Cecile Guidote Alvarez: ‘Mother of Philippine Theater’
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Cecile Guidote Alvarez founded the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) at the age of 23 in 1967 (Photo courtesy of Cecile Guidote Alvarez)
In 1971, I wrote my first play, Tatlong Manyika (Three Dolls), a tragic farce on Philippine class warfare. A few months later, I pioneered the use of Philippine monsters in theater and modern literature in my satire on the Philippine Constitutional Convention, Kombensiyon ng mga Halimaw (Monsters’ Convention), which won third prize in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature 1972, the Philippines’ most prestigious literary awards.
I was fortunate to have been given opportunities to succeed in theater and literature at a very young age. I am indebted to this day to PETA founder and “Mother of Philippine Theater” Cecile Guidote Alvarez. When I reconnected with her on Facebook after four decades, I expressed my gratitude to her. “I had faith in your talent, Rey,” she told me.
Being an icon in Philippine theater arts did not happen in a day. When Alvarez was growing up in Quezon City, Philippine theater was virtually nonexistent. English was the language of the elite and educated. Tagalog, which is the basis of the national language, and other native languages were considered bakya or low-class. As such, foreign plays in English were staged. And even if there were plays written by Filipinos, they were almost all written in English.
Alvarez studied theater and communication at Trinity University and the Dallas Theater Center in Texas. Her master’s thesis was “Prospectus for a National Theater,” which proposed an establishment of a national theater in the Philippines. It would train artist-teachers who, in turn, would teach other people in theater arts.
At 23, she founded PETA in 1967. Based on her master’s thesis, it established a national theater “that will promote Philippine culture and heritage.”
Naysayers gave her the gloom-and-doom scenario. Many people thought she was out of her mind. They told her, “That’s never going to happen!” In spite of the uphill battle, Alvarez persevered in fulfilling her big vision of a national theater.
The first PETA production was Bayaning Huwad (Straw Patriot), which she directed. It was staged at the open-air Rajah Sulayman Theater in the old ruins of Fort Santiago in Manila. Movie actors Vic Silayan and Lolita Rodriguez played the lead roles. Alvarez pioneered in encouraging movie actors in the Philippines to perform onstage to hone their acting skills.
Realizing the wide scope of the media, Alvarez established Balintataw (Mind’s Eye), a weekly drama-anthology television series. Foreign and native literary pieces were adapted, and original teleplays were shown. The show broke the mold of sitcoms and melodramas, which dominated Philippine television at the time.
Because the youth are future audiences and artists, Alvarez established the Metropolitan Teen Theater League (MTTL) to nurture teen-theater artists in Metro Manila. Conferences and summer-training programs were held. Students from different schools were brought together and empowered to be creative and develop social awareness.
But it was in the area of playwriting that Alvarez saw the most need. The Palanca Awards had playwriting contests in English and Tagalog, but the winners were called “file-cabinet plays” because they were hardly staged. Alvarez established the playwrights’ development program, from which I benefitted, for original plays in Tagalog and other native languages to be developed. From writing to staging plays, PETA became a laboratory for reflecting and promoting Philippine languages, cultures and traditions, as well as experimenting with new ideas.
In 1972, Alvarez received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s number-one prize and highest honor, for producing “a practical program for a national theater and founding PETA in 1967.” Cecilia Garrucho, who is the current PETA president, recalled: “In Cecile’s acceptance speech, she said that she did everything because she loved the Philippines so much.”
Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, making himself a dictator. He had unlimited power, and he could do anything to anybody who opposed him. Fearing for their lives, Alvarez and her husband, lawyer Heherson Alvarez, escaped to America. There, she was based at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. She resumed involvement in theater, especially in advancing performances from developing countries.
After the People Power Revolution in 1986, Alvarez and her family moved back to the Philippines. She became president of the Philippine Centre of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute (iTi), helping to promote international peace, friendship and cooperation.
Cecile Guidote Alvarez at the ITI 36th World Congress in Fujairah, UAE (Source: ABS-CBN News)
On its 50th anniversary in 2017, PETA received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for using “the power of theater arts in empowering communities and in social change.”
Alvarez continues to receive accolades. For her work as global citizen for more than half-a-century, she was among the seven outstanding honorees and the only Southeast Asian at the Remake a World Gala on November 10, 2022, at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. She was honored “for her work as founder of the Philippine Educational Theater Association, and her lifetime commitment of ‘cultural caregiving’ by providing free arts training to street children, the disabled, and Indigenous youth.”
Dancer and choreographer Alvaro Restrepo (Colombia), "Mother of Philippine Theater" Cecile Guidote Alvarez, and artistic director Mia Yoo pose with copies of Cecile Guidote Alvarez: The Philippines Is a Stage and Ballesteros on My Mind: My Hometown in the Philippines at the Remake a World Gala at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City, New York, on November 10, 2022. Restrepo and Alvarez were awardees at the gala. (Photo courtesy of Cecile Guidote Alvarez)
She remains sturdy despite conquering cancer and COVID-19 twice. Also, she lost her husband, former Senator Heherson Alvarez, in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
Cecile Guidote Alvarez worked very hard to establish a national Philippine theater. A cultural visionary, she was persistent, focused, took risks and never gave up on her dream. Because of her, Philippine theater is very much alive. It finally has its own identity that can be shared with the world.
Rey E. de la Cruz, Ed.D., Positively Filipino correspondent, writes from Chicagoland when he is not loving the arts and longing for his hometown in the Philippines: Ballesteros, Cagayan. He was the first documented film student (University of the Philippines) and high-school film teacher (San Beda University) in the Philippines. An educationalist, he originated and disseminated the use of the ancient Philippine board game sungka as a teaching strategy. He was awarded the Gawad Balagtas for Drama in Filipino by UMPIL, the Philippines’ largest organization of writers, “for his pioneering creative spirit that imagined and expanded what can be possible for today’s modern theater.”
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