Monday, November 12, 2007 Costanilla: Soap as stage play By Sam Costanilla spotlight
WE in the Cebu United Radio and Television Artists Corp. are planning to stage something different for the general public and mass communication students. I am referring to our upcoming project that aims to show how radio dramas or soap operas are produced. It is our group’s idea to present them onstage--complete with sound effects, background music, narration and several other factors that make soap operas possible.
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IT is our club’s intention to entertain and educate the public about radio drama production. We will be doing this project as our group’s humble way of honoring the soap opera as an industry since its early days up to the present. It is our wish that with the staging of radio drama production onstage, people would learn to appreciate soap operas as an important form of entertainment as well as very much a part of Cebuano art and culture.
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WHAT happened to the Press Freedom mural in Manila should serve as an eye- opener to those Cebu City Hall officials who ordered the bastardization of the mural depicting Cebu. It was painted by artist Bart “Boy” Kiamko during the incumbency of then Vice Mayor Alvin Garcia. The mural depicting Cebu, which Boy titled Composition, was done under the heat of the sun for three weeks. Boy didn’t charge the city government then because, according to him, it was also his gift to Cebu and the Cebuanos. It used to occupy the wall of the city library and museum. The building also houses the office of the Cebu City Cultural and Historical Affairs Commission. When they had the edifice renovated recently, some so-called “maayong laki” city officials ordered the destruction of Boy’s massive artwork on the building’s wall without even the elementary respect and courtesy of consulting with the artist. What a tragedy to happen to the local art scene!
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ANYWAY, the Press Freedom mural in Manila became controversial with the National Press Club’s censorship on the artwork, which is an unforgivable blunder. The club’s justification that the changes in the mural were only temporary and minor doesn’t hold water. Nobody should have touched the mural or made some revisions on it, even how slight. In Cebu, it is clear that those city officials who ordered the destruction of Boy’s mural do not love and understand the importance and significance of art to humanity. They had the gall to have the 14x33-feet mural completely erased!
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THIS public figure is a frustrated singer. When entertaining visitors inside his office, he lets them hear a compact disc of his own version of some popular hits although his rendetion isn’t that impressive.
