Lorenzo

The Script of Lorenzo: Katha nina…sa tulong ni…

by Paul A. Dumol

          It was seven years ago (2007) when Christopher de Leon called and asked whether I would be interested in writing a play on Lorenzo Ruiz. I demurred because I had already written a play on a similar topic—Saint Felipe de Jesus, the protomartyr of Mexico who died with the first group of martyrs in Japan. I asked whether he would accept work from two former students whom I would supervise. Christopher agreed, I contacted Joem Antonio and Chris Vallez, and the writing team of Lorenzo was born.

          Joem did the research. He used Fr. Fidel Villaroel’s book on Lorenzo Ruiz based on the documents submitted for Lorenzo’s beatification. We quickly realized there was much material on the saint’s trial and martyrdom, but hardly anything else. There was a little on his flight from Manila, but absolutely nothing on the one year of imprisonment in Okinawa. I proposed we make the play into a musical, as that would allow us to produce a work of decent length with little material, and Joem and Chris and later Christopher de Leon agreed.

          We decided to write three acts: obviously, one set in Nagasaki which would be act 3, and another set in Manila which would be act 1. Act 2 would be the yearlong imprisonment in Okinawa. Joem was charged with making an outline for act 3 and Chris for act 1. I would do act 2.

          Joem’s act 3 followed Villaroel’s book closely, particularly in two details not known to most Filipinos. The first has to do with Lorenzo’s initial hesitation with regard to the faith. Even before he was interrogated, he asked the Japanese interrogator whether he would be released if he recanted. The interrogator replied that Lorenzo himself should ask that of the judge. At this moment, the interrogator was called outside by the judge. When the interrogator returned, Lorenzo informed him to forget about his earlier question: he was ready to profess the Catholic faith steadfastly. Villaroel asks what brought about this change? Villaroel surmises that Lorenzo witnessed the torture of Fray Antonio and this moved him to follow the friar’s example: This is what the audience will see in act 3. The second detail has to do with one of the missionaries who recanted, but who subsequently returned to the faith and died a martyr. Villaroel speculates that he might have returned to the faith because of the example of his companions, but above all of Lorenzo, because this particular missionary was a layman like Lorenzo: This is also what the audience will see in act 3.

I thought of making act 2 into a Rashomon, with the five missionaries with whom Lorenzo was jailed in Okinawa guessing what Lorenzo’s motive was for fleeing Manila. Surviving documents are not clear at all on the matter, so we felt free to take a stand. We would give credence to the rumor that he had murdered someone in Manila, who would have to be a Spaniard on the basis of Lorenzo’s testimony that he had a quarrel with a Spaniard. We presented this to Christopher who accepted our stand: I think he liked the implication that even sinners can become saints. Afterwards, the writing team discussed the possible motivations for Lorenzo’s murder of the Spaniard. I take all the blame for the conjecture which is presented at the end of act 2.

          The task of writing the libretto fell on both Chris and Joem: Chris would write acts 1 and 2; Joem, act 3. After both came up with their respective parts, it became clear that only one of them should write the libretto: Their respective voices were too different from one another. We decided on Chris who had prior experience in writing poetry in Tagalog.

          Chris did a marvellous job. He lovingly crafted every verse in the script, which originally (if my memory serves me right) did not contain a line of prose in the dialogue. The idea was to have everything in verse, both song and speech. Chris counted every syllable and chose every rhyme and from the start worked on different verse forms per act: Japanese verse forms for act 2 (tanka and haiku?), the pasyon for act 3. I do not now recall the verse forms he used for act 1. These verse forms set to music will not show up in the songs, but they are there for anyone who reads the script. There are passages of beauty in the libretto which make one hope he will one day take a break from his usual subject matter of moony males and estrous females and write the modern Tagalog verse play.

          As the drafts evolved we presented them to Christopher. Christopher had two contributions to the final draft: first, the consistent focus on Lorenzo and, second, a greater role for Lorenzo’s wife. Our first version began with the focus on the five missionaries in act 1 and gradually shifted that focus in acts 2 and 3 to Lorenzo. Christopher didn’t like that; that meant rewriting act 1 and adding something to act 2 to give Lorenzo a bigger role than just sitting mysteriously in the darkness while everyone speculated on his past. We added a personal conflict that produced two great songs from Ryan. As for the wife, Christopher’s suggestion meant more appearances for her, counterpointing the narrative at crucial points.

          The final draft of the musical was finished within a year. After Christopher’s approval, I passed it on to Nonon. This was now 2008. Nonon liked it, but asked for the inclusion of a twenty-first century character, an OFW, with a devotion to Lorenzo Ruiz, the patron saint of OFWs. That, of course, meant a major change in the conceptualization of the script. I went back to the team, but by this time Joem played a lesser role. Chris and I discussed possible stories in which the musical would be embedded; I think we agreed the OFW was to be the author of the musical and would have three scenes, each introducing an act of the musical. I believe we also agreed he was to be interviewed by a reporter. All the stories passed through Christopher and had to have his approval. One story in particular, which Christopher quickly rejected, would probably have our friends hooting.

          Chris produced a number of drafts, but none was satisfactory. The problem was to come up with a story that would neither eclipse nor “misrepresent” the musical. Chris was busy at the time with other projects as well, and at a certain point, when the deadline we had set for ourselves approached, I decided to write the three scenes myself that are now part of Lorenzo.

Nonon’s suggestion was a stroke of genius. I don’t know if what I gave him was what he had in mind, but certainly the three scenes set more than four centuries later change the complexion of the whole work. Laurence the OFW comments on each of the acts, explaining them, and his comments reveal how his personal story has become enmeshed in the story of Lorenzo. (It is not Lorenzo’s story that is embedded in his; it is his that is embedded in Lorenzo’s.) The resulting work has an emotional intensity the musical in isolation did not have. I do not mean that the musical by itself is flat; on the contrary, Lorenzo’s story by itself (and I refer above all to act 3) is moving, but over and above Lorenzo’s story, there is now the story of a contemporary character from which emerges another sort of emotional intensity. Laurence embodies what is often claimed of Hamlet: how each generation must make the stories of the past their own.

          The addition of Laurence charges the musical with luminosity, with transparency, transforming the story of Lorenzo Ruiz into talinghaga—or integumentum, as my Master would say. The three scenes of Laurence suggested the “crossovers” to be found (at the time of this writing) in acts 2 and 3 of Lorenzo, when Laurence enters the imaginary world he has created for Lorenzo. If the audience follows the story of Laurence and does not treat his scenes like entr’actes, those crossovers, but especially the first, could rival the climactic scenes of act 3 in intensity. The more discerning among my Dante students will detect the fingerprints of the Master in the back-and-forth between Laurence the artist and Lorenzo the character. Grazie, maestro!

          In 2009 Ryan agreed to write the music of Lorenzo. It was to be a rock musical, he said, not pop, because the emotions were too intense for pop. (Later he would backtrack, entertaining doubts that some of the music he had written was rock. By then he had fallen in love with the material, enough for him to propose making Lorenzo into an opera, that is, with everything sung and nothing recited. Nonon, however, did not agree, wisely concerned that we would come up with a five-hour opus.) I edited the final version of Lorenzo. That meant reshaping some of Chris’s songs to make them more like songs instead of poems—with refrains and recurring lines. My personal rule was not to change any lines Chris wrote, although I might change their position in the work. Occasionally, however, I found it necessary to actually change a word or verse: this was when I thought Chris had failed to capture a particular point we had agreed on. I believe this happened in two places: (1) Fray Antonio’s song in act 2 when he counsels Lorenzo on forgiveness and (2) Lorenzo’s song in act 3 when he distinguishes between inner and outer fidelity to the faith. There are theological points there which I felt should not be fuzzy. In the beginning, I would clear every change I made in the script with Chris, but towards the end of that third year, as deadlines approached and Chris was busy on other projects, I think I was remiss on this point. That would explain Chris’s look of consternation in one reading when the words in a song did not look familiar to him. (Sorry, Chris! But I never changed entire stanzas; just a word or two and the occasional verse.)

It was then when I decided to make Lorenzo’s trip to Japan expressionistic with the pilot of the sampan and the five missionaries in skull masks. That was the year Michael Jackson died, so this was probably the inspiration of Nonon’s remark, “Why don’t you make them Michael Jackson masks?” Indeed. And so the character denominated in the script as “ang nakamaskara ng bungo” took shape. He appears in black in act 1 as the pilot of the sampan: he is Death (of the Body); he appears in act 2 in red and wrestles with Lorenzo, hip-hop style: he is the Death of the Soul; and he appears in act 3 in white resuscitating the unconscious Lorenzo: he is Death to Life. At the end of the musical he leads the six martyrs in a “Dance of the Living,” a sort of reverse Thriller. This was the last twist that the script went through before Nonon started rehearsals. I should warn the reader of these notes, however, that I have not to date (the beginning of August) seen a single rehearsal or costume design. For all I know, Michael Jackson will not appear. But he might in a future production.

          This first run of Lorenzo, however, is meant to be an “off-Broadway” run, to bring out the glitches in the production and script before the “Broadway” run in the CCP July of next year (2014). Already, we have started experimenting with different endings.

Director's Notes

by Nonon Padilla

I first approached Peta to do a co-production of LORENZO when it was finally decided to set a date and venue for the production. Maribel Legarda, the artistic director of Peta, said their schedule had long been decided on and had already been announced.

     I then asked CB Garucho, Peta’s Chair if they had a free slot within the year when we could rent the theater and rehearsal spaces. The only time they could offer were 2 weeks in October right before All Saints’ Day.

     The dates were not attractive, marketing-wise, making it impossible to sell the shows to schools during term break.

     Fortunately Gabby Fernandez of Saint Benilde, had been wooing me to teach in their School of Design. They had been planning to offer a full theater program, which they have long been eager to launch. I declined the teaching position but accepted becoming a consultant to their program (which to this day, has been stalled at the CHED for further scrutiny, and a ton of bureaucratic paperwork.)

     I broached the idea of doing a co-prod with Saint Benilde, and Gabby immediately grabbed the suggestion, exclaiming,“Yes, with open arms, we can host the production, and offer its facilities on the condition that our students apprentice in the production and do hands-on training!”

     Done!

     Prior to this we have had three musical previews to test the music by inviting potential producers to cocktails. Christopher and Paul gave brief spiels on the history and background of the project. Mr, C and his singers then played and sang highlight passages and arias of the opera.

     Looking for money for a theater production is eternally difficult in this country, and only the persistence of Paul had kept the flames alive. Christopher de Leon, the producer and the one who commissioned Paul to write the script, could not attend to it immediately, having been waylaid by his political pursuits in the last May elections.

     The project really had its jump-start when Paul invited Francis Sebastian of Metro Bank to help finance the whole enterprise. Enthused after hearing the music, Francis gave the go signal (after a series of meetings-lunches at Seryna, the Japanese restaurant in Japan Town) not quite knowing what he was really getting involved in, but warmed by Ryan’s beautiful music, most attractively sung by his talented group of singers.

     From the very first time that we heard Ryan’s music, all those who listened ended up moved and drenched in tears. (Music pa lang yon, ha!)

     Paul, in his notes, recounted comprehensively the process of writing the text. So me and my big mouth! Little did I know that my simple suggestion to add a contemporary angle to the narrative would trigger a creative frisson, a leap and somersault, prompting Paul and his team of writers, Juan Ekis and Joem Antonio, to “go to town” and write a really sophisticated drama on the first Pinoy saint. Exciting and challenging as it is, it is also awesomely deep in its poetic approach. The conversion of one historical figure from the 17^th century Manila, from accidental tourist, criminal, renegade, and fugitive into a martyr in Nagasaki is embedded in a contemporary narrative concerning an OFW condemned to death for murdering his employer and awaiting execution by beheading in a middle-east prison.

     Paul in his notes, has hinted on the source of his inspiration-Dante’s poetics, Dante being the supreme poet of poets worldwide.

     Enter Gino Gonzales, our production designer, who upon reading the script decided to use the balikbayan box as a metaphor for the sets. To me it was supercalifragilistiexpialidociously serendipitous! The structure of Paul’s and his team of writers’ drama is akin to a Russian matrioshka, a box within a box, within a box, with layers of reality ever deepening into spiritual and dramatic depths. Indeed the story telling is Conradian (as in Heart of Darkness) In this instance, it is both a journey into darkness and an escape into the light.

     I would like to take this opportunity to thank (Alvin, fill in the benilde staff) and a prayer for Brother Andrew who was the visionary of this new school for the arts. Bless his gourmet soul in heaven!

     Here now, is the Pinoy divina comediya!