Noriega

"He is being nominated to be the country’s newest National Artist in the field of theater."

No, this piece isn’t about the notorious Panamanian dictator whose country was invaded in 1989 by the U.S. just to kick him out of power and jail him for various offenses.

We’re writing here instead about the much more benign, but infinitely more talented, Bienvenido “Boy” Noriega. Boy was a veritable Renaissance man whose 26th death anniversary is being observed this month, even as he’s also being nominated to be the country’s newest National Artist in the field of theater.

The National Artist awards were established in 1972 to honor the country’s best and brightest across different areas of artistic endeavor, from music to film to literature. Today they’re jointly administered by the Cultural Center and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

The very first National Artist was no less than the painter Fernando Amorsolo. Since that time, the awardees in Noriega’s field of Theatre alone have included such luminaries as Lamberto Avellana, “Atang” de la Rama, Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, Rolando Tinio, and Amelia Lapena Bonifacio.

It’s the kind of distinguished company that I think Boy would fit right into, having been lauded on several occasions as “the best playwright of his generation.” But let me talk first about his non-artistic achievements, which frame a compelling study of contrasts in this multi-talented man.

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Born in 1952 in Isabela, Boy Noriega was an academic over-achiever right from the get-go. He completed his AB Economics in UP in only three years, graduating at the top of his class. He finished his master’s degree there two years later, again at the top. While at UP, he was elected to the Student Council and edited the “Philippinensian,” in those days the annual yearbook of new graduates.

From there, Noriega took his MPA degree at Harvard University’s Kennedy School (again at the top of his class), followed by an executive MBA at Columbia. Perhaps unknown to others, though, Boy also audited classes in modern drama, Shakespeare, comedy and film theory at those schools.

As a trained economist, Noriega spent his entire career as a government technocrat. He was appointed a NEDA director at the age of 21—the youngest ever—where he managed their policy and coordination staff from 1971-1981. From there he moved to PNB, where he served as an EVP—again the youngest ever—responsible for corporate services. He was also president of PNB Investments and a director of PNB Securities.

Of course, you don’t get to be nominated as National Artist for your skill in pushing numbers. Boy also led a double life, as an acclaimed playwright who sought—according to the Tanglaw ng Lahi award that he posthumously received from Ateneo de Manila—“to put form to the Filipinos’ search for a sense of place in his works”.

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Over a relatively short period of two decades, Boy produced a body of work that received nearly two dozen major writing awards, including six from the Cultural Center, 13 Carlos Palanca awards for literature, four National Book awards from the Manila Critics Circle, and one each from PETA, ECP, and Palihang Aurelio Tolentino.

Posthumously, aside from Ateneo’s Tanglaw ng Lahi in 1995, Boy was also awarded the Centennial Honors for the Arts in Theatre from the Cultural Center and the Philippine Centennial Commission in 1999. He also put in time on the teaching faculties of Ateneo, UP, De la Salle, Assumption, and UE.

According to the Ateneo award, “by presenting characters who are out of place and at the same time, refusing an easy way out for their dilemma, Noriega ennobles the plight and struggle of the Filipino”.

“He takes an insider’s point of view to depict outsiders’ lives, and thus is able to confront, even satirize, every facet of Filipino life without despair nor disdain… This creative freedom, far from simple experimentation, was based on his insight into the dynamics of insider and outsider; it enabled him to use styles and techniques wherever he found them without being afraid of being derivative. He always knew where he was writing from.”

According to the late UP Dean Rogelio Sicat in 1995, Noriega was, quite simply, “the best Filipino playwright today as evidenced by his output, books published, national awards, stagings in prestigious venues (including presentations abroad) and consistent recognition by peers and critics….In Noriega, Filipino playwriting finally hurdled being tentative to become the full-blown and lively genre that it is now.”

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Yesterday we celebrated National Heroes Day, when we recognize all those figures from our past in whom we find the fullest flowering of what is best in our race—courage, love of country, self-sacrifice. It’s a pantheon where Boy Noriega—who died of cancer at the young age of 42—would, again, be not at all out of place.

Readers can write me at [email protected].