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Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History. By DOREEN G. FERNANDEZ. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1997. ix, 264 pp. $30.00 (cloth).
Doreen Fernandez points out that the title of her book, Palabas, is a Tagalog word that refers to "performance, show, entertainment, fun" as well as to that which faces "outward... people-based and community oriented whether it be a school play or fiesta spectacle or protest theater" (p. viii). The history of theater is thus as much about genres of performance as they are about the performative aspects of colonial and national histories in the Philippines. Dramatic forms stage not only particular stories but equally important mimic the historical forces that impel their production. Throughout the fifteen essays that comprise this book, the author takes as her task the illumination of this fundamental link between the theatrical and the sociohistorical, offering the results, as she writes, to the student, the teacher, the "Filipino researcher," the "foreign scholar," the journalist, the critic, and the playwright (p. ix). Without question, her generosity puts us all in her debt.
Drawing on a wide array of Spanish and Filipino writings on Philippine theater, Fernandez, who is herself a well-known and highly respected scholar in the field, calls attention to the changing aesthetics and politics of this art form. Refuting the characterizations of Spanish colonial writers who regarded "theater" as having a purely colonial origin, she argues for the possibility of regarding pre-Hispanic religious practices, word games, chants, and the exchange of riddles as performative...