We have been digging recently into the storied history of culture and the arts in Dumaguete City, thanks in large part to the golden anniversary of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, which is currently unspooling its 50th cultural season.
Dumaguete’s love affair with the culture and the performing arts is quite legendary. In the cultural map of the Philippines, the city–small and only a tiny bit cosmopolitan though it may be–has become a requisite pit-stop for many cultural groups and performing companies.
A good part of the reason is, of course, the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium, arguably the best theater outside of Manila. The theater is almost 40 years old, and one can only imagine the flood of artists who have performed on its stage, or exhibited at its foyer gallery. Almost everybody from the world of art–from Cecile Licad to Lisa Macuja, from Eugene Domingo to the Tel Aviv Trio, from Pilita Corales to Bart Guingona, from the Bayanihan Dance Company to the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra–have made the Luce’s Green Room their temporary home before facing the glare of the Luce’s spotlight. Sometimes, I ask myself: If these walls could talk, what would they say? And what have they seen?
But what has always struck me about the Luce is the fact that its existence rests, in large part, to the overwhelming efforts by the Dumaguete community (and not just Sillimanians) who had this vision of having a viable cultural center open in their midst. Such dogged vision is quite extraordinary, given the general, often uncaring, ambivalence we sometimes meet with regards making thrive a communal sense of culture. (Take, for example, the sadly lackluster community support for the annual Arts Month festival–and that one is already mandated by law.)
I dug into the inaugural program notes of the Luce Auditorium, courtesy of Rodolfo Juan, whose archive of cultural programs collected since the 1970s is something of a legend among local culturati.
The Luce was first opened to the public in 6 October 1974, with a presentation of Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, directed by Prof. Isabel Dimaya-Vista. (In commemoration of this, the Cultural Affairs Committee is presenting Elijah as part of its golden anniversary season, in September 2012, together with its original musical director Prof. Vista.)
In a note titled “For Culture and the Performing Arts in Silliman…,” D. Baseleres and R.L. Maxino wrote of a time in Dumaguete pre-Luce: “For a long time musical artists and dance troupes who came to Silliman to perform had borne the utter inappropriateness of the gymnasium as an auditorium. In that place, the dying movement of a dancer cannot die to give birth to heightened expression. Nor can the sweetest musical note linger beyond a moment.”
Which is not to say that culture in Dumaguete was stagnant before 1974. On the contrary.
Baseleres and Maxino elaborates, in that inaugural program note, that “cultural presentations have [always] been a vital part of the University’s educational program, which aims at educating the whole man.” They also wrote the cultural ferment in the university current of that time: “Every year, nationally and internationally famous artists in the world of music and the performing arts are invited by the University for concerts and recitals. Among the more recent ones were Susan Starr, the U.P. String Quartet, the U.P. Concert Chorus, Grand Ballet Classique de France, Taipei Children’s Choir, the Cultural Center of the Philippines Dance Company and the German violin virtuosos Denes Zsigmondy and Anneliese Nissen.”
But 1974 would definitely be considered a watershed year. Baseleres and Maxino wrote in the program: “The story of the Cultural Center began with the early dreams of some people in the Silliman community. In the beginning, it was merely part of the campus plan prepared by Architect Cesar Concio in 1949, in which the auditorium and the School of Music and Fine Arts were to be placed in the area now occupied by the cafeteria and the College of Engineering.
“Seven years later, in 1956, Juan Escarda, an engineer working with the College of Engineering, translated into drawing the ideas for a new building and recital hall which was to be placed where old Silliman Hall stands by the sea. But since the fund-raising was unsuccessful, the project was not pushed through.
“Finally, in 1968, a more concentrated effort of planning and fund-raising began again. A cultural center committee was formed. It was composed of members from the School of Music and Fine Arts, Speech and Theater Arts department, English department, Audio Visual department, the College of Engineering, and the College of Business Administration and the Industrial Arts department. The committee prepared the detailed statements of purpose and facilities, which were translated by Architect Felix Abesamis into a cultural center plan with five buildings located on the athletic field.”
In 19 September 1968, Silliman University–with Dr. Cicero Calderon as President–received as visitors to the campus Henry Luce III and his wife, Claire Isabel McGill Luce, who came with their daughter, Lila Frances.
Claire–who is the mother of the Oscar-winning actor William Hurt–was Mr. Luce’s second wife. (She, unfortunately, would soon pass away, only a few years after their Dumaguete visit, from cancer, in 1971.) Henry III, of course, is the eldest son of the Time Magazine founder, a famed philanthropist and then head of the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. of New York. The Foundation, established in 1936 with $690 million of Time Inc. stock, was–and is–known for its support of programs in higher education, Asian affairs, theology, women in science, engineering and the environment.
At the height of their Dumaguete visit, Mr. Luce then asked what particular project Silliman was most interested in their supporting.
The plan for the Cultural Center was presented to him. (To be continued…)
