SETTING: 1935, in a small café in downtown Manila, just before dawn.

CHARACTERS: There is really only one character, Katerina Alonso, 33, a sarswela [musical play] actress. She speaks to a Woman on the left and a Man on the right, but they pay no attention to her and they never speak. Before the play ends, a Gentleman enters, but he also does not speak. If the director desires, the Woman, the Man, and the Gentleman can all be imaginary. 

KATERINA:  Here we are. Almost dawn. We’re wasting away again. Waiting.  No one’s coming.  Soon, the roosters will crow. And us?  Will we crow, too?  We have no one to blame but ourselves, do we?  No one forced us to become sarswela players.  We just got carried away by the applause, by the whistles of the young men, by the dirty looks of the old maids, by the flowers sent by the wealthy gentlemen.  Wasted. We wasted our lives. This is all we’ve come to.  Losing sleep.  Losing weight.  Waiting.  Waiting for nothing. There’s nothing more.  There’s no more hope left for us.  There’s no more hope left for the Filipino sarswela.  (To the Woman)  Did you know that I was only this tall when I started going to the sarswela?  I would really get it from Mother.  She said, you’re wasting your time.  She said, when you grow up, you’ll get married and you’ll spend the rest of your life inside your house. You’re not going to learn anything from the sarswela about housekeeping, about what makes a woman a woman.  I told her then – I was not even ten years old, then – when I grow up, I shall become a sarswela actress.  I shall become a sarswela queen.  She gave me a good spanking.  She told me not to leave the house.  But what one wants, one always gets. I would escape from the house, from my parents, and I would go to the sarswela.  (To the Man)  Did you know that I was barely ten years old when I became famous?  The guard at the Rizal Theater knew even then who I was.  He knew why, every time I would get to the theater, I would be gasping for breath.  I would run the whole length of Legarda Street – that’s where we lived then – because all our neighbors were spying on me for Mother.  Often, they would see me going to the theater.  Father would follow me to the theater with his big stick.  Even then, I was famous.  All of Manila knew who I was.  I was the girl whose crying could be heard all the way to Baclaran.  All the way to the ocean.  An ocean.  That’s what my life was, then.  I had to swim in an ocean.  There were a lot of sharks, a lot of octopus, a lot of monsters, whose sole objective was to prevent me from wasting my life in the theater.  But they all failed.  I still entered the world of the theater.  I still wasted my life.  (To both)  I was only thirteen when I left home.  At first, I did odd jobs at the Zorilla Theater.  I swept the stage after performances.  That was the time of Atang de la Rama.  She was beautiful.  She was very young, then.  She was loved by the audience.  Me, too.  When I became famous, when I became a star, I was also loved by the audience.  Stupid audience!  Where are you now?  Why don’t you go to the sarswela anymore?  How easily you forget!  (To the Woman)  Hermogenes Ilagan.  He was good.  He was Miss Atang’s writer.  Country Lass – he wrote that.  You’re too young to remember. You’re so young you remember so few sarswelas.  After God, Money – that was also by Mister Moning.  Now, there’s neither money nor God.  The world has really changed.  (To the Man)  Love, look at me.  Have I changed?  Am I no longer beautiful?  Am I no longer young?  Am I no longer the most famous girl in all of Manila?  (Laughs)  How would you know?  We’ve been going together for only two months.  You were not yet born, love, not yet born, when I started acting in sarswelas.  Grief.  You’ve never heard of that one, have you?  The Deaf.  Grief and The Deaf.  Those were the first two sarswelas I acted in.  What’s happened since?  Grief is all I feel.  And the audience?  It’s become deaf!  Earless!  Unable to tell a good voice from a bad one.  (To the Woman)  Do you know what has an audience now, what the audience is patronizing?  Vaudeville!  Worthless vaudeville!  Anyone can now get up on a stage and sing.  Even those who have no voice.  Even those not beautiful nor handsome.  Even the obese, the skinny, the bald.  Here, this is vaudeville.  (Sings in a distorted voice)  “In the dark of midnight, under the banana tree…”  (Normal voice)  Do you call that singing?  This is singing.  (Sings)  “The jar breaks…”  (Her voice breaks)  Dull.  My sharp voice has become dull.  It’s been years since we played regularly.  It wasn’t so bad last summer.  There were many fiestas [town feastdays] in the provinces.  Are we good now only for fiestas?  Only for makeshift stages built of bamboo?  Where, where are the stages of the Zorilla, of the Rizal?  (To the Man)  Where else?  They’ve gone over to the moviehouses.  It’s not people anymore who perform in the theater.  Not people, but light.  Flickering light.  Light that pretends to be people who do nothing anyway but chase each other, hit each other, hurt each other.  Even this new invention – light that speaks – is worthless.  They call them “movies.”  The silver screen.  What kind of screen hides nothing?  What kind of silver has nothing of value for the audience?  (To the Woman)  Why did Miss Atang ever agree to work with Nepomuceno?  They made a movie.  A movie of a sarswela.  How can there be a sarswela without music?  Without sound?  Poor Miss Atang.  Every afternoon, she would sing behind the screen.  There she was, behind the screen, behind the curtains, backstage, the woman who was once the toast of the stage.  Now, sarswela queens are hidden backstage, hidden from the audience.  What is now on stage is light.  What are backstage are the actresses.  We might as well return to the days of the carillo [shadow plays].  And save all that expense.  Now that the movies can speak, what will happen to us?  Now, we’ll really waste away.  Even in the provinces, believe me, those damned movies are catching on.  Slowly the movies will kill the Filipino sarswela.  It’s dead anyway, isn’t it?  Here we are.  Almost dawn.  Nothing to do.  We’re even worse off than moro-moro [costume drama] performers.  We threw them out of Manila, but look, they’re alive and well in the provinces.  (To the Man)  Why don’t we go back to the house so you can perform for me?  I still have some savings left.  And what is my Gentleman for?  If we run out of money, I’ll ask some from him.  Why don’t you speak to me?  Are you afraid that Don Isagani might suddenly return and catch us lusting for each other?  (Laughs)  Don’t be afraid of a dead horse, love.  I, Katerina Alonso, have never been refused by my Gentleman.  Did you know that Don Isagani de los Amores has been keeping me now for ten years?  He’s almost down to his last centavo because of me.  Because of my desires.  But he never complains.  Do you know how I make him kiss my feet?  I praise his writing.  (Laughs)  Don Isagani de los Amores.  The gentleman writer.  He has written thirty plays in English.  Not one has ever been staged.  He thinks of himself as The Great Filipino Writer.  I flatter him.  I pretend to read what he writes.  He does not realize that I don’t know a word of English.  Once – this will amuse you – once, I asked an American professor at the University of the Philippines, there on Padre Faura Street, to read one of Don Isagani’s works.  The American couldn’t stop laughing.  I couldn’t understand what was going on, because according to Don Isagani, the work was a tragedy.  When I asked the American why he laughed – can you believe this – he said that Don Isagani’s grammar was all wrong!  No wonder nobody in America wanted to produce his plays.  They were laughing at his grammar.  And here in our own country, very few people can understand English.  Pidgin English, maybe.  So how can they understand the great works of my great gentleman?  He’s wealthy.  That’s why people don’t laugh to his face.  But when his back is turned, I’m sure even his closest friends cannot stop laughing.  Because all his closest friends have Spanish blood.  And to the Spaniards, the English language is the language of monkeys.  (To the Woman)  My life with Don Isagani is like a sarswela, isn’t it?  After all, we met because of the sarswela.  Because he was wealthy, he used to finance our shows at the Opera House.  I was in the cast of The Would-Be Actresses.  I wasn’t a queen yet.  One night, he had me called to his box.  He was surprised when I told him that I was not yet seventeen.  He liked me.  He was good to me.  When I became a star, he would visit me now and then in my house.  Sometimes he would spend the night.  But it was always just one night at a time.  He was young, then, and the rumor was that he was seeing several actresses.  One night led to another, and here we are.  Funny, isn’t it?  It’s only now, when I hardly ever perform, that he has put me up in a nice house.  Life is strange.  Now that he’s old and unable to perform, he treats me like a wife.  Do you know that he forbids me from leaving the house at night?  I’m allowed to leave only when I have a show or a rehearsal.  But if I could defy Mother, I can certainly defy him.  I escape from the house every time I want to take a walk or to be entertained.  He’s hardly ever home, anyway.  He’s always in Bacolod.  (To the Man)  That is why I want you here beside me, darling.  I get very lonely at home when my lord and master is away.  But even when he’s in town, we still manage to do it, don’t we?  That’s why I prefer young boys like you.  You move fast.  When he comes home unexpectedly, you’re able to jump out the window and to disappear fast into the streets of Manila.  So, what are you worried about?  He’s not due to arrive until much later.  My friend at the docks says his boat will not get here before sunrise.  I know he’ll pick me up here, because I wrote him that I would wait for him here.  But it’s not yet sunrise.  He’ll probably be late and come mid-morning anyway.  We can still rush back to my bedroom if you want.  There’s time to enjoy ourselves.  Let’s go, lover.  What’s with you?  Have you gone deaf from lack of sleep and rest?  (To the Woman)  I should have listened to Mother, shouldn’t I?  I should have gotten married and become a simple housewife.  I wouldn’t have ended up like this, escaping from my own house, stealing brief pleasures, living only in my memories.  (Shouts)  Come on!  Will no one come?  Does no one out there want an actress who can sing, dance, speak, love?  (To the Man)  Why don’t you love me?  I’ve given you everything, even my dreams.  Why do you act like your heart is not in it?  I’m beautiful, am I not?  I’m young, am I not?  I’m a woman, am I not?  Why don’t you answer me, you bastard?  (Cries)  Mother, Mother, why did you forsake me?  (Suddenly brightens up)  Aren’t they going to have a fiesta in Santa Ana next month?  That’s right.  It’s fiesta time there.  They’re sure to stage a sarswela.  I have to get my costumes ready.  What shall we stage?  Sampaguita.  We could do that.  A bit dated, but still a crowd favorite.  The Honorable Hero.  Wounded.  It’s too bad that sarswelas with political content are now banned.  We could have staged Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.  That was produced at Libertad Theater, I remember.  I came out in that one, but the Libertad was in its death throes by the time I played lead.  I know.  Neneng.  That’s a nice one.  And I still remember the melodies.  (To the Woman)  Why are you so quiet?  Have you lost hope?  You might as well go over to the movies.  You’re not a true sarswela actress.  The true sarswela actress never loses hope that the Filipino sarswela will rise again.  Are you envious of the vaudeville performers who have a show every night?  Or of the movie actresses who are always on location shooting?  Be ashamed of yourself, woman.  We’re not dead yet.  We’re not dying yet.  Well, maybe we’re dying.  But we’re not dead yet.  We’re still alive, very much alive.  I am very much alive.  (To the Man)  I’m alive, am I not?  Am I not?  (To the Woman)  I’m being kept alive by my gentleman who is a famous playwright.  He never loses hope, so why should I lose hope?  That son of a bitch!  If not for him, I could have found a man who would marry me and give me children.  (Cries)  But now, what?  I’m not yet married and I still don’t have kids.  (Don Isagani de los Amores enters)  Oh, there you are.  How was your trip, love?  These two are my friends.  She’s also a sarswela actress.  And this man . . . this man is her fiancé.  You know, Don Isagani of my life, I have a show next month, in Santa Ana.  I’m coming out in Neneng.  I need to have new costumes made.  Applaud, Don Isagani.  Send me flowers.  Show me you like me.  Tell me you’ll make me happy for the rest of my life.  Worship me, kiss my feet, because I, I, Katerina Alonso, am your queen, the queen of the Filipino sarswela.