Right In Front of Us
A Critical Review of Tanghalang Pilipino’s Tatlong Maria
By Jan Philippe V. Carpio
“Let things that happen on stage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up …“
-- Anton Chekhov
Personally, there is no playwright living or dead that I admire more and owe more inspiration to than Anton Chekhov. Next to Shakespeare, he is the most critical and compassionate of the playwrights, and equally so in his short fiction works, an almost unmatched ability to create on the page fully authentic, living and breathing human beings, no matter how different their background and circumstances from him.
In one of his many early short stories “Verotchka”, Chekhov describes the title character as seen through the eyes of an admirer:
“Before Ognev stood Kuznetsov’s daughter, Vera, a girl of one-and-twenty, as usual melancholy, carelessly dressed and attractive. Girls who are dreamy and spend whole days lying down, lazily reading whatever comes across, who are bored and melancholy, are usually careless in their dress. To those of them who have been endowed by nature with taste and an instinct of beauty, the slight carelessness adds a special charm …
… Perhaps because Vera attracted Ognev he saw in every frill and button something warm, naïve, cosy, something nice and poetical, just what is lacking in cold, insincere women that have no instinct for beauty.”
As an artist, one of the things Chekhov explores and questions are the problems caused by our confusions between our perceptions of things, situations and others, and the shifting truth of their natures. He builds his artistic playgrounds between the self made prisons of our illusions and the pains of their recognition.
In the previous passage from “Verotchka”, Chekhov describes this through prose what he would later explore even further in his later plays.
Previously being familiar with Chekhov only through personal readings of the plays (and later his short fiction), for years, I wanted so much to see his work staged that I even organized an impromptu casual reading of “Uncle Vanya” among friends one afternoon that yielded some interesting and personal reactions. A few years ago, the closest I got to a stage performance was a strange and wonderful movement and sound interpretation of “The Three Sisters” by the Pappa Tarahumara experimental performance group at the RCBC Theater. Director Hiroshi Koike’s disturbing, mysterious yet intimate blending of elements from the play, anime, karaoke and AV soft-porn left me speechless. I continued to long even more for a theatrical staging of the play’s original form.
When I learned that Tanghalang Pilipino was staging a Tagalog adaptation of the play as part of their “Woman of Substance” series, I was fortunate and joyful to be able to catch its second weekend run at the Cultural Center of the Philippines last February 27.
From an adaptation by multi-awarded playwright Rody Vera, direction and set design by Loy Arcenas of Ma-Yi Theatre Company fame, and a cast consisting of many of Philippine theater’s most respected and gifted actors from different generations, Tanghalang Pilipino’s Tatlong Mariya seemed up to the task – at least on the surface – of living up to Chekhov’s emotionally layered and difficult material.
This adaptation transports the play from a sleepy 19th Century Russian town to a small town somewhere in Northern Luzon in 1977 during the Martial Law years. Instead of a military garrison, a government dam project serves as the center of the town activity.
The one clear addition to this version not part of the original play was a kind of first scene/prologue that seemed like an onstage homage to the burial scene from Lino Brocka’s classic film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang. (This is certainly telling in the context that one of the performers in the play is the legendary theater and film director Mario O’Hara who acted and wrote the screenplay for the same film.)
Apart from the changing of character's names, some of their professions and ages, and the play’s references from Russian to Filipino, the change of setting initially appears to serve no purpose other than to provide a cultural anchor for a Philippine audience that would possibly find itself lost and alienated from the play’s original Russian version. But it is through both the translation of the text and the performers’ interpretations which help create a deeper experience of the play. The focus was not merely on a proper transporting of the setting and characters or a proper translation of the language of the text along with the emotional subtext and nuances. (It is important to note the difficulties of maintaining consistency with a play originally in Russian translated to English, and then translated further to Tagalog.) A wonderful technique that the adaptation employs throughout the play is the sudden or gradual shifting between Tagalog and English for comic or tragic effect and emphasis. Although a second attendance of the play is required to determine if the comic effect was merely for the sake of getting laughs from the audience, the use of this language shift finds itself most potent during the town fire of Act 3 as Ricardo/Vershinin (Nonie Buencamino) launches into a monologue on his family and life. Whereas Tagalog has a sweet almost vulgar comfort in its familiarity and how much richer it is to the ears of those who speak it as a first language, English on the other hand seems colder and distant. Ricardo’s sudden shift from the former to the latter during his monologue has an effect that can be described as the language and performance suddenly shifting your brain from comprehending the more emotive Tagalog at one level of his pain to comprehending the English being more intellectual and objective but paradoxically unveiling more of his real pain at the same time.
As in Shakespeare and the other great playwrights from all over the world, there is an openness in the text which allows actors multiple points of attack, multilayered interpretations of a character, multiple shifts in emotional tone and intent, coherent and contradictory at the same time, throughout the play and even within the dialogue segments of one character. This is not a matter of being multilayered for the sake of being multilayered. Apart from this being an example of art at its highest level closest to depicting the multi-states of existence and the complex experiences in our lives, this is part of Chekhov’s technique, and interpreted here as effectively by the cast and crew, of forcing the audience to delay any mental judgments of the characters that would deny the audience the deeper more spiritual understanding and compassion for people not quite so far of from their own flawed and confused selves.
At some points where judgment forces its way in, the play has established our relationships with the characters so well, it somehow becomes more uncertain and unclear as for example in the difference between judging someone you do not know - like a politician - as a bad and corrupt person and if that politician were personally close to you. We can only manage a begrudging dislike for them at worst. Chekhov shows us that we can still be critical of people without damning them to hell for we damn ourselves as well by doing so.
A clear example is in the case of Erlinda/Natasha (Che Ramos), the girlfriend and eventual wife of the youngest and only male sibling Teddy/Andrey (Riki Benedicto). In other works, she would normally be cast as the obvious central villain. She is manipulative, selfish, shrewish and insensitive, but Ramos is able to find the balance between the reality of her flaws and her unawareness of them. Unlike the simplified self-aware villains, we encounter her as we encounter someone in life who does not realize she is doing bad things. We are presented with the far more complicated reading of someone who – horrifyingly enough – thinks that she is actually doing good things. The play also shows in a subtle manner that the other characters are doing more damage to themselves than she could ever inflict on them.
Tatlong Maria is a great example of what great ensemble acting of great material can do to you: feelings slide away from you as you to attempt grasp at them, shifts and tones hit you in multiple waves from multiple points onstage, we are laughing one moment then deathly silent the next all in one breath, a combination of emotional smart and cluster bombing, with everyone in the cast completely true and present to their specific moments for the most part throughout the performance.
Reading Chekhov’s play casually, the text on the page to me seems almost casual, meditative and charged with a subtle electric air, sprinkled with sudden sparks of humor and anguish.
This version, performed onstage, is bursting with tension that finds itself lodged in the space of the belly, hardening and softening all at once. The performers’ interpretation of the text brings a raw, solid physicality, immediacy and desperation to it that at times one can barely look at them without laughing then suddenly averting your gaze for some space to breathe.
Whereas most of the play seems wrapped around your body squeezing you tighter and tighter, the performers’ affective use of pauses (that Chekhov is famous for) provides some variation where you find yourself surrounded by the silence before rolling or falling into the next mood as in the moment before Doc Elpidio/Chebutykin (Mario O’Hara) answers the question if the sisters’ mother loved him back or when Daniel/Tuzenbach (Paolo Rodriguez) expresses his realization of how Monette/Irina (Angeli Bayani) really feels about him.
Only a director who fully trusts his actors and is open to true collaboration with them – resisting the urge to impose his entire will over the whole play – would result in each actor performing the truth of their own characters independently while at the same time still remaining in balance with the core of the play. It is only in open, collaborative works such as Tatlong Maria where little creative gems that I call “intentional accidents” result on occasion as in the example where during an intense emotional moment in Act 4, Finina/Masha (Mailes Kanapi) hits her head for real on one of the garden chairs as she bends down to weep. Showing the mark of a performer at the peak of her powers, she does not hesitate and simply goes with the truth of that moment as she improvises by exclaiming how much her head hurts before continuing on with the rest of the scene. The reactions of other performers in the scene show their real shock at the accident even as they try to hold back their laughter at the same time. It is through “intentional accidents” such as these – especially the in performance realm of art – that actually deepen the experience of the creation and the resulting work by showing us – as in life – how many different emotional layers can exist in one moment all at once.
With the style of this adaptation and the performances, certain things are more emphasized than perhaps might only be hinted at in other productions. In this case, different types of unrequited love – familial, platonic and romantic – and hidden desires are emphasized. But despite the titles of “brother”, “sister”, “wife”, “friend”, “lover”, one experiences the nightmare of how emotionally cut off and closed off everyone is from each other. There are very few, if at all, points of deep connection between people. Any attempts at deep connection are eluded and dismissed and scorned and recanted by the characters.
There is much laughter in the play but most of it is hollow and forced, as if the characters were willing themselves to laugh as they try to cover up their pain or at the very least mediate their suffering of it. The only sincere laugh in the entire play comes from a reaction to a joke or trick meant to make one feel better and forget the sorrow. That, however, is all too brief.
The lighting, sound, costume and set design are pared down and thankfully do not call attention to them selves for attention’s sake, but serve as more important complements to the play’s overall experience.
It is important to take note of the key decision to place the audience onstage with the performers. Even before the play begins, it already begins to work on you as the first shock comes when you enter the Little Theater and expect to be seated in the usual areas and instead, you are suddenly led, slightly bewildered, to the stage area.
Onstage, the audience surrounds the performers on four sides on seats and bleachers similar to Tanghalang Huse Batute. Although staging the play in the Batute might have intensified the experience even more for the audience, perhaps the space would not have been able to accommodate the size of the cast and set as envisioned in this version of the play.
Cutting the physical distance between the audience and the performers provided a full field vision of the performance that was at times overwhelming and exhilarating. Whereas if we were seated in the Little Theater’s regular seats, the physical distance would allow us to merely focus on who were speaking at that point in the play, but here, onstage, our eyes, our ears, our bodies, take in the full view of the experience of each character who is present onstage, their silences and non-verbals more telling than words during many instances. Multiple points of view are respected, criticized and celebrated. In a subtle manner, it is made clear that there are no “stars” in this play as there are no “stars” in life. Each character is given their full due by the set design, the audience seating arrangement, and the actors in expressing both the wonder and horror of who they are. At some point, bombarded into submission by the experience, the mind and the body begin functioning at a fantastic pace to take it all in as the play ends up reversing the spectator-performer dynamic by ultimately engulfing the audience.
The set design used wire frames extending downwards from the stage’s ceiling to partially obscure the actors which helped add to the tension of an almost intrusive and voyeuristic feel of spying on your next door neighbors as you realize they behave as nobly and as badly as you do. This design and the seating arrangement, for good reason, also break a rule of theater where performers are taught to face the audience at all times. During key emotional moments, the performer or performers are at times facing only one side of the stage where a group of audience members are seated, whereas the other three sides only have a view of either the performer’s left or right profile or back. Another layer is added to this by having other performers also facing another side of another group of audience members at the same time. (This arrangement clearly differentiates this staging at the Little Theater from one at the Batute.) This deliberate obscuring of the performers adds another layer of heightened tension by playing with that desire of the audience to “know and understand everything”. This leads one at times to look at the audience across on the other sides of the stage to see how they are reacting to the performance they are witnessing if the actor was silent, or to listen to the tone of voice of the characters if they were speaking. This artistic decision does not involve merely breaking the rules for its own sake nor playing with theater audience expectations out of some arch-artist superiority. It allows the audience to experience some important lessons. One, we experience life at a deeper level more through uncertainty rather than knowingness. Two, it is the unknowable parts of life that need to be lived first before they become truly known to us. Three, this deliberate obscuring somehow prods us to exercise and use our senses to their fullest capacity than we would normally do in our daily lives on autopilot. The deep experience of a lesson is always greater than a lesson lectured on as Chekhov exclaims in one of his early short stories:
“It is only by being in trouble that people can understand how far from easy it is to be a master of one’s feelings and thoughts … There are a great many opinions in the world, and a good half of them are held by people who have never been in trouble!”
-- A Misfortune
Much has been written though on how Chekhov saw his plays and how this came in conflict with how others staged them.
As noted in the play’s program,
“… although the Moscow Art Theatre productions brought Chekhov great fame, he was never quite happy with the style that director Constantin Stanislavsky imposed on the plays. While Chekhov insisted that his plays were comedies, Stanislavsky’s productions tended to emphasize their tragic elements.”
As in life, the truth always lies somewhere in between. If “Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of existence …” then they are a different and deeper form of satire. Whereas most lower-level satires are too obvious satires, fearing that the critical joke will be lost on the audience, pandering to them through exaggeration and though clever, ultimately, empty and shallow witticisms, in Chekhov’s work, there is always an uncertainty of what is satirical and what is serious through the openness of the text and the many possible interpretations of a performer. In shallow forms of satire, people are predictable for the sake of the satire playing with being predictable to make its points. Here in Tatlong Maria, even though we pretty much can figure out and generalize the personalities of each character at some point, they remain astonishingly unpredictable and spontaneous for the most part as a real person that we knew would be in real life.
If we were to understand what comedy means on a deeper level instead of merely making people laugh through a cheap gag, by comedy perhaps Chekhov means for us to find humor and the laughter in the recognition of what is true about the people his plays depict as he found it: finding the humor in the tragic, finding the tragic in the comic. That recognition comes when we find our own selves – all too human – right in front of us, onstage.
It is not simply a matter of mixing comedy and tragedy but a matter of mixing it and performing is as life truly is: both comedy and tragedy. Tatlong Maria successfully approaches this and moves into the level of the in-between, the uncategorizable.
And it is our tendency to categorize that Chekhov also asks us to break out of. Perhaps the thing that most people (and myself) initially find irritating with Chekhov’s characters is that they are fully aware of their miserable situation but do nothing to correct it. (Why do you bother caring about these useless people?) This is entirely true of course, but it is how Chekhov presents them, and actors with a deep understanding portray them, that invite us to move towards a deeper understanding of the work and life.
Chekhov is not about doom, gloom, and the futility of our situation. He invites us to have the courage to see and hear ourselves as we are, without hatred, the courage not to deny the worst parts of ourselves and at the same time the courage to seek out our best parts.
We as artists and as audience members unfortunately tend to see our own selves in a too heroic light at times. Chekhov reminds us how far off even our own perceptions of ourselves are.
“After all, it seems to me that the truth, no matter what it is, is not so dreadful as uncertainty.”
-- Uncle Vanya
I understood this differently some years ago, but perhaps now, a deeper reading of uncertainty would mean uncertainty as it relates our own illusions. To be trapped in the bliss of our illusions is far more dreadful than the pains of our truths. In this context, the prologue scene of the picture taking at the burial becomes more than a mere homage. By maintaining appearances for the sake of image, we create more problems for ourselves. However unpleasant the pain of our truths, it is only then can we be truly be transformed. But it must be emphasized that this is only an opportunity for transformation that is presented to us and not the transformation itself. In the end, that is still up to us.
The highest respect you can give Chekhov apart from being true to the essence of his work is to also be true to the essence of your own experience and its expression. That is what the cast and crew of Tatlong Maria have accomplished.
It only remains to be seen how this varies on other evenings as I prepare to watch the play a second time this March.
Tanghalang Pilipino’s TATLONG MARIA (Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters) was staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines from February to March 2010.