Reina Krizel J. Adriano | 124428 | FA-CW 104.

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HOW MIMESIS AFFECTS CULTURE IN A REALISTIC PLAY
AN ANALYTICAL ESSAY
To include culture from a particular region in realistic plays is not unusual. In fact, it is
something so rich and colorful that to make it the fulcrum concerning events and circumstances
onstage is to engage the audience in the theater. We, as people, are bounded by culture, no matter
how distinct or not this set of rituals or beliefs may be. Being Filipino even makes us more
grounded by the fact that a lot of regions and provinces have their own unique culture in terms of
food, language, clothing, and even mindset. In so far as culture contains traditions that
sometimes cannot be questioned and practices that must be followed at all times, it also allows us
to preserve a certain shared identity within people in the same location or lifestyle (Pecora, 506).
The question of why culture should be definitive of a community says something about the
people in it whether they agree to the methods or not, or if they understand the reason behind
doing it or just follow it as is.
James Joyce once claimed, "In the specific is the universal." By taking a slice of a
realistic occasion and transforming it into a premise which a play can live on, we are able to
learn how a particular culture lives through the years and through its people. Likewise, we are
also able to see how it affects the passage of time, the occurrences of other events, and the
decisions made by humans, be they erroneous or not. Since cultures have a certain specificity
which includes certain conditions that must be met for it to be authentic either by way of
background or lifestyle, in examining a certain culture, we are able to gain a larger perspective of
a seemingly universal behavior of people.

Mimesis, as defined by Pewny (5), is the imitative representation of nature and human
behavior in art and literature. Objects act as what they are. With mimesis, theater is able to
imitate real life, blurring what seems to be real (something which is possible in a natural context)
and what seems to be true (something which definitely has happened in a particular
circumstance). Thus, culture in a play cannot only live within the stage; it must also resonate
with the audience, perhaps eliciting responses and reactions from the crowd. The audience may
find the Penitensya barbaric instead of sacrificial, and may delight in the concept of ritualistic
orgies of married couples to which majority will find revolting in the context of a play.
But this is theater we are speaking of we are not supposed to judge ones culture
through the lens of a play, even if it is accurate enough to be a story told as truth. This, I believe,
is where the other elements of a play spring to action: the dramatic conflict happens when all
choices are bad and when the characters become responsible for their own choices in the midst of
the inevitable. Mimesis as representation depicts culture as something that has to be processed as
the lines exchange between characters, as tension develops, and as something to be understood
through the emotions displayed in a scene. Without challenges, the character will never get to
know a bit about the self and how he or she acts accordingly to the threats posed upon by
unnatural circumstances in life.
On Ang Panata ng Birhen, I wanted the play to center around the vow of young women
sewing the gown of the Virgin Mary in time for the fiesta. This is what makes the women
privileged and noble deemed more important than men in such a way through their
domestic roles and yet the downfall of one comes when she refuses to follow the tradition
because she does not seem worthy of finishing it. I see my play as an opportunity for a post-

teenager to come to terms with how she sees purity and culture, and how she let those words
affect how people see her. Several conflicts also arise from the play imbibed with a culture
known to few people from the province. Mayang creating tension with her mother and aunt as
she comes to terms to the fact that the tradition still lives on despite people around her having
matured already in terms of reasoning. Furthermore, Mayang having internal conflicts with
herself as she is pressured by people around her her relatives, Liway, the other women, as well
as Michael leaving her to decide for herself which action to take in the end. The climax of the
play happens when the reversal of attitude in Mayang occurs and the irony of the virgins
highlights the question, Is the fulfillment of the vow dependent on the act itself or on the
conditions that have to be met?
This also makes us take note of why we culture can provide a turning point in the drama.
Because of it, we can see how people interpret traditions, perhaps differently some with clear
thoughts of following it, others with extreme hesitation and afterwards, defiance. To imitate
culture, to be mimetic of it, means to revolve around the only the practices within it, but also to
dwell upon the reactions of the people who are bound to it. ##

Pecora, Vince (2008). Culture as theatre. Criticism 49(4). MI: Wayne State University

Press, Detroit. Article. doi: 10.1353/crt.0.0044

Pewny, Katharina (2000). Staging Difference: TheaterRepresentation Politics. IWM
Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences 6, ed. Rogers, Dorothy, Wheeler et al. Vienna: IWM

Reina Krizel J. Adriano | FA-CW 104.1

A Review on Rossums Universal Robots (R.U.R.)
When I watched R.U.R staged by Tanghalang Ateneo and translated into Filipino, I was
immediately greeted with the impression that this play has a dark premise. The stage, supposed
to be the Rossums island for his robot factory, was set with wooden frames and scaffoldings,
haystacks all around, the scent of sawdust lingered in the air, and bamboo poles loomed above
our heads. I was aware that R.U.R. was in the fictional world where robots are mass produced for
the convenience of mankind. It sounded haunting and idealistic but the stage rendered it
believable enough to be true. Furthermore, it was clear that the audience wss being begged by the
stage to be part of the scene, even as observers of the factory from afar, and thereafter, as
witnesses of what occurs in the room in which Helena Glory and Harry Domin had observed
things happening around them from afar as well.
Like the rest of the characters, I had been intrigued by the sudden appearance of Helena
Glory at the factory in the middle of an island. Her character proved to be the most progressive
of all, learning from her experiences before and after the sudden revolt of the robots. Helena,
beautiful and glorious as her surname implied, has a strong character in the beginning with her
background as the daughter of the president of a certain company and a representative of the
Humanity League, she believed that she would be able to set the robots free from the oppressive
slavery the have been subjected to. However, the factorys general manager was quite aware of
this fact and saw to it that he would be able to convince Helena to change her mind. Harry
Domin, charming and dominating as he could be, told Helena that robots do not have feelings
and proceeds to reveal to her the history of Rossums robots.

The symbolism of Old Rossum as a Creator who understood the details of robots and
their intricate design convinced us that his deed was honest and noble, only wanting to help
mankind in their work by substituting robots instead and by empowering humanity through
science and technology. His son, the younger Rossum, however, was an engineer who only
wanted to profit from creating robots without letting them have emotions. The differences
between the two generations changed the intention of maintaining the factory and its reason for
continuing even after realizing the fact that robots can gain understanding if fed with vital
information about their surroundings.
Although the backstory in R.U.R. is dark, there were still certain scenes from the play
that lighten up the atmosphere while still retaining the seriousness of events. For example, the
different opinions from the factory managers alleviated the tension between Domin and Helena
because of their varied stands in the freedom of the robots. Alquist as a God-fearing man who
understood the nature of his actions understood that robots were supposed to have freedom as
much as people, making him deem not dangerous to the robots. Fabry and Busman were
business-centric person who only cared about profit and were thus scared of freeing the robots.
Finally, Gall and Hallemeier were doctors who sought to help the robots in times of their
malfunctioning but were torn between wanting them to be under the control of humans and
giving them their own lives.
Although loved by the men in the factory, Helena was voiceless more often because her
husband Harry Domin did not want her to get in the way of the factorys manufacturing
operations. This did not also help the fact that she was unable to give birth to a child, making her
grieve at the halting of births throughout the world since people would not want to procreate
anymore due to their laziness. Nana, Helenas grandmother, who believed in superstitions, also

added to Helenas worry through her nonscientific beliefs, making Helena question why she went
to the factory ten years ago in the first place: to free the robots. Throughout the play, the
dialogues showed how the characters relationships (man to woman, man to robot, man to man)
progressed, as Helena became less and less indignant of her stand in freeing the robots, and as
the other managers got scared at the uprising of their once slaves.
Even if the original Czechoslovakian play of Karel Capek was done in 1920, the issues
discussed in R.U.R were still able to resonate up until today. For robots to signify forced labor on
people who cannot fight for themselves is quite an opaque parallelism in the modern world. With
labor unions here and there, and grave misunderstandings between people who wanted profit and
those who wanted to give benefit to the lower class, we must ask the question, What does it mean
for people to get so invested in things that can replace humanity and its abilities? We have been
too dependent on science and technology for the improvement of everyones lifestyle that we are
starting to make use less and less of our own skills.
I appreciated the irony at the end with the roles of man and robot being reversed and the
consequences of that: Alquist, the only man left in the world, working for the robots, and the
robots planning everything else with not idea how to progress since their inevitable wearing off
and thus death are coming close at the end of the decade. However, the introduction of Robot
Helena and Primus, after being discovered by Alquist as two robots falling in love with each
other, signify hope and revival of humanity, if not mankind, as they are blessed by old man and
sent off to live together as the new Adam and Eve. Apart from title, Robot Universal ni Rossum,
sounding just as good as the English title, I believe the play was translated into Filipino for the
audience to see the relevance in a Filipino context that the play was commenting on. Whether

robots signify poor people, slavery, or modern technology replacing humanity itself, R.U.R.
indeed was a play good enough for people to ponder on its relevance in the modern world.