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Ms. CECILE GUIDOTE ALVAREZ
The Prime Mover of the National Theater
Movement
The Early Years
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| Cecile
Guidote Alvarez and the DREAMS Ensemble
during the "Clean Up the World"
celebration in Malacañang in
October 1996 with President Fidel V.
Ramos. |
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Her passion for peace was instilled since childhood
by her Mother, a war widow who told her: "Your
Father died so you would be born free". Cecile
never saw her father, a guerilla fighter during
World War II who was killed before she was born.
She was High School Valedictorian in St. Theresa's
College QC.
Cecile Guidote Alvarez graduated AB-BSE - summa
cum laude, St. Paul's College 1962 and in the first
select group of Ten Outstanding Students. She holds
an MA degree in Theater and took special Communications
Arts Studies in the State University of New York
in Albany, on a Fulbright-Hays and John D. Rockefeller
III Fund Scholarship at the Dallas Theatre Center.
At the age of 18, she created produced and directed
a live drama series, Teenagers, as an antidote to
juvenile delinquency. Students from public schools
and out-of-school youth were integrated with students
from exclusive schools, reflecting together on the
needs, problems and aspirations of the youth. Her
work was cited with a nomination for a Citizens
Award for Television. Fresh from graduate school,
she conceived and organized the Philippine Educational
Theater Association (PETA) as a national theatre
movement, encouraging writers to draw power from
the language and lives of the people.
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| The
moving force behind PETA. |
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She conceived the flexible staging spaces at the
Paco Park and Fort Santiago most notably the Raja
Sulayman Theatre in the Ruins. She designed a Creative
Theatre Training program rooted in indigenous heritage
appreciation crystallized in CITASA and founded
its repertory Company, Kalinangan Ensemble. Among
its productions were the critically acclaimed Pilipino
translation of Virgie Moreno's Straw Patriot (Bayaning
Huwad) and Nick Joaquin's Portrait (Larawan), and
Filipino adaptations of such classics as Durenmatt's
the Visit ( Doña Clara) Ionesco's bald Soprano
( Tatay Mong Kalbo ) the Morality play Everymen
(Tao) and an original politically sensitive Zarzuela
"Halimaw" by Isagani Cruz and "Aidao"
a muslim play by Malou Jacob. She provided a bridge
between the movies and the stage through its TV
drama series Balintataw. This brought to the masses
an alternative diet of history, literacy classics
and social conditions dramatically depicted for
their entertainment and education.
She pioneered exchange with the Arab World and opened
cultural links with Eastern European countries in
the Philippines when there was still absence of
diplomatic relations particularly with Czechoslovakia,
Romania, Poland, German Democratic Republic (GDR)
and even China. She has initiated Philippine ITI
programs with Asian, African, Latin American, through
the holding a Third World Theatre Festival with
the International Theatre Institute.
She openly questioned the use of limited public
funds by Imelda Marcos for a building by the bay
and suggested the use of the 67 million dollar veteran
education fund for relevant arts education and equitable
distribution for provinces to have their own centers
of culture. Her frank statements aroused the ire
of the First lady who prevented her exit out of
the country in her travels abroad as Secretary of
the ITI Third World Committee and UNESCO Consultant
on Ethnic minorities for the US Center of the International
Theatre Institute. The Ramon Magsaysay Awards, recognized
her artistic work in the national and international
scene for Public Service in 1972. She is the youngest
Filipina to have received the equivalent of a Nobel
Prize in Asia as well as the Patnubay ng Kalingan
Award given by the City of Manila.
In Exile
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| The
Alvarez Family with the bronze statue
of Ninoy Aquino after the 1983 assassination.
The statue was commissioned by Alvarez
as President and Founder of the Ninoy
Aquino Movement (NAM) and sculpted by
Tom Concepcion. |
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She got married in a matrimonia de consciencia ceremony
presided by Fr. James B. Reuter to ConCon delegate
Heherson " Sonny" Alvarez who eluded arrest
and a shoot-to-kill order during the imposition
of Martial Law. Both escaped and lived in exile
for 13 years, working with Movement for a Free Philippines,
an overseas movement to restore democracy and eventually
the Ninoy Aquino Movement founded by her husband
after the Assasination of the former Senator. Passing
on the legacy of her parents, she has named her
two children, Hexilon and Herxila, with the word
"exile" carved into their consciousness
so that they too, will zealously but peacefully
defend democracy.
With other exiled artists from Chile, South Africa,
Uganda, Argentina, East Timor and Cambodia, Cecile
organized the International Alliance of Concerned
Artists for Human Rights and Peace (ACAHRP). As
Founding Member of the Performing Artists for Nuclear
Disarmament (PAND), she organized various for an
in Cooper Square, Asia Society, Riverside Church
and La Mama Theatre, featuring sculptures of prisoners,
relevant paintings, and anti-dictatorship performances,
and thus drawing attention to violations of human
rights and encouraging protests against nuclear
weapons. She liaised with Amnesty International
for the creation of a desk for the plight and concerns
of artists.
In the streets of New York in front of the Philippine
Embassy, the United Nations, at St. Patrick's Cathedral,
in front of the White House and the U.S. Congress
in Washington, demonstrations organized by her husband
to restore democracy took the form of creative arts
presentations that added color and media strength
to the political rallies. Images of the Filipino
carrying the cross of dictatorship, veiled women
in black lamenting the Desparecidos, Muslim women
in funeral rituals, Cordillera war dances, exhibits
of the Dictatorship's Seven Deadly Sins, a helicopter
carrying a STOP USAID sign, even Ninoy Aquino's
life-size sculpture saw print in the newspapers.
She extended PETA into PETAL, reaching out to the
Filipino communities abroad, not only in America
but including England, Italy and Canada, providing
training, production services and cultural festivals
focusing on the struggle of the Filipinos for cultural
identity and freedom. Performances like Amerikanong
Hilaw, Sultan Kudarat, Macling Dulag, Hayop Man
ay Dapat Mahalin, and Ninoy Aquino's poems in prison
received rave reviews in the New York Times, Village
Voice, and Asia Week. PETAL, under her direction
received the Outstanding Political Theatre Award
together with the world renowned Bread and Puppet
Theatre. The PETAL Ensemble was selected as the
first ethnic American minority theatre company to
participate in the Third World Festival hosted in
South Korea.
PETAL was based in La Mama Theatre where she co-founded
the Third World Institute of Theatre Arts Studies
(TWITAS) with Ellen Stewart and was instrumental
in presenting new plays and cultural traditions
of Asia, Africa and Latin America in a series of
Annual World Theatre festival in New York City.
Her brilliant direction of a Third World Liturgy
was hailed by Robert Patrick as " The masterwork
of a Third World Woman Artist". Her interpretation
of Juana La Loca merited an invitation to Mexico's
Cervantino Festival.
As Founding Chairperson of the International League
of Folk Arts for Communications and Education (FACE),
she initiated and directed parallel cultural programs
at various UN Conferences as a vehicle for Human
Rights Education. Among these events are: the Population
Conference in Bucharest (1974); the Women's Tribune
in Mexico (1975) and in Nairobi in 1985; Habitat
in Vancouver (1976). She developed the Child Year
Culture Corps Project for the Year of the Child
(1979-80) inaugurated with the Pacific Peoples Festival
which she organized and was featured in the CBS
Festival of Lively Arts. She designed a Third World
Arts Curriculum utilized in artist-teachers training.
Cecile conceived and directed the highly successful
cross-cultural performance, The Ramayana, for the
Year of the Disabled, involving a blind Indian choreographer
(1981). She designed and organized the Conference/Festival
on Traditional Cultures and Communications Technology
(1983) at the United Nations and also served in
the UN Panel for the Year of the Youth (1985).
She was given a UN Human Rights Day Award for Cultural
Innovation by the Fund for Free Expression in 1985.
Coming Home
She revived of the multi-awarded TV drama series,
Balintataw, which she has also translated to radio
on DZRH and comics on OCWs. Her tri-media creative
approach Sali-Salising Buhay for human resources-development,
social integration and employment expansion, dealing
with women, youth, OCWs, street kids, tribal concerns,
and health issues like AIDS and maternal and child
care, was reviewed favorably by Time Magazine and
singled out by Cable News Network (CNN) in a special
30 minute feature on Soap Opera for Social Change
and transmitted by satellite to 100 countries introduced
by Jane Fonda.
Her proposal for a Cultural Summit and Indigenous
Cultural Olympics for Peace and Sustainable Development,
to mark the Decade for Indigenous Peoples and to
observe the 50th anniversary of the United Nations,
resulted in the UN Resolution 48/163 sponsored by
28 countries and passed by the General Assembly.
Thus were the seeds of GICOS sown: "To affirm
the value of traditional cultures, folk arts and
rituals as effective expressions of respective national
identities and as a foundation for a shared vision
for peace, freedom and equality".
She is Founding Artistic Director of the Earthsavers
Movement/DREAMS Academy initially based at the Ninoy
Aquino Park which provides cultural and livelihood
studies for street kids, ethnic and disabled youth.
The DREAMS (Development, Rehabilitation, and Education
through Arts, Media and Science) Academy, has developed
socially integrated performing group that has been
cited by UNESCO Sources Magazines as "one of
the most unique Theatre Companies in the world"
besides being nominated as UNESCO Artists for Peace.
They have successfully staged shows here and abroad.
Perhaps the most
memorable one was when Cecile celebrated her 40th
year in public service in the arts and media, when
the youths performed in "Pasasalamat sa may
K: Para sa Karapatang Pantao, Kalayaan, Katarungan,
Kapayapaan, Kalikasan at Katutubong Kalinangan"
at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The DREAMS
Ensemble did an original adaptation of Antoine de
Saint Exupery's, The Little Prince in Marikina for
the Global Earth Day Festival in 1997. The musicale
was unorthodox for it was the first time that a
blind girl, Jaymee Castillo, took the role of the
Prince.
Cecile also broke grounds when she took the DREAMS
Ensemble to perform in different countries. They
received rave reviews in the Queen Faviola Center
for the mentally handicapped in Belgium, in the
UN Earth Summit in Brazil, in the UN Social Summit
in Denmark, at the Vatican for their special performance
for the Pope, in the UNESCO in Paris, in the International
Festival for Young Professional in Romania, in the
UN Habitat Forum in Turkey, in the UN Conference
on Human Rights in Vienna, in the World Youth Festival
in Lisbon, in the Social Summit in Copenhagen, in
the UN Habitat Conference in Istanbul, the UN Millennium
Forum in New York City as well as Canada, England,
Korea, and Thailand. They have received awards given
by Earth Day International and the Ford Motor Corporation.
They were honored with commendation from the Los
Angeles County Board of Education, the festival
of Twin Cities in California, the Asia-Pacific American
Heritage Council and the Environmental Protection
Agency. Cecile and the Ensemble bring to different
audiences around the world a universal message,
a uniting force of hope, peace, and love.
Peter Yarrow of the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary
gave them the song "Don't Laugh at Me."
Speaking to the group, he praised them as, "Young
peacemakers, (I have only) admiration for your courage,
your superb artistry and your beautiful hearts.
You teach us all something about loving, and you
make us one with the beauty of your art and inspiring
souls."
Cecile has received the Ten Outstanding Women of
the Nation (TOWNS) awards and other recognition
from the different civic groups and international
organizations.
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