He got use to the long days and the long nights. He didn’t expect to be repaid. Volunteerism was what he signed up for.
The Philippines had it own star system, a system that was out of reach for most everyone. Some actors and directors already had a public following; some had just begun their rise to stardom, while others who worked there would always work in the shadows. Sometimes they were envious and sometimes not. Alfred was always on track. It was always an adventure for him, from when he first arrived from Nick’s class, either at the theater or on the television set. For him it always seemed new and exciting: the selecting of a script, the casting calls and auditions, the pressure of getting something on; the temperamental actors, the rehearsals and run-throughs, technical stuff, with a small group of people who really knew what they were doing. The industry (if you could call it that) was still very small, and the number of people Alfred worked with every week to produce a weekly live television drama was also very small. Sometimes he couldn’t find the people he needed. But people who couldn’t improvise didn’t last long in the business. Alfred evidently made do, and producers preferred to work with him rather than someone who wasn’t as flexible.
All of the shows were in Tagalong. That also applied to the theater, except for a few exceptions. Susan was nervous about playing the Virgin Mary. She didn’t want Ted anywhere near the studio during the performance. But there was no way he would miss it, though he didn’t tell Susan that. To get him in, without her knowing it, they gave him a ticket. No one in the audience seemed to know that he was married to the Virgin Mary. After getting in, without her knowing it, he went and sat in the back. So for him, more than for anyone else, and in different ways than anyone else, Susan’s successful depiction of the Virgin Mary had special meaning.
Sometimes on the weekend, between performances and rehearsals, Alfred would take them out to eat, and they had their favorite restaurants that served their favorite fish and soups, sweet and sour with tamarind.
Ted would always remember the conversations they had with Alfred over soup…conversations that went somewhere and those he followed up with Alfred alone, conversations about the Philippines and the direction the country was going.
It wasn’t much different then than sixty or seventy years before then, when “sedition in Manila” was the theme of many plays in native theaters. “HOW AN AMERICAN SMASHED THE SUN OF FILIPINO INDEPENDENCE” had been a brazen cry during those restless times when the Americans held tight control…in the face of that tight control to produce those plays took balls. The Americans would have tried to clamp down on the thespians with everything they had, while they wouldn’t have been able to subdue the “recrudescence of the insurrecto spirit.” The symptoms of that spirit would have been an alarming increase of insurrecto bands. All of them would’ve been on foot. The modern insurrection had less support, though that was hard to gage. The assaults would’ve been simple, and not too different from modern assaults, and with good firearms would’ve driven back constabulary forces, and terrorize areas for some time. There would’ve been scattered fighting, Filipinos against Americans, no mercy for Filipinos. To live through that would’ve been rough; to live through war and disease month after month and year after year would’ve been rougher than rough; it would’ve been hell. It made for good drama. Just as bitter as the drama in the countryside, Filipino theater took up the cause in Manila, since without a doubt it was a just cause, in tune with the hearts and minds of the people, so they got away with producing semi-seditious plays in Tagalong, a language most of the Americans didn’t understand. Only history can judge them. And now there was Nick and all those agitated students, but did that call for a new play, or perhaps they should do a revival of “Hindi Aco Patay,” one of the seditious plays from long ago. They would have to mull that one over.
All over campus students talked about France and China and Vietnam. They stood up to the police with their armored jeeps and tear gas. Ted, spending the day in his office and wondering what the hell Nick was doing, had become sympathetic with the demonstrators. But while students and professors alike had been allowed to assemble, the president of the university hadn’t had time to call off classes. Here history was being made, as the first shots rang out. This was the beginning of THE FIRST QUARTER STORM, or had it been building for quite some time? It certainly had on campus. Nick had made his way down to the street. This happened in June, a wet June that year; there were tables, benches and chairs used to set up barricades that one side crouched behind. Nick wished he had remembered to bring his Filipino flag. He had to find Ben; it was no secret that he relied on Ben. And he sang revolutionary songs and waited for Ben to appear and make a speech. There were the colonels and the deans debating over what to do, with ambassadors crossing over from one side to the other. Each side had their reasons for being nervous. The school was under siege, and it looked as if it would never end, or not without a lot of bloodshed. They all jeered at the police and the soldiers before the police and the soldiers tossed tear gas at them. Ted watched from his window, Ted and a student, one that didn’t want to get involved. As an American, it was hard for him to watch, it was harder to be at ease knowing the anti-American sentiment of the demonstrators, as a moderate demonstration turned into a “radical one.” Down with America and Marcos, Marcos, an American goon! The students always treated Ted like a stranger. He never got used to being treated that way; so to him, to the bloody end, the siege felt strange and awkward, and watching it from his perch really got to him.
Randy Ford
