Abstract:

This chapter presents the genealogy of protest performances on the Philippine stage and proposes the revolutionary rhetoric of creating an assembly is transformed into an active protestation in the process. This genealogy has created a radical figure of solidarity between the performers and the audience members by renewing a sense of community through dissent against forces of oppression. This community is forged inside the auditorium with artists commonly hoping for it to be extended outside the theatre. In the formation of a community, the stage has invited the audience into transcendence in the rehearsal of social responsibility through the presentation of the everyday social life of the Filipino people, particularly those involving abuse, repression, and oppression. In the end, the stage signals recognition of what Judith Butler calls the precarity of each other and recognition of the other as other and not as an object of one’s enjoyment, work, and possession.