Performing Catholicism: Faith and Theater in a Philippine Province

2018

Damrong Rajanubhab กรมพระยาด� ารงราชานุ ภาพ. 1917. Tumnan Sepha ต� านานเสภา [The legend of Sepha].

Southeast Asian studies, 2018

Damrong Rajanubhab กรมพระยาด� ารงราชานุ ภาพ. 1917. Tumnan Sepha ต� านานเสภา [The legend of Sepha].

Philippine Humanities Review 14 (1), 2012

Held annually beginning the 6th of January, the kuraldal, an impassioned ritualistic dance usually associated with fertility, is performed by the Catholic community in Sasmuan in Pampanga, Philippines. Participants are usually childless couples whose participation is an act of panata (religious pledge and sacrifice). Apung Lucia (Saint Lucy), the patroness of the town, is believed to be the ‘divine authority’ who answers the devotees’ intentions especially in relation to child bearing. This paper asserts that this Catholic community continuously constructs narratives about Apung Lucia based on several scripts of interpretations: negotiations between the orthodox doctrine(s) and the non-orthodox narratives. These negotiations are then woven together providing the performative text(s) of the kuraldal and then undergo traditionalization. It will be argued that the performance is a continuous traditionalization as well as a celebration of the ongoing imagined image(s) of Apung Lucia, which are not necessarily derivatives of the Catholic Church narratives.

TDR: The Drama Review, 2010

Present-day performances of two Catholic rituals/cultural spectacles in Pampanga, the fluvial parade in Apalit and the nailing ritual in Cutud, reveal some ambivalence toward the very Christian-Catholic religion that is the basis of the rituals.

TDR/The Drama Review, 2010

Present-day performances of two Catholic rituals/cultural spectacles in Pampanga, the fluvial parade in Apalit and the nailing ritual in Cutud, reveal some ambivalence toward the very Christian-Catholic religion that is the basis of the rituals.

In this article I draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2013 in San Pedro Cutud, a village located in the Philippine province of Pampanga. The focus is on the performance of the Via Crucis y Passion y Muerte, a passion play held there every year on Good Fri-day. Central to the play is the individual pursuit of panata, or divine pledge, by the cast of around forty actors, and particularly by the play's main protagonist: the Kristo, who is nailed to a cross in front of tens of thousands of spectators. In the first part, I describe how the cast engages in the production of a particular theatrical aesthetic that is coterminous with the embodied pursuit of their respective appeals for divine intervention. In the latter portion, I focus on the act of nailing as a context for the formation of intersubjective bonds of trust, or tiuala ya lub, between the Kristo, and his ritual associates. By describing how rituals of pain are premised upon the shareability and entrustedness of ritual agency, I situate the ethnographic data on passion rituals in relation to wider discussions about the anthropological turn to affect.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2017

In this article I draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2013 in San Pedro Cutud, a village located in the Philippine province of Pampanga. The focus is on the performance of the Via Crucis y Passion y Muerte, a passion play held there every year on Good Friday. Central to the play is the individual pursuit of panata, or divine pledge, by the cast of around forty actors, and particularly by the play's main protagonist: the Kristo, who is nailed to a cross in front of tens of thousands of spectators. In the first part, I describe how the cast engages in the production of a particular theatrical aesthetic that is coterminous with the embodied pursuit of their respective appeals for divine intervention. In the latter portion, I focus on the act of nailing as a context for the formation of intersubjective bonds of trust, or tiuala ya lub, between the Kristo, and his ritual associates. By describing how rituals of pain are premised upon the shareability and entrustedness of ritual agency, I situate the ethnographic data on passion rituals in relation to wider discussions about the anthropological turn to affect.

Relations between Religions and Cultures in Southeast Asia, 2009

In this paper the author tries to show that the introduction of Roman Catholicism to the Philippines has effected two fundamental influences, viz., Westernization (in terms of Hispanization and later Americanization), which enables the native Filipinos to see and gradually adopt a different culture, and syncretism, where the sacred and the profane are blended, that is to say, the Filipino indigenous rituals and practices are made compatible to Catholicism. The author likewise tries to argue that folk Catholicism is in general the Filipino way of expressing religion as a way of life. "

International Journal of Asian Christianity, 2018

The topic of this paper is the dynamics of clerical and public attitudes pertaining to the continued performance of Passion rituals of self-mortification among Roman Catholics in the Philippines. I examine discourses of official clerical disavowal of Passion rituals as well as the seemingly contrasting attitudes of accommodation and tacit encouragement from clerics ‘on the ground’. I argue that the diversity of perspectives on Passion rituals are not contradictions per se, but they are facets of the theological notion of inculturation, which espouses cultural porosity and diversity as elements of spiritual formation. In so doing, I discuss how scholars can come to a better appreciation of the analytical utility of inculturation by pursuing the disciplinary convergence between theology and anthropology. I submit that this anthro-theology does not only involve anthropologists expanding their conceptual range to include theological concepts but also making adjustments to the way we thi...

The International Journal on Culture, History, and Religion, 2024

During the 1970s, many barangays in Malolos, Bulacan, faithfully staged the Sinakulo, dramatizing the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 2014, the residents of Barangay Tikay in Malolos, Bulacan, celebrated the centennial staging of their traditional Sinakulo. Scholars like Doreen Fernandez and Nicanor Tiongson already examined Sinakulo in the context of Philippine theatre history and aesthetics. In addition to its historical implications, this research article explored the social and catechetical contributions of Sinakulo. The researchers used a traditional triangulation method, which involved conducting library research, making observations with field notes, and carrying out informal or semi-structured interviews to verify the data. They applied a tripartite framework developed by Prospero Covar, where Filipino personhood is likened to a jar (banga) with the characteristics of labas (exterior), loob (interior), and lalim (depth/meaning) (Covar, 2015). They effectively adapted the said framework in presenting the evolution of Sinakulo from an agricultural landscape (historical context) to an industrial workplace (socio-political context) and then to a pastoral/catechetical necessity for present-day evangelization.