For the first time, a sarsuela performance will be featured in the month-long Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival, thanks to the Leyte Normal University, the Province of Leyte and the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival of Festivals Committee.

Entitled “Panahon han Kawara han Paglaum, “Pag-abot han Senyor Sto.. Nino ha Tacloban,” the sarsuela will be staged at the RTR Plaza on June 30 coinciding with the 117th Feast of the Senor Sto. Nino.

Written by noted poet and playwright, Dr. Victor N. Sugbo, the sarsuwela is directed by Prof. Joey N. Lianza of the Leyte Normal University.

The sarsuela which is woven along the miraculous accounts of the Sto. Nino as remembered by the people of Tacloban, is LNU’s contribution to the Tacloban City festivities and an expression of devotion to the Senor Sto. Nino, the Patron Saint of the Province of Leyte.

Dr. Sugbo intimated that ” I wrote the play… primarily to remind the City and all devotees of what the Sto. Nino had symbolized in the collective imagination of our ancestors.”

The narrative, Dr. sugbo said, is spun out of factual accouts about cholera, the tales of people about the Sto. Nino, and the memories of “my father and grandparents who lived closer to the time of the occurrence of the plague.”

Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho “Icot” Petilla said he gave his full support for the revival of the sarsuwela in Leyte because he believes in “its power to remind us who we are and what we are capable of is in itself an affirmation of our being a people.”

He added that the sarsuela reminds him of Iluminado Lucente, the unequalled father of Waray literature, who also wrote plays for the annual feasts of Sto. Nino.

Hon. Remedios “Matin” L. Petilla, chaiperson of the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival of Festivals and Vice President for Social Fund of PAGCOR, said that “the sarsuela harnesses the collective memory of a people at a time when the City was troubled by the plague.”

For her part, Leyte Normal University President Dr. Evelyn C. Cruzada described the sarsuela as a memory built on “salvation through the intercession of our Patron Saint Senor Sto. Nino de Tacloban” as she stressed the importance of the zarsuela to Tacloban’s history and its people.

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