The Month of May and the Season of the Queen in the Philippines
The excerpt below is from my essay “Panata, Pagtitipon, Pagdiriwang: A Preliminary Contexualization of Cultural Performances in the Philippines” published in Humanities Diliman: A Journal of Philippine Humanities, a Scopus-listed journal published by the University of the Philippines Diliman. The journal is open-access, please click here for the current issue. To access the full essay,…
Tanghal Kultura 