Connecting with the earth

Before they began each performance of “Ningning sa Salangan” (“Light in the Village”) the actors of the Tanghalang Ateneo Company did a very beautiful thing:

In turn they quietly, affectionately, and solemnly knelt down to touch the patch of earth in the front of the stage.

I loved them doing that so much: because it was so exactly in the spirit of the play.

And it made it all the more important and significant, somehow, for me to ask everyone to pause a moment at the beginning of Jesus Queen of Heaven and remember the Earth.

Remember the Earth, our mother, still very present even under the millions of tons of concrete in the huge city of Manila.

Still so very present, and the source of the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

In a sane society, those whose skill and hard labour work the earth to provide our food would be honoured and rewarded.

Instead, they are often marginalised, disempowered, and tend to live in great poverty.

Not only that, but in Manila, as in Karachi, as in so many other places on this tormented earth, they are losing their land to unscrupulous proper speculators.

In the Philippines they have formed a union, called Gabriela, currently engaged in a struggle to retain control over their own land.

Because because the play is about the struggle of landless peasants, members of the union came to talk to the cast at the beginning of rehearsal to talk about their situation and their struggle.

And then they came to see the play.

In this photo, there's me and the company and two courageous women leaders of the organisation.

I hope to be able to reconnect with them before too long.

And when I saw the climate change play in the capital U P next door, a group of women from the organisation with their selling their produce and they gave me a cabbage.

An enormous cabbage, I'm still very proud of.

Because theatre needs to do this. Theatre needs to engage with realities of our world.