Re-search.

I am one harrassed researcher.

It could be my own doing. But there are always two sides to the same coin.

As many of you are already aware, collating theater reviews of Director Tony Mabesa's plays running as far back as 1975 is crucial to my thesis on his directorial work for Dulaang UP. so, for as long as the Main Library's been opened for the semester, the Periodical Section and Microform Section Staffers (located in the basement-bowels of the structure) have once again begun to grow accustomed to me puttering to and fro 'round the area. (I sayonce again because I once had the pleasure of spending quality library time in the same section for my Certificate Thesis. ) So, after two long years, I say hello once more to xerox machines and squeaky karrels and index cards (or paper?) and print-out forms and borrowing call slips swiped by the bulk (for writing down items for borrowing ahead of time, of course).


It's a joy hanging out in the library and have quiet time, really, even if quiet time just means five-minute lavatory breaks or two full minutes of staring into space every twenty to thirty minutes of elbow-deep excavatory work.

There are gripes, of course. As I go poring over page after page of 1980's indices looking for play names and reviews, I have to grapple with the reviewer's choice of article titles. It's rather difficult, you see, to go looking for reviews of plays like Pinoy Pers Klas or Much Ado About Nothing when the reviewers choose to exercise artistic license and give their write-ups titles such as Encore, please, or A Stunning Performance by So-and-so Rocks Theater. (Not their fault, of course.) My objective calm veers a notch toward frustration, but I stop myself: frustration wears off precious patience, and giving in to it will get me nowhere. so I take a chance and borrow every reel that hold each article on the list anyway. Cranking away at the Karrel at top speed, watching pages and pictures fly by on the yellowed light and feeling the same projected words and photographs run across my face, I cling on and hope, hope, hope I did not pore and crank in vain. I finally come to the page, to the column, to the author, and I do find a review. A review that is anything, every other theater company, anything but Dulaang UP.

Frus. Trating.

And I end up spent as tuppence on London Bridge.

Oh, it's pretty much the same deal with every other three reels or so.
But come on. I'm the researcher here. It's my job; I'm not supposed to whine.

But what strikes me as odd, really, is this. I've noticed that for the many seasons of DUP where Sir Tony has directed most (if not all) of its productions (it's happened: DUP once had a season in the early 80's where he directed all of its three plays), I have found only one review of his work. Only one review of a Dulaang UP production for a Dulaang UP Season.

Only that one review in a span of one year? That's impossible. I mean, a theater season with one director directing most or all its offerings? Come on, that's bound to attract some attention.

Could it have been the line-up of plays? Impossible; world premiers and philippine premiers ought to attract much attention. Could it have been the politics of the time? Perhaps, considering UP was branded as tibak (activist) territory, and thus, attending a play set on red ground could prove dangerous, what with the Marcoses still about. Or, as my mother proposed, could it be Imelda's funding? Remember that she had the CCP built, and with that, was probably a major patron of their theater company. Maybe she also was patron to the other commercial companies. Maybe University Theater Companies got left out. Like Dulaang UP. Maybe. It's all just one big Maybe.

I find I still have too little pieces to the puzzle for me to fit and see the whole picture.

But that's what research's all about. That's what research's for. Scavenge, scrape, find, sift them pieces out, fit them together, and come up with one big picture. It's off-field indoor Archaeology.

It all seems such a heavy responsibility, for now. But soon enough, if I conscientiously, consciously, diligently keep at it, it will prove to be rewarding.

Who knows? I may end up unearthing a city.