Salvador F. Bernal: Designing the Stage (review)

Philippine theater research has not been short of able scholars. Most of them have focused on the history of local dramatic forms or on individual playwrights and their works. Few, however, have ventured into material aspects of Philippine theater. In this context, Salvador F. Bernal: Designing the Stage is a welcome addition to the field. The book is a comprehensive review of Bernal's work as designer for theater, with over two hundred full-color photographs of his sketches, models, and actual costumes and sets complementing the text.

Nicanor G. Tiongson is arguably the best authority on Philippine theater history, having written the pioneering studies on the sinakulo and the komedya, as well as various articles on other forms of Philippine drama. Tiongson is also a playwright, and as such he is privy to the ins and outs of theatrical production in the country.

Salvador F. Bernal, named National Artist for theater design by the Philippine government in 2003, is a worthy subject for Tiongson. Since the 1970s, Bernal has designed the sets and costumes of over 250 productions, which together span the full spectrum of theater arts—ballets, concerts, dramas, operas, and musicals—for which he is rightfully recognized. A combination of a subject like Bernal and a scholar like Tiongson must needs result in a good book.

In the first chapter, Tiongson provides a biographical sketch of Bernal, focusing on his education as an artist. Bernal's apprenticeship began in his mother's dress shop, where he learned techniques of "cutting, sewing, and embroidery" (4). Later, when he was studying at the Ateneo de Manila, Bernal developed an interest in writing poetry. Rolando Tinio, his mentor, also introduced him to theater. Afterward, Bernal received formal training in the theater arts at Northwestern University.

The design process is the subject of the second chapter. As a designer, Bernal shied away from literalist renderings and preferred abstractions or stylization. Tiongson credits this orientation both to his teachers and to his appreciation for modern poetry. In example after example, Tiongson shows the expressiveness of Bernal's designs. The sets and costumes are visual incarnations of the theatrical text, not mere decorations or concessions to realism. They become symbols or indices of character and feeling. One example that Tiongson cites is the set that Bernal designed for the play Ilustrado. The director of the play conceived of it as a memory play, and Bernal's design concept was on the mark:

Bernal designed an empty black space that looked like a distorted cube with a rake to represent consciousness. This space was bound on left, right, and top by big square grills. To show memories materializing in the character's consciousness, objects were flown in and hung suspended from the ceiling or they invaded the stage from left and right. In the end, a huge piece of white cloth was pulled up and to the sides, covering the entire space to signify the total erasure of memory.

(48)

Thus, Bernal elevates the status of the designer, who becomes as much a creative artist as are the performers or the director.

In the next two chapters, Tiongson gives a further account of Bernal's creative process and of his ingenuity in the face of limitations. Tiongson writes that Bernal turns to various sources for his design concepts, sometimes combining them to "stunning results" (105), as was the case of his Southeast Asia inspired version of Twelfth Night (staged in Tagalog as Kung Ano'ng Ibigin).

To turn his design concepts into reality, however, Bernal has had to overcome such realities as limited budgets, poor technology, or forbidding acting or dancing spaces. Bernal finds solutions in the unlikeliest places. Tiongson recounts that for a production of Julius Caesar,

Caesar's gigantic head "sculpture" … had to crumble at the exact moment of Caesar's assassination in the hands of Brutus and his conspirators. Bernal achieved the effect by following the principle of a local toy, where the parts of a man's...