From colonial legacy to embodied solidarity: The palo-palo of Batanes

Presentation Date: 

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Location: 

International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) Trans-Regional Conference 2018, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City

This presentation is a preliminary discussion of the “palo palo,” a cultural performance of the Ivatan community in the Batanes group of islands in northernmost Philippines where performers strike “opponents’s” sticks to reenact a battle of two opposing camps. The first part is a descriptive narrative of the palo-palo performance. The second part is a preliminary analysis and theorization of the palo-palo’s origin by arguing that the performance could have been based on and/or inspired by the komedya, a Philippine traditional theatre form introduced by the Spaniards during colonization which has roots in the socio-historical conflict of the Christians and the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula in Southwest Europe. Generally, the localization of the form is argued to be paradoxically an embrace and the repudiation of the foreign.

 
Co-presenters: Sir Anril P. Tiatco and Madilene B. Landicho