Menu
Photo Courtesy of NCCA PAIS
The Order of National Artists (Orden ng mga Pambansang Alagad ng Sining) is the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts. The order is jointly administered by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and conferred by the President of the Philippines upon recommendation by both institutions.*
Title
National Artist For Theater And Film (1976)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
February 12, 1915 – April 25, 199
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Lamberto V. Avellana, director for theater and film, has the distinction of being called “The Boy Wonder of Philippine Movies” as early as 1939. He was the first to use the motion picture camera to establish a point-of-view, a move that revolutionized the techniques of film narration. Avellana, who at 20 portrayed Joan of Arc in time for Ateneo’s diamond jubilee, initially set out to establish a Filipino theater. Together with Daisy Hontiveros, star of many UP plays and his future wife, he formed the Barangay Theater Guild which had, among others, Leon Ma .Guerrero and Raul Manglapus as members. It was after seeing such plays that Carlos P. Romulo, then president of Philippine Films, encouraged him to try his hand at directing films. In his first film Sakay, Avellana demonstrated a kind of visual rhythm that established a new filmic language.
Sakay was declared the best picture of 1939 by critics and journalists alike and set the tone for Avellana’s career in film that would be capped by such distinctive achievements as the Grand Prix at the Asian Film Festival in Hong Kong for Anak Dalita (1956); Best Director of Asia award in Tokyo for Badjao, among others.
Avellana was also the first filmmaker to have his film Kandelerong Pilak shown at the Cannes International Film Festival. Among the films he directed for worldwide release were Sergeant Hasan (1967), Destination Vietnam (1969), and The Evil Within (1970).
Title
National Artist For Theater And Music (1987)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
January 11, 1902 – July 11, 1991
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Honorata “Atang” Dela Rama was formally honored as the Queen of Kundiman in 1979, then already 74 years old singing the same song (“Nabasag na Banga”) that she sang as a 15-year old girl in the sarsuela Dalagang Bukid. Atang became the very first actress in the very first locally produced Filipino film when she essayed the same role in the sarsuela’s film version. As early as age seven, Atang was already being cast in Spanish zarzuelas such as Mascota, Sueño de un Vals, and Marina. She counts the role though of an orphan in Pangarap ni Rosa as her most rewarding and satisfying role that she played with realism, the stage sparkling with silver coins tossed by a teary-eyed audience. Atang firmly believes that the sarswela and the kundiman expresses best the Filipino soul, and even performed kundiman and other Filipino songs for the Aetas or Negritos of Zambales and the Sierra Madre, the Bagobos of Davao and other Lumad of Mindanao.
Atang firmly believed that the sarswela and the kundiman express best the Filipino soul, and had even performed kundiman and other Filipino songs for the Aetas or Negritos of Zambales and the Sierra Madre, the Bagobos of Davao and other Lumad of Mindanao.
Title
National Artist For Theater And Music (1987)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
January 26, 1917 – May 12, 2013
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Daisy H. Avellana, is an actor, director and writer. Born in Roxas City, Capiz on January 26, 1917, she elevated legitimate theater and dramatic arts to a new level of excellence by staging and performing in breakthrough productions of classic Filipino and foreign plays and by encouraging the establishment of performing groups and the professionalization of Filipino theater. Together with her husband, National Artist Lamberto Avellana and other artists, she co-founded the Barangay Theatre Guild in 1939 which paved the way for the popularization of theatre and dramatic arts in the country, utilizing radio and television.
Title
National Artist For Theater And Literature (1997)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
March 5, 1937 – July 7, 1997
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Rolando S. Tinio, playwright, thespian, poet, teacher, critic, and translator marked his career with prolific artistic productions. Tinio’s chief distinction is as a stage director whose original insights into the scripts he handled brought forth productions notable for their visual impact and intellectual cogency.
Subsequently, after staging productions for the Ateneo Experimental Theater (its organizer and administrator as well), he took on Teatro Pilipino. It was to Teatro Pilipino which he left a considerable amount of work reviving traditional Filipino drama by re-staging old theater forms like the sarswela and opening a treasure-house of contemporary Western drama. It was the excellence and beauty of his practice that claimed for theater a place among the arts in the Philippines in the 1960s.
Aside from his collections of poetry (Sitsit sa Kuliglig, Dunung – Dunungan, Kristal na Uniberso, A Trick of Mirrors) among his works were the following: film scripts for Now and Forever, Gamitin Mo Ako, Bayad Puri and Milagros; sarswelas Ang Mestisa, Ako, Ang Kiri, Ana Maria; the komedya Orosman at Zafira; and Larawan, the musical.
Title
National Artist For Theater (1997)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
January 22, 1910 – April 28, 1995
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero is a teacher and theater artist whose 35 years of devoted professorship has produced the most sterling luminaries in Philippine performing arts today: Behn Cervantes, Celia Diaz-Laurel, Joy Virata, Joonee Gamboa, etc. In 1947, he was appointed as UP Dramatic Club director and served for 16 years. As founder and artistic director of the UP Mobile Theater, he pioneered the concept of theater campus tour and delivered no less than 2,500 performances in a span of 19 committed years of service. By bringing theatre to the countryside, Guerrero made it possible for students and audiences, in general, to experience the basic grammar of staging and acting in familiar and friendly ways through his plays that humorously reflect the behavior of the Filipino.
His plays include Half an Hour in a Convent, Wanted: A Chaperon, Forever, Condemned, Perhaps, In Unity, Deep in My Heart, Three Rats, Our Strange Ways, The Forsaken House, Frustrations.
Title
National Artist For Theater (2001)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
January 3, 1915 – December 12, 1980
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Playwright, director, actor, and theater organizer, Severino Montano is the forerunner in institutionalizing “legitimate theater” in the Philippines. Taking up courses and graduate degrees abroad, he honed and shared his expertise with his countrymates.
As Dean of Instruction of the Philippine Normal College, Montano organized the Arena Theater to bring drama to the masses. He trained and directed the new generations of dramatists including Rolando S. Tinio, Emmanuel Borlaza, Joonee Gamboa, and Behn Cervantes.
He established a graduate program at the Philippine Normal College for the training of playwrights, directors, technicians, actors, and designers. He also established the Arena Theater Playwriting Contest that led to the discovery of Wilfrido Nolledo, Jesus T. Peralta, and Estrella Alfon.
Among his awards and recognitions is the Patnubay ng Kalinangan Award from the City of Manila (1968), Presidential Award for Merit in Drama and Theater (1961), and the Rockefeller Foundation Grant to travel to 98 cities abroad (1950, 1952, 1962, and 1963).
Title
National Artist For Theater Design (2003)
Date Of Birth – Date Of Death
January 7, 1945 – October 26, 2011
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Salvador F. Bernal designed more than 300 productions distinguished for their originality. Sensitive to the budget limitations of local productions, he harnessed the design potential of inexpensive local materials, pioneering or maximizing the use of bamboo, raw abaca, and abaca fiber, hemp twine, rattan chain links and gauze cacha.
As the acknowledged guru of contemporary Filipino theater design, Bernal shared his skills with younger designers through his classes at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University, and through the programs he created for the CCP Production Design Center which he himself conceptualized and organized.
To promote and professionalize theater design, he organized the PATDAT (Philippine Association of Theatre Designers and Technicians) in 1995 and by way of Philippine Center of OISTAT (Organization Internationale des Scenographes, Techniciens et Architectes du Theatre), he introduced Philippine theater design to the world.
Title
National Artist For Theater (2018)
Date Of Birth
April 4, 1930
Biography (As Adopted From The National Commission For Culture And The Arts)
Known as the Grand Dame of Southeast Asian children’s theatre, Tita Amel is the founder and playwright-director of the Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas, which has placed the Philippines on the artistic map of world theater. She has written most of the plays performed by the group based on materials culled from painstaking researches. She has also been involved in the production and design of puppets. All in all, what she has achieved is an indigenous fusion of puppetry, children’s literature, folklore, and theater.
Daluyan ng Dulaang Pilipino provides an online platform for sharing and learning Philippine Theater materials. This developing portal will be updated as new resources are currently being gathered. If you wish to contribute materials about your theater praxis, feel free to connect with us!
This website was originally developed within the framework of La Salle University – Ozamiz and currently funded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
2022 © Daluyan ng Dulaang Pilipino – Philippine Theater Portal
