This column celebrates the vibrant literary culture and heritage of Dumaguete City, in anticipation of its bid to be designated as UNESCO City of Literature under the Creative Cities Network. It is produced by the Buglas Writers Guild, a network of literary artists from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor. Each week, we will focus on the work of one local writer. For this month, the guest editor is Dumaguete fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot.
In 2005, the theatre artist and playwright Dessa Quesada-Palm, a stalwart from Philippine Educational Theatre Association [PETA] came to visit Dumaguete to do a theatre workshop for a bunch of young people interested in theatre—and came to stay. The workshop had ended in a high note, and feeling that something significant was at play with the participants’ heady embrace of the process, she asked them: “Would you like this to continue?” She did not expect the immediate response to be ecstatic. Thus, Youth Advocates for Theatre Arts or YATTA was born.
Among the original participants of that fledgling group that has become a powerhouse of Dumaguete community theatre was a young Mass Communication student from Silliman University named Earnest Hope Tinambacan, son of pastor parents and originally from Oroquieta City, but with roots in Negros Oriental.
Hope would later on become the lead singer for HOPIA, and one of the founding figures of the Belltower Project and the CuadernoSS Singer-Songwriters Collective. In 2019, he would earn a diploma in acting at the Intercultural Theater Institute in Singapore, and right after graduation, founded D’ Salag Theater Collective in Dumaguete. But aside from his preoccupations with music and theatre, he would also write balak—but writing plays is his foremost creative expression. His latest creation is the original Bisaya musical, Pulang Langob. He currently serves as assistant secretary of the Committee on Dramatic Arts of the National Commission for Culture & the Arts.
In 2015, he wrote the short play Alkanseng Alkansiya for YATTA, an advocacy piece tackling poverty, which has just been invited to the Asian Youth Theatre Festival 2024 in Chiang Mai, Thailand under the title Piggy Heist. An excerpt from the original play in Binisaya:
Mogawas si Girlie nga nagmud-ok dala ang iyang cellphone.
Kapitana Honesta: Oh, naunsa naman pud nang nawonga, ’nak? Unsay problema.
Girlie: Ma, akong mga classmates lagi naay iPhone, naay iPad. Pero ako, bati kaayo og cellphone, dili man lang Android. Ma, nganong datu sila, kita pobre?
Kapitana Honesta: Ah, kalisud pud tubagon na imong pangutana. Pero abi nimo, ‘nak, dili man ‘ta pobre. Makakaon man ka katulo sa usa ka adlaw, naa kay balay, naa kay sinina, naa kay cellphone.
Girlie: Pero nganong ang uban mas dako ang balay, naay sakyanan, ug mga mahal nga butang?
Kapitana Honesta: Tinuod na, anak. Ang atong katilingban karon di gyud makiangayon. Naay pobre, naay datu. Sa atong kahimtang, wala na si Papa ninyo, ako lang ang nagtrabaho og gamay ra ko og sweldo sa akong pagka-kapitan. Igo lang nga makakaon ‘ta, og maka-eskwela mo. (Motan-aw sa nawong sa anak nga nalibog gihapon.) Masabtan ra unya na nimo samtang magkadako ka. Ang ako lang nga ‘di nato usikan ang kwarta, ug dapat ma-antigo mo tigum. (Ngadto kang Millet) Millet, palihug ko og kuha sa atong piggy bank!
Millet: (Kuhaon ang piggy bank, og magdalagan pabalik) Nia ra ma! (Madagma)
Girlie/Kapitana Honesta: Bantay!
Millet: (Mobakod ug mongisi kay wala ra mabuak ang piggy bank) Wala ra mabuak! Sorry!
For Hope, this scene has personal resonance: “This part of the play is actually based on a real conversation between me and my mama when I was a little kid. A conversation that has opened my mind to the realities in the society. I had asked her why we were poor, and she told me: ‘Dili ‘ta pobre, ‘nak. Middle class ‘ta.’ I asked her: ‘Unsa ang middle class?’ She replied: ‘Dili man ‘ta dagkong yutaan ug wala ‘tay dagko nga negosyo so di ta matawag og dato. Pero propesyonal man mi ni Papa nimo, og naay ginagmay sweldo. Dayon maka-kaon man ‘ta katulo sa usa ka adlaw. Mao nga dili pud ‘ta pobre. Naa ‘ta sa tunga. Magpasalamat ‘ta sa Ginoo nga dili ‘ta pobre, pero dili pasabot ana nga ato silang ipaka-ubos. Maayo pa atong tabangan.’ I finally asked her: ‘Nganong naay pobre naa pud dato?’ And my mother tried her best to explain inequality, injustice, and a system that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. She ended it with. ‘Sige ra. Makasabot ra unya ka ana.’”
The next thing he remembered was his parents making him play with the children of their Badjao friends. “They exposed me to families of farmers,” Hope said. “I saw how my father organized sikad drivers and laborers in Ozamiz. I saw how my mother organized small vendors and jobless church women. They made me play with our neighbors, one of them a family of at least eight children. The fisherman father arrives late in the afternoon with his catch. The big ones they sell, while they feast on the small ones which they even willingly shared to me. My parents made me and my brother experience selling fish around the neighborhood.”
He continued: “If there’s one thing I clearly remember seeing all these as a kid is this: I never saw laziness among these people, only lack of opportunities, inequality, and injustice. My father was a farmer and my mother was a lab-asera [or fish vendor] before they went to the seminary as working students at Silliman University. They were products of what some politicians call ‘Sipag at Tiyaga,’ a slogan that makes us all think hard work and perseverance are the only way to escape poverty. But my parents made it clear to me that ‘sipag at tiyaga’ aren’t enough to alleviate the situation of the poor people, who comprise the majority of the population of this country. It is an entire anti-poor and pro-rich system that needs to be changed, and only a united force of people with a common understanding and goal to change it can make it happen.”
