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| Cortesanons To dance Wadje Tale For Tourists |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Tuesday, 29 September 2009 00:11 |
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IF plans do not miscarry, Cortesanons would have a brief preview of the dance drama fully performed by amateur drama artists from its riverside barangays.
Set for a minor launch this October 17 and a repeat performance for October 21, the dance drama entitled Wadje sa Abatan (sa mga Panghitabo) would showcase debuting local artists. Early this year, National Commission for Culture and the Arts Drama Committee Chair and Boholano multi-awarded artist Lutgardo Labad was tasked to study the possibility of a cultural show complementing Abatan Community Tours. With a trigger fund from the government through House Committee on Tourism Chair Edgar Chatto and PROCESS Bohol’s interest in complementing the community tours, executive director Emilia Roslinda initiated the first coordination meetings to realize the project. It was Cortes’ biggest day, as a New York based and true blooded Cortesanon theatre artist Lorely Garrote-Trinidad with local artists Blair Panong and writer Rey Anthony Chiu and dela Paz community elders forming the core team to pound on the dramatic base. Research and ocular inspections to sites started immediately while a workable script first took form in mid April of this year. Months later, in interviews and research, the frail but admittedly epic character of Wadje stretched taut as the common thread for local lores about the place. Prodding open the dusty oral memories of people, tales which were handed best kept in the repository of a community ethos stretching generations, researchers soon unearthed and rejuvenated the buried tale of Wadje and husband Mag-ile. The tale was all too colourful not to be noticed, admits the playwright. The sketchy storyline patched from oral traditions. folk tales and persistent archaeological venture grounded the story about Wadje’s transformation from a submissive wife to a ruthless sentinel of the Abatan River came. This in turn excited PROCESS, a non government organization helping Abatan Riverside Communities keep watch over the river environment, as Roslinda said nothing could be more succinct than Wadje personifying river environment protection: Abatan’s foremost come-on. After months of workshops at the Cortes central Elementary School, a little support Alfonso Corbita and Toto Cuhit, the team of amateur thespians soon gained confidence to perform the scenes plucked out from the script. If the audience would be in for a drama loaded with powerful lines, they are in for a big surprise, said a local artist in a casual talk. Wadje uses powerful dancing to show the story and it entails doubling up on the effort and skill of local artists to come up with a compelling story which Cortesanons and every tourist should understand. More than that, the rest of the rave would be on those days when Wadje would finally jump into the stage, more than four hundred years after her story fail to lie still in the marshlands of the Abatan. |
| Last Updated on Friday, 09 April 2010 10:48 |