By Mars Cavestany
Lenag Santos has been my friend for such a long time. Distance, both physical and metaphorical, could have easily relegated our relationship at arm’s length, but social media bridges all gaps and engenders proximity all the time, in all levels, and at all costs. It is, suffice it to say, the best companion piece to friendship.
Needless to say, many commonalities in our shared life experiences BEFORE, not to speak of our constant updating and involving one another NOWADAYS, has drawn us closer and deeply more attached to each other even perhaps till afterlife as real soul-mates do anyway. Our crisscrossing lives seem like a ballad of two resilient theater persons ending not.
Time was when we ‘lived’ theatre day in, day out.
Onstage — we breathed life on the various roles we played out, parrying critics and wallowing in the luxury of plaudits and adulation indulged by the rather select coterie of Teatro Pilipino resident artists of the Cultural Center of the Philippines during the Marcos regime, under the artistic direction of the late national artist, the one true genius of the Filipino theatre—Rolando S. Tinio.
Backstage — almost throughout a decade, we collaborated as part and parcel of an acting ensemble working on weekends with three shows in a row staged “en repertoire,” meaning, alternating in-two languages (English and Filipino). We were like childhood playmates eternally tittle-tattling and giggling away at tales intimated and secrets traded (including sexual fantasies and conquests) but always guffawing our hearts out until some of the oldies quiet us down so they can catch sleep between morning, afternoon and early evening performance breaks. But most often than not, we were outsmarting one another in boggle, scrabble and other word games, and that exclusively for actors only “name that character and play” antics with which we regaled ourselves, quoting stychomythies and famous lines of this and that character from such and such immortal play inasmuch as we had the rare exclusivity and now almost impossibly unsustainable (under present conditions and budget constraints) feasibility and plausibility of working purely on the classics of world dramatic literature.
But certainly we we’re happy working our ass off and keeping our passions alive. From time to time we crossed mediums, guesting on TV and shooting films and commercials apart from doing all sorts of commercial gimmicks, which we did swimmingly and got paid handsomely, too.
With the theatre serving as our eternal common battleground—that in so many words, was our so-called “status quo ante bellum,” literally meaning status before the war.
By war, I refer rather poetically to our essential likeness, that is, we are both battling with our present respective set of debilitating illnesses. It is also the metaphor with which we race with life and rage against the “sea of troubles” confronting us. Yet, without self-applauding, our lives have proven to possess that ineffable quality that allows people to be knocked down by obstacles yet strike back stronger than ever, in each our own way.
For instance, just sometime in the past week, as I almost routinely slipped out of my hospital gown following an almost my fourth bout with angioplasty-cum-stenting, my partner drove me back home to normal everyday uneventful living under the watchful eye of my beloved Australian Carer-Nurse and my two ever-loyal dogs so happy to be reunited with their master as if I had been away too long when in fact it was just for a day or two. The first that greeted me on my FB was a worrying account of Len where she posted about her latest hospitalization which, as everyone close to her knows, is one too many to count any more.
How many times have they conducted huge fund-raising concerts to help Len’s immediate family defray staggering costs, the last featuring a virtual coup de theatre monologues from actors dabbling as visual artists selling their original works to donate to Len who altogether sold her own produce of arresting paintings, again all marked for hospital bills. No small wonder, Len’s FB is fraught with eternal gratitude’s for the endless outpouring of friends’ well wishes and financial OPM’s (oh-promise-me). No doubt, Len (and her devoted partner, Technical/Lighting Director Shax Siasoco) accept any and all kinds of gratuity with such dignity and graciousness and people are simply touched by their unconditional love and untiring faith in each other.
What personally amazes me about Len is her uncanny knack for and prodigious feat in documenting her every day ordeal distinguished by such elephantine photographic memory and humor, plus systematic organization/ sequencing of events that boasts her skillful stage management prowess she picked up from working with the great Tinio before she became a full-pledged thespian. Put together, her FB accounts not to mention our long messenger exchanges verily make for a novel of survival, buoyancy and redemption full of riveting tales of a courageous woman, an accomplished actress-indefatigable mother and wife turned-prolific painter who shall never be defeated by the monstrosity of her combined sicknesses and indisposition. Len’s story-telling becomes all the more remarkable in light of the fact that she is largely homebound, literally seated 24/7 on her portable, self-propelled wheel chair, debilitated by God-awful, one-too-many illnesses.
Well I know her prodigious memory in learning kilometric lines but to be able to repeat doctor’s prognosis like a medical book is something my mind refuses to engage in. It’s bad enough that I go through this and that kind of bodily pain, some reaction to a new medicine and things like that, but I leave all that to the discharge notes which are always written by my attending doctors extensively and to the letter.
In the case of Len, she alone will “educate” anybody about everything she undergoes. Maybe it’s therapeutic for some patients like Len to be perpetually talking about her illnesses—principally for the elucidation of all and sundry. When all is said and done, people don’t truly know, nor do they fully understand the nature of the illnesses. So I give Len the last say.
Over all, she mentions that this year alone, she’s been brought to the hospital six times. This gave me a bit of a laugh because it matches the same number of times that I came in and out of the hospital in 2016. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is to compare how long it has been since I knew her to have been sick and how lucky she is to have survived all her attacks—the strong and resilient superwoman that she is, in more ways than one.
My own battle is thoroughly different of course. Would you believe I’ve been HIV-positive for almost 17 years? If I hark back to the original question (we refer to this as taning in Filipino) I forced out of the very first obviously inexperienced young doctor who was tasked to spill the beans, so to speak. As mad as Lear, I literally coerced him to tell me truthfully how many years he opines I have left. With downcast eyes and trembling voice, he said I’ll be lucky if I lived for seven more years.
Methinks now, I swear, should I see that doctor ever again, I will be the first to sweetly whisper it in his ears. “Well you were wrong, doctor. The better to arm yourself more with the sweeping giant strides and developments in prevention and cure of HIV-AIDS.” On the record, I have heard of people living positively for more than 25 years. I’m on my 17th “still hale and hearty year,” which means if I beat or match that, I’ll die at 72, which is more than enough bonus for me.
Going back to Len, lately we have been drawing our zest for life from each other. “Cest la vie, la vie” We would mouth the lines of that immortal Boy Noriega, Filipino classic full length play, Bayan-Bayanan about the travails of migrants like me dealing with our diasporic woes.
Our souls have sallied forth to higher dimensions, eternally needling each other what not to eat and how not to get more bloated, comforting each other “never give up” as a way of reinforcing each other’s steadfastness even in the face of insurmountable financial problems.
I know the great difference between us now is simply that I am surrounded with comfort and I never ever had to worry about medical bills. The sad reality back home is that despite recent Herculean government efforts to reduce costs, spiraling prizes are so oppressive. Here Down Under, because of our government-subsidized scheme for disability pensioners like me, we are entitled to sizeable discounts off the commercial rates. And in the past two years, it’s been declared totally free. Medicines for HIV are absolutely free, nil, nada. Isn’t that great?
So whatever Oz dollars left after I pay my bills, bills and bills, the rest go to my other signs of unsteady health such as chronic heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, and gout. Don’t ask me for Len’s own list. The first time I made a mistake of asking her was the last time I’d ever listen to such long unimaginable list.
The good news is, I am, in more ways than one, “functionally cured,” except that science or God have not miraculously allowed for the discovery of the most-awaited cure for HIV. I live blissfully and contentedly with the fervent hope that I shall be the first person ever cured of HIV without having to lead to AIDS.
Meantime, the big ask is, what about Len?
Len, as always and forever, shall be up and about. To me she is destined to wake up time and again to tell every bit of her delectable story.
The other bigger news is, hey, Teatro Pilipino and Bulwagang Gantimpala guys (Len, of course, has associated herself with every up-and-running theater group in Metro Manila), let’s all cheer our fellow theater artist a resounding HURRAH, a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS, and MORE ACCOLADES please to the one and only LENAG SANTOS SIASOCO.
Just last 30th November, I was beside myself with joy. I couldn’t be more proud for my friend to have been awarded the famous ALIW Awards – “Lifetime Achievement in Theater”.
I’m afraid I can’t pay tribute to you my friend with the strokes of a brush with which you inspiredly, unstoppably, create visual arts so prolifically. But words are all I have and I have strung them together herewith to offer as a garland of my undying love.
As well, I doff my hat to you, and salute you dear Len, not to offer this as a tribute of sorts that bespeaks of extinction. Quite the contrary, my friend Lenag Santos Siasoco shall live on, and on, and on…
(The author, is a PhD scholar in theatre arts and founding Artistic Director of Filipinas-PETALS Community Theatre Ensemble, operating in NSW, Australia)