Monday, June 04, 2007 Literary giant on stage By Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano
MOST stage directors do their job well. But often they’re not the multi-task kind of person. Most can’t write scripts nor can they act. Moreover, they can’t sing and dance in musicals. To be the master of the stage one has to do all these.
Hence, rarely can a director be expected to get involved, outside of directing, to attend to the other aspects of theater because it’s a collaborative process by many individuals at work.
Theater is a conspiracy by many people from different fields of expertise to make it work. But to our very own, and one and only (not that he have pretenders) Crispin Ramos, he’s a tireless dynamo oozing with passion for local theater.
Being at the helm of Bantawan Sugbu, Ramos is like a one-man army in charge of everything. On several occasions he’s the playwright, artistic director, choreographer and actor all rolled into one. As the moving force behind Bantawan he’s a package of ideas ready to unwrap on stage. But would you believe that he never thought of himself becoming a literary figure. The now three-time Palanca awardee from the start recalled feeling insignificant.
After he was expelled from school: “I felt sorry for myself. “Wala nay modawat nako na high school sa Cebu” having flunked everything, except Bible class.
He once threw a chair at his teacher for humiliating him. Soon he found himself studying in Silliman University after his dad made pleas with the school. There “nobody thought of me as a promising talent” but he started to love poems and dramatics.
Ramos is a late-bloomer and his friends will usually say: “Cris, nobody really thought you write.” His very first composition was a poem he entitled The Challenge. It saw print in The Quill.
“In my Silliman days I was like a sonnambulist.” He couldn’t speak English and American women in Dumaguete will say he’s innocent. It was only during his first summer in college that he found out that he actually had the capacity to learn. He finished his education at Columbia College with a Masters degree in Arts in Film Education.
His first comedy play, Blind Corners, was “really about me.” This was followed by Return to Santander, Blind Lanes and Blind Alleys. This early Ramos plans to turn his plays into novels once he turns 60. Just recently he quit some vices. He’s been smoke-free for a year.
