Children are indeed angels.
They are innocent.
Imagine, just a few afternoons ago, near the playground of the subdivision where I live, there was a little girl in a rugged overall large-sized gray t-shirt who smilingly handed me three nearly ripe guavas she herself climbed and picked from the tree planted in the periphery of the basketball court.
At that moment, I had just picked underripe guavas which I dropped into my shorts pocket and came out from below the weeping tree loaded with sprawling leaves, branches and green fruits from the opposite side where she got hers.
Oh! How sweet of the girl, who said that she lives along the rail tracks in Barangay San Vicente in San Pedro, Laguna.
I don’t often see this four-year old female in the vicinity and I am practically a total stranger to her who frequents our small village but she didn’t have the qualms to give me the fruits as I was looking up the tree for yields.
These God’s creatures don’t see yet the value of consumerism for they could always ask money in exchange for the pieces of guavas.
They are just simply adorable and pure human beings.
Kids like them pin hopes for tomorrow’s brave new world.
Even the most mischievous or makulit of them is tolerable if not lovable although there is such a thing as misopedia, which, according to APA Dictionary of Psychology, means hatred of children, which I suppose is a very strong feeling against kids and probably a one in a million case. Or it could be situational.
There is also paedophobia, which I think is a more appropriate term to react to children which, according to AI, is an emotional state or clinical phobia involving a persistent fear, disdain, aversion or prejudice towards children. A trauma, for one, can cause this deviant reaction. Anyway, both these idiosyncrasies are acted upon usually by grownups.
I remember actress Lorna Tolentino’s Joey’s character from the classic film “Moral” (1982) created by two National Artists for Film creatives, Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s cutting-edge direction and Ricky Lee’s thought-provoking screenplay.
Lorna played a liberated woman who went infertile after an unwanted abortion. Subliminally, it showed her dislike for a child who had been pursuing her in a party that she scolded and made her cry. Then I knew Joey where is coming from.
I have always been fond of little boys and girls especially the precocious ones although I am also intrigued by the quiet types.
Time and again, I have been exposed to children.
I would always feel emphatic about Whitney Houston’s cover of “The Greatest Love of All” which has an allusion to children who should be taught early on in life to nurture kindness and honesty when a rare hero of the same virtue among grownups are hardly found.
When I formed DUMALO (Dulaang Don Mateo Lopez), a community-based theater group in Lopez, Quezon in 1991, there were a bunch of kinder and elementary pupils who enrolled and they were such a nice and excited lot to learn about children’s theater.
Reviving DUMALO (Dulaang Don Mateo Lopez) this year at the Mascardo’s Hidden Garden in Bypass Road in Barangay Penafrancia in Lopez, Quezon saw a number of kids who got to the program on the first day.
Two seven-year-old boys showed interest in the dramatic arts.
They were smart and could create images on a piece of paper through colored pencils.
One of them, a toothless on front denture, doodled things facilitator Sidney Dalanon asked them to do.
He would interpret them intelligently and vividly.
I waited for him the next day—the workshops are conducted Saturdays and Sundays—but he didn’t return until I saw him last Sunday during a birthday party in the outskirts of the town.
Someone lightly patted me on the back and when I turned my back, look who was there?
This precocious little boy who said that he didn’t come back because her grandmother who enlisted him for the workshop didn’t pursue the course due to many commitments.
It was ten-year old Kean Gime who also exhibited a unique talent in drawing.
Meanwhile, Grayson Villaraza, the other seven-year-old kid who came on the second week of the workshop missed the sketching but he is such a smart pupil. He is an amazing participant that he could integrate well with other work shoppers, adults or his age.
Grayson has consistently attended the workshop with her grandaunt Vilma Villaraza Delica and he is an amazing participant that he could integrate well with other work shoppers, adults or his age.
Coolen Kate, a ten-year-old girl, has also shown an immense interest in theater although she just comes to the training on her own sweet time.
These kids reinvigorate my stamina in teaching the rudiments of theater as their adult counterparts are very supportive of them.
They rejuvenate and reinvigorate me like what Kairos theater workshop modules have emphasized, that conducting the seminar is bringing back the youth of each participant, the Senior Citizens and young people alike, through games and exercises.
Aside from Kairos, DUMALO’s other inspiration in theater discipline is the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) which has supported the group since 1991 by lending us the scripts of such nationalist and people’s oriented stage plays like “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo,” an adaptation of prizewinning playwright Rody Vera from the movie screenplay of equally award-winning scriptwriter, Marina Feleo-Gonzales on American imperialism, “Bombita,” an absurd drama by Tony Perez on military training and other people’s theater hits.
DUMALO’s Artistic Director Sidney Dalanon was an alumnus of PETA who brought the “bitaw” approach (to let go or release) to the workshop.
I recently discovered American theater icon Viola Spolin in her “improvisational theater” treatment and I am adapting it to the workshop.
The kids and grownups like all the games and exercises.
That makes the children more huggable.
Children’s theater makes me young again!