Critics are getting it all wrong panning Bonifacio P. Ilagan’s “O, Pag-ibig na Makapangyarihan” for lighting “miscues,” the absence of “background” to explain the main character’s drift to nationalism and abhorrence of colonial rule, and worse, the play’s intrusive narrator’s bridging of the past and present, the “forced” comic relief and the hortatory nature of the script.
To impose these criticisms on Ilagan is to lose sight of the reason why audiences laugh, howl, sing and ask questions in the course of the play, which tackles the shackles of feudal society on both Gregoria de Jesus (Pau Benitez) and Andres Bonifacio (Nel Estuya), the narrow-mindedness of Oryang’s parents that apparently failed to grasp the winds of change brought by the opening of the Suez Canal, the 1871 French revolution, the German revolution of 1848 and the industrial revolution in England that shattered the exploitation of child labor (now making a comeback in Trump’s USA) as well as the oppression of women, with horrible deaths of women workers in an apparel company in New York leading to the universal celebration of International Women’s Day on Mar. 8.
In 1922, V.I. Lenin declared that day to be a holiday to celebrate the heroism of women who fought tsarism and won the October Revolution. Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx championed the cause of women revolutionaries and eschewed the anti-men slant of the nascent feminist movement. Dolores Ibarruri (1895-1989), born in Basque country and known as a leading figure of the Communist Party of Spain, fought the royalist and fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War, and mobilized thousands of workers under the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB), including some Filipinos. Ibarruri, known as “La Pasionaria,” popularized the slogan “No pasaran” or “they shall not pass.” Oryang antedated both Ibarruri and Frieda Kahlo, but they all fought for women’s liberation.
“O, Pag-ibig na Makapangyarihan” was a title borrowed from Francisco Baltazar’s line: “O, Pag-ibig na Makapangyarihan, hahamakin ang lahat masunod ka lamang.” It was most fitting to watch on March 8, International Women’s Day, at the I. B. Gimenez Theater in UP Diliman since the play focuses on how Oryang practically liberated herself from what actually was serious illegal detention, condemned to live in her “paraisong parisukat” in some “bahay na bato” in Binondo owned by her own godparent. The conflict between Oryang and her parents was not due to Andres not belonging to their class, or was merely selling fans and belonged to a Masonic lodge (largely a petty bourgeois organization); it was a clash of backward ideas insisting on maintaining brain fog against ideas that batter the walls of ignorance, misery and poverty. Thus, the “amour interdit” led to the freeing of a shackled relationship, all because Oryang knew better, and writing a note to a gobernadorcillo about her plight is akin to slipping notes to Karapatan through couriers who breach safehouses guarded by Fernando Tempura, Kokoy Villamin and Mary Grace Piatos.
Oryang, Andres, Nanay Baltazara and Tatay Nicolas were all historical characters and so were Ladislao Diwa and Teodoro Plata but to stitch the narrative together and make the leap from past to present, overcome questions about jump cuts (in film, credit Jean-Luc Godard for that), “trolls,” “brainwashing” and a slew of other words that perplex critics, you need Remigia (Angellie Sanoy) for continuity. She’s both a character and narrator, a servant who witnesses the agony of Oryang, the bird in a cage that cannot sing, and how detention was killing her. Brief but substantive, Oryang convinced Remigia to do her a favor by smuggling her letter to the gobernadorcillo. The same letter, written on Oct. 6, 1893, is kept at the National Archives of the Philippines. With authorities inquiring into the matter, the godfather had to release Oryang and ship her back to Caloocan. Her parents could end up in the same dire straits as their compadre, and the play proceeds to show that no spear, or lance, sword or gun, could break the Oryang-Andres romance. No “deus ex machina” was needed to resolve the issue, just a nice, clean ploy by the quick-thinking Oryang.
All throughout the play, talk was heavy on righting the unrightable wrongs of Spanish colonialism, the abuses of the friars, the exploitation of peasants and the abominable policy of keeping the indios ignorant, forever subdued and denied their democratic rights long after the Spanish realm and the Cortes had abolished slavery. Nanay Baltazara may have failed to gain a wealthy son-in-law but she acquired a man who stood by his principles. The colonialists may have set the rules, the laws and the crippling culture of surrender among the indios but the courage of Andres, Oryang and the Katipunan warriors changed all of them.
Consider “O, Pag-ibig na Makapangyarihan” as “pièce à these” or thesis play, a piece of work that defends the author’s argument or examines a social, political, economic or moral issue. Henrik Ibsen tackled them, along with Arthur Miller, and even Shakespeare, to clarify the folly of the dominant thinking in class societies. Women’s rights were front and center in Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” while McCarthyism was dissected in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” Today’s version of Filipino McCarthyism continues to be let loose as the May 2025 midterm elections approach and when the Marcos and Duterte factions are vying to show which of them is more corrupt and bloodier in the exercise of political power. Like two sides of the same coin, the Filipino electorate should hammer them.
Ilagan’s play will naturally compel theatergoers to examine contemporary armed with the acuity of Andres, an autodidact by description who learn more from the French revolution by reading, and in the course of wooing Oryang, she imbibed the ideas that Andres had imparted, just as Diwa and Plata, understood why peace cannot be achieved under a regime established through violence. Bertholt Brecht taught that plays should educate and arm spectators with the understanding that just after watching a play, one cannot go on dismantling an oppressive system. Critical thinking, deliberate work and continuous analysis of concrete conditions are required of the new Katipuneras (they’re all clad in black) if they were to inherit the sacred duty of Oryang and her peers. (DIEGO MORRA)
