Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio
Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio is a Filipino playwright, puppeteer, and educator known as the "Grande Dame of Southeast Asian Children’s Theatre." She was recognized in 2018 as a National Artist of the Philippines for Theater - a conferment which represents the Philippine state's highest recognition for artists.
Early Life
Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, known as Tita Amel to her students, was born in Binondo, Manila in 1930. She studied Japanese traditional theatre, South East Asian traditional theatre, and international children’s theatre. Research convinced her of the necessity of a theatre for young audiences using Asian and Filipino folktales and utilizing puppets inspired by Japanese Bunraku and Indonesian wayang.Bonifacio became a Fulbright scholar in 1956 and obtained her Master of Arts degree in Speech and Drama at the University of Wisconsin in 1958. She wrote her first play, “Sepang Loca,” in 1957 and followed this up with “Rooms” the following year. Both works won awards in the Wisconsin Playwrighting Competition and were staged at the UW Play Circle Theater, with the author herself designing “Sepang Loca.” The two plays were later published in literary journals in the United States.
During those times, the young Asian Fulbright scholar was told by one of her American professors that her one-act play had 18 characters, far too numerous for the standard format of that time. Her material also delved into abortion, which was barely spoken of in the 1950s. The young Amelia replied that in her milieu, Asian plays did tend to have a lot of characters, regardless of the running time. Not long after, the professor apologized to her privately for not assessing her play correctly.
Her research into traditional theatre of the Philippines was supported by the University of the Philippines' Office of Research Coordination, Zarzuela Foundation of the Philippines, Inc., and the American Philosophical Society.
Pioneering Works
As a young faculty member, she helped establish the Speech and Drama Department of the University of the Philippines - Diliman in 1959 and taught subjects like History of the Theatre and Fundamentals of Speech in the early 1960s until she moved back to the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She contributed significant efforts to the advancement and refinement of the study and practice of theater arts in the Philippines.In 1976, Lapeña-Bonifacio published Anim na Dulang Pilipino Para Sa Mga Bata, with six-year-old daughter supplying illustrations and also influenced by traditional Asian theater techniques. Originally a playwright for adult audiences, she has since then written and directed many other plays for children, most of them based on Asian folktales.
In 1977, Lapeña-Bonifacio was invited by the University of the Philippines Department of Speech and Drama to present one of her plays. She wrote and directed Abadeja: Ang Ating Sinderela, a puppet play based on a Visayan folktale about the Cinderella-like Abadeja. With December shows at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, Abadeja was performed in cooperation with Dulaang UP and UP Repertory Company.
Her first puppet play, “Abadeja: Ang Ating Sinderella,” with music by Felipe M. de Leon Jr. and puppets by Rafael del Casals, was favorably reviewed in the press. With the enthusiasm of the cast's continued visits to her office and her long-standing dream of forming a children's theater group, Lapeña-Bonifacio founded in 1977 the children's theater troupe "Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas", the official theater company and puppetry troupe of the University of the Philippines.
She stirred an aghast public after the Asian lady puppeteer commented on Jim Henson of “Sesame Street" during an arts festival in Washington, D.C that Henson's puppetry approach would not work on the other side of the globe due to three reasons: first, Sesame Street at the time engaged in some violence, secondly, the show’s scenes were too short, whereas a child’s attention span could be held for a much longer time, and finally, the pie-in-the-face antics could be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. With a shocked audience, the young lady added, “If kids have a short attention span, then how come our children back home can watch puppet shows for an hour? And, please, stop throwing all that food around. If that is funny to you Westerners, food for us Asians is almost sacred—it can be a matter of life or death.” After the encounter, Henson would later come up with a full-length puppetry-packed movie, “The Dark Crystal,” which had Asian themes like peace-building and equilibrium between the yin and the yang.
Lapeña-Bonifacio released "Sepang Loca & Others," a first volume of works in English, on 28 January 1981. The collection includes two plays that won playwriting awards at the University of Wisconsin, ten author-selected short stories, several poems and essays.
During the Marcos dictatorship, Amelia's theatre company released "Ang Paghuhukom,” based on the Pampanga folktale of the animal kingdom, which took swipes at the martial law regime. The main character, the ape king of the jungle, kept smashing the other animals to enforce silence and control, until he ended up smashing himself. The government noticed the theatre company, but only after the dictator's wife, Imelda Marcos, saw one play, “Manok at Lawin,” at Quirino Grandstand. The first lady, unknowing of the Ang Paghuhukom play at the time, tasked the Cultural Center of the Philippines to fund Bonifacio's theatre company. Teatrong Mulat afterwards performed dozens of shows in various countries. Bonifacio's theatre company was invited to the International Workshop On Living Children’s Theatre in Asia, where performances in eighteen sites in Japan gained media attention. At the International Puppet Festival in Tashkent, former USSR, Mulat premiered The Trial to acclaim. In 1980, with Tokyo-based Ohanashi Caravan, Mulat toured Metro Manila and provinces, and the group participated in International Workshops On Living Children’s Theatre in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
Papet Pasyon, with music by Professor Rodolfo de Leon, has been staged annually since 1985, and translates the Filipino tradition of reciting the death and resurrection of Jesus into a puppet version for children.
Later years
The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption which devastated numerous provinces in the Philippines highly influenced Bonifacio's craft. Through the University of the Philippines College of Medicine's advice, the Teatrong Mulat showed Pinatubo's traumatized children their plays to help the children in coping up with the horrors caused by the second most powerful volcanic eruption in the 20th century. In the next few years, the theater company performed in 30 refugee or relocation sites in Pampanga and Zambales. Each site would have approximately 100 children.Bonifacio's theatre company presented Sita & Rama: Papet Ramayana in 2004 which interpreted the Indian epic Ramayana through shadow and rod puppetry with music by Joey Ayala and Cynthia Alexander and directed by the Bonifacio's daughter, Amihan Bonifacio-Ramolete.
In 2006, a house near the University of the Philippines, which served as Mulat's 100-seat base, was rebuilt and reopened as the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Teatro Papet Museo through government funding and grants from former presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph E. Estrada.
The most memorable celebration of her work occurred in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2009 at the International Puppetry Festival under the auspices of the UNESCO National Commission. A journalist noted that during a break in the performance of The Ramayana, "the performers approached her, clasped their palms, bowed and kissed her on both cheeks. When, misty-eyed, she kissed them back, the audience rose to their feet."
In February 2010, the University of the Philippines’ Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts conferred her the title “Mother of Philippine Puppetry” to recognize Lapeña-Bonifacioo's efforts in promoting Philippine stories and Asian puppetry and eventually creating a Philippine puppet tradition.
Land, Sea and Sky, a 1991 play, was again launched by Bonifacio's theatre company in 2012 to raise awareness on various environmental concerns that the country is facing. Bonifacio's daughter began leading the theatre company on the same year. Bonifacio has served as the President of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People-Philippines and Union Internationale de la Marionnette-Philippines.
In October 24, 2018, Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio was formally declared by the government as a National Artist of the Philippines, the highest distinction and honor conferred by the Republic to Filipino artists. At the time, she has written 44 plays, 28 of these for children; 136 short stories, mostly for children and young adults; 26 books, and a 2014 novel for young readers about World War II, “In Binondo, Once Upon a War,” written from the point of view of an 11-year-old child. She also wrote countless essays, speeches, poems and songs. In a 2019 interview, she hinted of a possible collaboration with fellow National Artist Ryan Cayabyab, where she has "already sent" an original script for Cayabyab to make a musical from, adding, "I hope he's writing it now."