This is Part 2 of 2 parts of my blog on cultural refinement

Sometime in 2006, I announced what was going to be my Swan song. Entitled MARS CAVESTANY: UNMASKED, UNWOUND, UNZIPPED it was a brave baring of my soul, a no-holds-barred confessional “coming out” duo-drama together with Fil-Am primo danseur Enrico Labayen whom I had brought over from Manila thru an endowment fund from the National Commission for Culture and Arts (the Philippine counterpart of the Australian Council for the Arts). It was shown at the storied and then very famous NIDA Fig Tree theatre in UNSW Campus in 2006.

After that I suffered a heart attack on stage and was forbidden by my doctors from physically taxing stage performance of any kind else I die of heart attack and not from HIV which, mercifully for me, has been very well managed and in full control even up to this very day.

But I was not about to vegetate in Sydney, sitting pretty and doing naught. Against my doctors advise, I decided to stage a dramatic return to Manila “coming back and coming out” simultaneously bringing my now one-man theatre (as my dear creative partner has gone back to America) whilst I was determined to go it alone in what I re-titled “PEREGRINATIONS” and keeping the old title as a sub-title this time. It was met with both critical and heart-warming if tear-jerking success. I triumphantly toured my monodrama all over Metro Manila to as far as Tagum, Davao in Mindanao, Bohol and Iloilo in the Visayas and Palawan and Baler in Luzon.

From 2006 to 2009 I was spending more time in Manila doing multi-sectoral and long-term “Cecilian” projects with the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. In addition, I was appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo through her Presidential Adviser on Culture and Arts and concurrent NCCA Director Cecile Guidote Alvarez and endorsed through Gemma Cruz Araneta, Cultural and Tourism Director, working for Mayor Alfredo Lim as Acting Artistic Director and Member of the Board of Directors of the newly-refurbished and revived Manila Metropolitan theatre. For nearly 3 years, I was practically spending more time in Manila than in Sydney so that before the new Philippine elections drew nearer, I thought it wiser to come back to Sydney than to get lost and intrigued out in the change-over to a new dispensation.

Revisiting the Filo community made me feel like an outsider all too suddenly. So many young and not so young upstarts have sprouted like mushrooms doing what they seemed like a merry-go-round of entertainment fares. Surely I welcome all that in the spirit of cultural plurality but the temerity to make claims that this is the first time (?) such and such a show is being done in our community, to me, depicts an utter disregard for what has been done before: a cultural malfeasance thoroughly beyond me! Why I had become a stranger in my own turf set me into introspection and kept me home preferring the company of Hopey, my dog, and Ginger, my cat, under the care of my ever-loving carer Vera with her cat Noreline plus my new Indian partner. I had decidedly become a homebody and even confined my immigration, higher courts, health centers etc. on-call assignments to purely telephone interpreting.

Rightfully so, I was emoting. Methought then that it’s bad enough that people don’t have a sense of theatre history; its worse when they don’t even bother to ask around that’s why they hardly have an inkling of what you have contributed. (All of these stopped when Kate Andres asked me to do something for our Ilocano Association anniversary for which I offered to direct a rib-tickling folk drama comedy chamber theatre, Why Women Wash the Dishes. That single little something led to another and another until people acknowledged “you’re back!”

I happen to come from a rich theatre tradition and background in Manila where the pecking order among artists of my generation is de rigueur. Comparatively speaking, I am accorded much accolade and respectability whenever I come home especially by the artistic community where I was reared and that which has remained an industry that’s perpetually alive and kicking amidst an ever-growing arts community. I am not citing this because I am expecting a red-carpet treatment in our community here in NSW. In fact Australian way of life is a great leveler unto itself so that walang mayaman, walang mahirap (no such thing as poor or rich) as EEO puts us all equal.

My only contention has to do with people who figure prominently in the Philippine arts and cultural milieu most especially the newcomers who have absolutely no perception and sensitivity to the ins and outs of our community life. Many don’t even bother to do their homework by researching and checking out what has been done in the past so that they have a respectful sense of historicity on the one hand, and a sense of propriety and acceptability on the other.

At the same juncture however, I felt so happy to realize that the young artists I have trained before in their baptism of fire (RJ Rosales, Jennifer Trijo, Roxanne Castro, Fely Irvine, Reggie Daguio, Fiorella Bamba, etc.) have become big stars in their own right, in Manila, overseas as in Singapore, New York or London, and on the home front.

Whether or not they acknowledge me as having been their director-mentor one way or another is excusable but to be totally ignored is to me, an error in judgment, nay, an error in history — by simply not knowing and not duly acknowledging those who have come before us and had made significant dent and impact in our community. That is one of the reasons why I created the Mars Cavestany Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Filipino Arts and Cultural Heritage to honor our slowly vanishing cultural and artistic species.

Likewise, I take pride and delight at friends and former associates who have began producing, directing and/or performing by themselves such as Armando Reyes, Claudio Javellana, Alberto Dimarucut, and Brian Babon, not to forget the well-loved and long-missed singer-producer Chit Conway, plus still my number one loyal producer of independent shows Alexandria Tocalo.)

I acknowledged all of them after I took my own curtain call as the founding artistic director of FILIPINAS. Allow me, to mention their names again here. Apart from those already mentioned, other old timer FILIPINAS-PETALS members who came to the anniversary include: Nancy Casaol and Evelyn Zaragoza. Both our founding President Benny Chan and Production Manager Fe Enriquez couldn’t come at this momentous occasion but sent kudos and exchanged emails with me to keep track of how things are.

Again, on the record, of all organized community organizations in the Filo commune all throughout NSW, FILIPINAS is the first semi-professional, honest- to-goodness community arts group ever founded and sustained for the longest time in our time and clime and will live on until I am around. FILIPINAS became PETALS (when our President Benny Chan relocated to Perth) and then I merged both as FILIPINAS-PETALS to retain the track record whilst giving it a new push along untrodden paths and directions including joining up with PCC as represented by our ever-loving “Mother Hen” and guiding spirit Edna Longhurst.

It was during the time when Ronaldo Villaver and Cen Amores emerged PCC President and Vice President respectively, with the rest of the party team in which I have been convinced to join that I had my first taste of PCC politics.

That PCC exposure was one of my most unforgettable nightmarish experiences ever. Imagine me dramatically and most humiliatingly losing in that fateful PCC elections of 2000 something after having ably supported the Villaver-Amores tandem. It became even more funny and pathetic for me because our team almost overwhelmingly won, save for my good friend Mitchell Badelles and the poor me being defeated by some crowd-beloved “Dancing Queen.”

I must admit, such a scenario slapped a big lesson straight unto my doggone face: that in PCC, popularity sells and wins over erudition, skills, and experience. To prove my point, that popular choice of a secretary over my educational qualifications and experience in community welfare eventually resigned for one reason or another. The same personality build up and of our fellow Pinoy’s penchance for the popular against the highly qualified (as in the case of bungling movie actor Joseph Estrada winning over the illustrious Senator Roco ) was gleaned once more when another sweet-talking Dancing Queen jostled her way to unrivalled victory igniting bitter discontent-cum- cold war ala-First EDSA Revolution. The result is history in the making which to me is more positive than what many others seem to make of it. (But this is the subject of Part III: Finale on my Take re. the APCO Versus PCC Battle Royale that I invite you all to watch for, coming very soon!)

Meanwhile I am keeping myself afoot as well. Perhaps this blog writing business is really heaven sent. As I intimated in my very first entry, the idea of blogging had configured in my mind long before but I never gave it much thought until one Apostle by the name of Romy Cayabyab turned it all into voila…! And now, hep-hep hurray…. I’m online 24/7 ever ready for your delectation and constructive criticisms please.

I am beginning to appreciate it now more than I ever imagined especially since I was perforced beyond anyone’s control to continue what I have always been inclined to do well shining from an early age as an elementary public school pupil winning on the spot essay writing contests and the like that has somewhat precociously predetermined my true calling as a writer.

Looking back, it all began from that inaugural launching salvo (May 1995) of the community theatre group I founded and simply called it FILIPINAS, from the common term of endearment we call our country of origin.

Apart from that, I also turned it into an acronym formulated to mean Filipino Intercultural Linkages, International Partnerships & Integration with other Nationalities through Arts in Sydney.

I distinctly remember, one famous gay commune tabloid, the Sydney Observer, then the most widely-read leading gay newspaper in Sydney published our launching press release and made a side comment saying that it was “the most determined theatre group in town”, judging perhaps just from the name of the group alone.

But true indeed, as the founding artistic director, I was doggedly determined to put up the first of its kind community theatre ensemble operating within the length and breadth of the Filipino community in NSW, with an eye for multicultural partnerships as the acronym itself implies.

In my mind, it was patterned after and formed out of the collective harvest of experience of practicing and living theatre in the Philippines for more than 35 years growing up and developing under the aegis of leading theatre companies from PETA- to Arena theatre- and Teacher’s Community theatre of Philippine Normal College to Teatro Pilipino of CCP reared by the great masters and geniuses of Philippine theatre (my Trinitarian influences were shaped by Dr. Cecile Guidote Alvarez of PETA, Dr. Severino Montano and Dr. Naty Crame Rogers both of Philippine Normal University, and Dr. Antonio Mabesa and Prof. Rolando Tinio of MET and CCP-Teatro Pilipino on all 3 angles).

I proceeded with aplomb, fearlessly as I always have been in reaching for my goals whilst rooted and anchored on a vision and mission to utilize theatre and the arts to harmonize the community towards making a distinct hallmark amidst our multicultural society.

Despite all the flak, the sturm und drang (storms and stresses), I am determined as I am now to correct misimpressions that FILIPINAS has died a natural death. No way, 15 years henceforth, FILIPINAS-PETALS exist for as long as I am round and even long after I’m gone. I must admit, I’ve been very choosy about directing shows being offered to me so that in that sense I do seem to have hibernated for some time. Nevertheless, I have never stopped conceptualising and perpetually theorizing and advocating on issues but only within my sphere of arts and letters. Again, I’ve also joined the bandwagon to use a cliché, that is, I’ve gone a-blogging!

Of course, many things have changed in such a technotronic world of ours. People have raised the bar of expectations, upped the ante so to speak. I’m not waving my own flag, but God truly works in mysterious ways. Why, it’s been 12 years since I openly came out with my debilitating illness, but the good Lord has kept me hale and hearty, intellectually robust, and physically able to still bring fruition to my creations. Certainly, I had expected that my coming out was tantamount to mass-unfriending as well. Without unconsciously getting anti-social, I have literally mass deleted people from my stratosphere whilst holding on to my essential friends much like the Dunbar’s law.

Otherwise, I have remained as brutally honest with my opinions that is why I continue to ruffle some feathers making tonques wagging behind my back. My long lost ever-guiding Mom used to remind me to take heed: “kakambal mo na yatang intriga at kontrobersya anak” (you seem to be enmeshed in intrigues and controversies son).

I have stopped counting, but for the books, this recent opus of mine also adds to the more than 100 something shows/stage productions/cultural presentations that I have conceived, designed, sometimes also acted/performed in, and mostly stage directed since I migrated to Australia in early ’94 and vigorously if unstoppably pursued my own vision and mission that permeates every piece of work I do.

In other words, I am, and will always be the theatre I make.

Other post/s by Mars Cavestany, APA-PhD

• Community Theatre in Australia and the Philippines: Part 3 - April 24th, 2012
• Community Theatre in Australia: Part II - April 10th, 2012
• Hindi Ko Malilimutan (End of a Series) - April 10th, 2012
• Community theatres are a way of life in the Philippines - March 29th, 2012
• APCO still reigns supreme - March 20th, 2012