NANA ROSA: BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
NANA ROSA: BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
“Entablado” Performance of Nana Rosa is a valuable epistemic tool as well as archiving or writing it to ensure evidence based documentation based from primary sources. This is a timely manner due to the emergence of revisionism who attempts to modify or change the Philippine History. The UP Playwrights’ Theatre-Dulaang UP brought back to the stage last February 27, 2020 the life of Maria Rosa Henson, the first Filipino Comfort Woman to publicly testify her horrifying experience during the Japanese Occupation in the Philippines. Through perforformance in the Entablado, the oppression of institutionalized sex slavery is unveiled on stage and examined by both audience and actors simultaneously, as a result of that, enabling a transformative critique of values, emotions , behavior, and attitudes. Carlos Palanca Awardee and UP Diliman Professor Dr Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco wrote that the use of Entablado is twofold. But in this context, it “is used to denote its literal meaning as a space on which a performance takes place.” Nana Rosa was held at the Wilfredo Ma.Guerrero Theatre in the Palma Hall at the University of the Philippines(UP) in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. The Entablado performance will be analyzed and presented as a phenomenological experience. Edmund Husserl, the father of Phenomenology wrote,
“This phenomenology must bring to pure expression… the essences which directly make themselves known in intuition, and the connections which have their roots purely in such essences.”
KAKANYAHAN (ESSENCES)
Husserl believes that intuition could lead to essences or Kakanyahan in Philippine context.
Kakanyahan is more related to the Filipino concept of loob. Mercado wrote, “The manifold aspects of loob require a bigger concept … That bigger concept would be self as viewed from within. While it is true that there are other words for ‘self’ (sarili, kaugalingun, met laeng), these expressions are superficial do not express the essence of the Filipino. Loob would therefore be characterized as (1) holistic and (2) as interior.”
Kakanyahan has various meaning and depends upon its use. Philosophers like Aristotle and traditionalists defined Philosophy as the science of first cause but modern philosopher like existentialists or phenomenologists have multiple definitions and its meaning depend upon the individual perception or world-view.
I interviewed Jonathan Ivan Rivera, one of the leading actors at Nana Rosa. He stated:
“It inspired me to be an actor with an advocacy, not just as an entertainer…Nana Rosa…had social relevance and the responsibility of representing the history of telling the story of Nana Rosa.”
What cause Nana Rosa to resurrect
The striking part in Nana Rosa is the phenomenon or fact of the comfort women. What cause Nana Rosa to resurrect? She had died in 1997. Carlos Palanca Awardee Playwright Rody Vera shared two scenarios:
1. a TV documentary of Phyllis Grande entitled “Haunted: A Last Visit to the Red House” was featured on Cinema One in 2017 about the “Bahay na Pula” where comfort women were raped savagely;
2. On December 8, 2017, The National Historical Commission installed a Comfort Women statue in Roxas Boulevard, Manila. It followed the similar erection of statues in China, South Korea and Australia. But the following year, the controversial statue of comfort women was removed by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to give way for the improvement of Roxas Baywalk Area. This is doubtful due to a courtesy call meeting with Japanese Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication Seiko Noda who filed an official complaint.
These events motivated the playwright to write about the story of Maria Rosa Henson. Primary sources such as news clippings and diaries were examined through the help of Shiela Coronel. Nana Rosa was originally a film script to be filmed soon but halted. Director Jose Estrella got interested and adapted it for Entablado.The playwright has intentionality or purpose to write for preservation and accurate documentation.
Phenomenology in the Performing Arts
One of the main contributions of Phenomenology in the performing arts is the concept of Intentionality. Franz Brentano asserted that all mentality has objects or ways have a purpose.
In Performance Phenomenology, I will apply the works and writing of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty because of his emphasis on embodiment relevant to performing arts. He transformed Husserl’s ideas on Intentionality as mental consciousness into bodily engagements or movements with the world called Motor Intentionality. I understand that he was defending monism view over dualism of Descartes. In my humble opinion, it does not really matter who has the right position towards mind-body debatable issues. In real life, regardless if you are dualist, monist, or trichotomist, each position aims for one thing: embodiment or the unity of mind and body. Embodiment is the reaction to the world though body movements. Embodiment, in Philippine context, is “Pagpapangatawan,” Katawan is the noun root word. It refers to integrating or putting mind into action. It is also living in the “Here and “now. ” A co-performer could tell you: “Parang wala ka sa sarili” if they see you performing below your regular movements or expected performing ability.
In observing Nana Rosa, I have to analyze it based from two stages:Pre-entablado and Entablado.
ENTABLADO (STAGE)
Professor Tiatco also defined Entablado as,
“In the context, of the Philippines…Entablado is used as a signpost for ambivalence and exact possibility. “
Pre-Entablado: This stage is the gap between intention and action. It suspends judgement or “Alam ko na yan attitude” or pre-notion about comfort women. Looking at the poster, dates, and venues in facebook without making conclusion. It is an attempt to let go of preconditioned assumptions about the play.This is a reduction process in Phenomenology.The pre-Entablado stage value mindfulness or “hear and now” experience. This immersion to reality might create vageness and symmetry, joy and anxieties. This exercise will unlock the subconscious mind,surface the heart’s desire, and open the mind for new thoughts that can be learned from the environment and actual stage play. As Merleau‐Ponty said:
“If reflection is not to presume upon what it finds and condemn itself to putting into things what it will then pretend to find in them, it must suspend the faith in the world only so as to see it, only so as to read in it the route it has followed in becoming a world for us; it must seek in the world itself the secret of our perceptual bond with it. It must use words not according to their pre‐ established signification, but in order to state this prelogical bond”.
The openness and peace of mind will strengthen the speactator and say,
“Yes, I will watch.”
Understanding the difference between the PRE‐ENTABLADO/ENTABLADO can move us to a place beyond common thinking. The pre‐Entablado does not negate Entablado stage but indicates a dynamic ontological state of entwinement between the two. It is not a steady state. It appears and vanishes in a constant sliding exchange of ideas or concepts, similar, to the concept of liminality.
ENTABLADO: This is the stage where the performance can be witnessed. There is reversibility inside the Entablado like a mirror principle between the performers and spectators. Merleau-Ponty theory is “I can see and that I am also seen.” I am both subject and object through the act of seeing. Merleau-Ponty stated, “Since the same body sees and touches, visible and tangible belong to the same world.”
What’s the sign that you’ve seen a great stage play? I woke up the next morning with the face of Ingrid Joyce (Dalagang Rosa). I considered jacking it all in to pursue a career in film, tv, and theatre. The time I saw Jonathan Ivan Rivera (Tanaka), he inspired me to achieve my potential, go to the gym, and study theatre/performance studies hard in UP. I told myself, “Being International Christian TV/Radio host and published as catholic model for manhood and handsomeness would come to waste if I will not take care of myself. I really have to go to the gym”.
REPRESENTATION OF NANA ROSA
Peewee O Hara and Ingrid Joyce who made the biggest individual impact with their soulful turns as Nana Rosa and Young Rosa, both possess delicate beauty, vulnerability, and humanity bears the burden of untold suffering. They represented Nana Rosa Well. The director did not hide the scenes that would create questions and ambivalence especially when Nana Rosa accepted the 320 million yen from Asian Women fund collected from private citizen in Japan. She continued to fight for Justice after receiving the atoned payments due to refusal of the Japanese government to accept legal responsibility and refused to pay the victims.
References:
1.Tiatco, Sir Anril Pineda. 2015. Entablado: Theatre and Performances in the Philippines. Quezon City, Ph: The University of the Philippines Press.
2.“Reflections on Buut-Loob-Nakem – Philippine Studies.” n.d. Accessed March 27, 2020. http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/download/1991/5041.
3.Brochure/Souvenirs from Nana Rosa
4.Grant, Stuart, Jodie Mcneilly-Renaudie, and Matthew Wagner. 2019. Performance Phenomenology: to the Thing Itself. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
5.Bennett, and Catherine Ann. 2013. “Performing Phenomenology: a Practice-Led Investigation of Contemporary Performance.” Performing Phenomenology: a Practice-Led Investigation of Contemporary Performance
Photo courtesy of Dulaang UP
(The author is dedicating this article to his UP, PNU, and Ateneo Professors: Carlos Palanca Awardee Dr Sir Anril Tiatco,Dr Lars Ubaldo, Mam Portia Soriano and Dr Danilo Gerona, Filipino Historian )
About the Author
Peter Dadis Breboneria II (Formerly Peter Reganit Breboneria II) is the founder of the International Center for Youth Development (ICYD) and the program author/ developer of the Philippines first internet-based Alternative Learning System and Utak Henyo Program of the Department of Education featured by GMA News & Public Affairs and ABS-CBN and MOA signed by Department of Education, Voice of the Youth Network, Junior Chamber International (JCI), and the Philippine Music and the Arts. You may visit his website at www.peterbreboneria.com
