Book Review: NOTES ON THE THEATER by Rolando Tinio

Notes on the Theater by Rolando Tinio
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first book from Everything's Fine's REQUIRED READINGS series, and I enjoyed the experience so much, I look forward to collecting the others! Short enough to be read over a prolonged coffee, but offering a lot to mull over... it's perfect for that quick read-and-reflect break over a weekend.

This particular slim volume contains two essays written by this National Artist around 60 years ago, where the great Rolando Tinio tried to describe contemporary Philippine theater of his day, and offered thoughts on what could be improved.

Perhaps a reader's reaction to this important book will depend a lot on your personal stance towards "Art for art's sake." This, Tinio acknowledges, is his "personal battle cry," but he further explains that "in the act of creation, the artist can serve only one loyalty, that of the integrity of the art work." Ever the idealist, as one might expect of such an esteemed National Artist.

Having been lucky enough to watch some of his Filipino translations of various plays by Shakespeare, Moliere, etc., I always knew he was a genius. To have that kind of mastery over verse in both languages!?!?! Reading these academic essays, I was struck anew by the highly learned vocabulary of the man. Tinio expected much from his expected reader, a lover of theater, as he did for theater artists, and wrote "At the same that I espouse the cause of Theater without an Audience... I am espousing too the cause of Criticism without Readership."

While some descriptions of theater are, understandably, outdated (he wrote this in a time when local professional theater was just being born, when today it is a very rich reality), he knew the importance of adapting to the times.

"In art, particularly in the theater, to cling to old forms is to satirize them... even the classics, for all that is monumental in them, speak esoteric dialect. The permanent and the universal are there, but they are hopelessly interlocked with touches of antiquity, dated gestures which mean nothing... it is essential that theater reflect these modulations if it is to stay vigorous and not merely a museum for archeological wonders."

He spoke against the idea that artists are born. He argues for the importance of having a thinking actor, and comprehended a great deal in the requisite education for one.

"The richness which both play and actor can offer is revealed to spectators only after 'violence' has been done to them- to the play, by extracting from its text levels of action otherwise overlooked; to the actor, by cultivating in him a vocabulary of acting he never dreamed he would be able to yield."

If Tinio at times comes across as inflammatory or impractical in the essays, I think it is only because he has such high respect for the art form. "Behind every tradition of Theater," he reminds us, "lurks the shadow of its ancestral office: religious experience... this was a divine theater."

And if divine, then lofty its intentions must be.

"Man has become the market of fires and thunder-bolts; to re-direct the flow of events through a re-direction of his motives must be the métier of the human theater."

He reminds us of theater's goal: empathy and understanding which ends in compassion.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Tinio's highly idealistic take, the book is a must-read for any theater lover.

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