The Badiang Cultural Collective and the Tales of Lamanok
Another tells the story of a girl named Iska of whom only the fact that she lived is certain. A woman driven to live in solitude in an island that no one comes to by chance. Many believed her to be mad. Some believed her a goddess. There were those who took her for a witch.
A third story portrays the duty to one’s ancestry and community that a shaman bears and his relation to the natural world, as with the supernatural.
The fourth story depicts how greed turns every man’s ambition to nothing more substantial than dust. Its setting is a cave, one of many that were once storehouses for the Chinese junks that traded with the prehispanic Boholanos.
The Collective is an offshoot of the CoMET or community-managed ecological-cultural tourism project implemented by the Badiang Fishermen’s Association and the Bohol Local Development Foundation in Lamanok. Funded by the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Project under the Focused Community Assistance Scheme (FOCAS) 2, it aims to enhance ecological-cultural tourism in Bohol by introducing a system where the community directly manages and benefits from the tourism it generates.
The Collective endeavors to humanize what a visiting tourist will encounter in the archaeological sites of Lamanok by providing a cultural context for a better understanding and appreciation of past Philippine cultures against the backdrop of their natural setting.
Most recently, the Collective performed three of the playlets to the visiting lecturers from the National Museum who were in Anda for an archaeology seminar and workshop last April 15 and 16. A seminar-workshop that they themselves attended for their benefit and at the behest of Anda Municipal Mayor Paulino Amper. When the members of the Collective took their bows, the lecturers and the other participants applauded them resoundingly, moved by the eloquent simplicity and unashamedness of their performances.
The fourth story depicts how greed turns every man’s ambition to nothing more substantial than dust. Its setting is a cave, one of many that were once storehouses for the Chinese junks that traded with the prehispanic Boholanos.
The Collective is an offshoot of the CoMET or community-managed ecological-cultural tourism project implemented by the Badiang Fishermen’s Association and the Bohol Local Development Foundation in Lamanok. Funded by the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Project under the Focused Community Assistance Scheme (FOCAS) 2, it aims to enhance ecological-cultural tourism in Bohol by introducing a system where the community directly manages and benefits from the tourism it generates.
The Collective endeavors to humanize what a visiting tourist will encounter in the archaeological sites of Lamanok by providing a cultural context for a better understanding and appreciation of past Philippine cultures against the backdrop of their natural setting.
Most recently, the Collective performed three of the playlets to the visiting lecturers from the National Museum who were in Anda for an archaeology seminar and workshop last April 15 and 16. A seminar-workshop that they themselves attended for their benefit and at the behest of Anda Municipal Mayor Paulino Amper. When the members of the Collective took their bows, the lecturers and the other participants applauded them resoundingly, moved by the eloquent simplicity and unashamedness of their performances.
At the helm of this is award-winning composer and theater director Lutgardo Labad, who has, through the months, exposed the Collective's members to the creative process of staging a theater production and who hopes along the way to instill excellence in the heart of every member.
Much still needs to be done to perfect the tales of Lamanok, but some weeks from now the Collective will have its soft launching and will present its performances to the municipal leaders of Anda and to guests. By then, the tales of Lamanok as told to us by the Badiang Cultural Collective will have conjured more than imagination. They will have brought back to us a heritage forgotten.
