Entablado : theaters and performances in the Philippines / Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-200) and index.

A collection of essays, this book attempts to continue the conversation on theater and performance studies in the context of Philippine scholarship. In the discussions, the trope of entablado is used as a central idiom. Here the use of entablado is twofold. First, entablado refers to its literal meaning, as a space on which a performance takes place. The space of the performance, however, is not only confined to the walls of an auditorium. It may be in a street, a foyer of a huge cultural landmark, a river, or a school auditorium. Also, the space may not necessarily be a location exclusively for an artistic performance. It may be a space where people gather for the Divine, for entertainment, for a political protest, or for an academic conversation. Second, entablado is used here as a signpost for both ambivalence and exact possibility. Borrowing the Hispanic origin of the term, entablar, entablado may be translated into English as "to strike," "to begin," or "to initiate." The ambivalence is in the concept's determinism, which also has Hispanic origins, that seems to be suggestive of a need for a discipline in Philippine academia where the starting point is this space of entablado (theater and performance). Entablado is a link to the more traditional disciplines of literary studies in which the stage is read as a cultural text. [I]t is also a departure from the literary paradigm to ... cultural performance ... where the possibilities of striking, initiating, and beginning take place.