Theater and Society in Early Colonial Manila

This article explores the social location of theater and performance in the early colonial Philippines. While very few of the plays written and produced in Manila have survived, chronicles, letters, relaciones de fiestas, and other forms of documentation contain a wealth of references to and descriptions of performative events in the city. By studying this corpus, the article explores the multiple social uses of theater in the city and the performative practices of the different ethnic groups, religious orders, and civic authorities. Public performance usually drew large, multiracial urban masses together. On the one hand, this helped domesticate social conflict in an astonishingly diverse city by integrating, in an orderly hierarchy of public visibility, the different social and ethnic groups of Manila. On the other hand, attempts at regulation, or even prohibition, of certain theatrical practices and traditions speak to a tumultuous, perhaps unmanageable, cultural practice that allowed for dangerous forms of sociability and potential misreadings of political and religious dogma.