Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio

As a young faculty member, she helped establish the Speech and Drama Department of the University of the Philippines - Diliman in 1959 and taught subjects such as History of the Theatre and Fundamentals of Speech in the early 1960s until she moved to the Department of English and Comparative Literature.[7]

In 1976, Lapeña-Bonifacio published Anim na Dulang Pilipino Para Sa Mga Bata, with her six-year-old daughter supplying illustrations.[8]

In 1977, Lapeña-Bonifacio wrote and directed her first children's play: Abadeja: Ang Ating Sinderela, a puppet play based on a Visayan folktale about the Cinderella-like Abadeja.[9] It was performed in cooperation with Dulaang UP, the theater group of the University of the Philippines Speech and Drama Department,[9] and was favorably reviewed in the press.[3] With the enthusiasm of the cast's continued visits to her office and her long-standing dream of forming a children's theater group, Lapeña-Bonifacio founded the children's theater troupe Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas (Mulat; Aware Theatre of the Philippines), the official theater company and puppetry troupe of the University of the Philippines.[3]

Lapeña-Bonifacio released Sepang Loca & Others, a first volume of works in English, in January 1981.[10] Half of the collection is made up of five plays, while the rest consists of ten stories, several poems and essays.[11]

Lapeña-Bonifacio created some controversy when she commented on Jim Henson's work; she stated that Henson's puppetry approach would not work on the other side of the globe due to three reasons: first, Sesame Street at the time engaged in some violence, secondly, the show’s scenes were too short, whereas a child’s attention span could be held for a much longer time, and finally, the pie-in-the-face antics could be interpreted as a sign of disrespect.[12] Lapeña-Bonifacio added, “If kids have a short attention span, then how come our children back home can watch puppet shows for an hour? And, please, stop throwing all that food around. If that is funny to you Westerners, food for us Asians is almost sacred—it can be a matter of life or death.”[12] Some time after these comments, Henson created a full-length puppetry-packed movie, The Dark Crystal, which had Asian themes such as peace-building and equilibrium between the yin and the yang.[12]

During the Marcos dictatorship, Lapeña-Bonifacio's theatre company released Ang Paghuhukom, based on the Pampanga folktale of the animal kingdom, which criticised the martial law regime. The main character, the ape king of the jungle, kept smashing the other animals to enforce silence and control, until he ended up smashing himself. The government noticed the theatre company, but only after the dictator's wife, Imelda Marcos, saw one play, Manok at Lawin, at Quirino Grandstand. The first lady, unknowing of the Ang Paghuhukom play at the time, tasked the Cultural Center of the Philippines to fund Lapeña-Bonifacio's theatre company.[12]

Mulat, the theatre company, was invited to the International Workshop On Living Children’s Theatre in Asia (1978), where performances in eighteen sites in Japan gained media attention. At the International Puppet Festival in Tashkent, former USSR (1979), Mulat premiered The Trial to acclaim. In 1980, with Tokyo-based Ohanashi Caravan, Mulat toured Metro Manila and provinces, and the group participated in International Workshops On Living Children’s Theatre in the Philippines (1983), Malaysia (1985), Thailand (1987), and Indonesia (1989).[1]

In 1985, Lapeña-Bonifacio's Papet Pasyon (Puppet Passion Play) was staged for the first time.[9] The play translates the Filipino tradition of reciting the death and resurrection of Jesus into a puppet version for children, and has been staged annually since 1985.[1] It was initially performed at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and was later staged at the University of the Philippines, Intramuros, and other provinces.[6]

The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption which devastated numerous provinces in the Philippines highly influenced Lapeña-Bonifacio's craft. Through the University of the Philippines College of Medicine's advice, the Teatrong Mulat showed Pinatubo's traumatized children their plays to help the children in coping with the horrors caused by the eruption. In the next few years, Mulat performed in 30 refugee or relocation sites in Pampanga and Zambales. Each site would have approximately 100 children.[12]

Lapeña-Bonifacio's theatre company presented Sita & Rama: Papet Ramayana in 2004 which interpreted the Indian epic Ramayana through shadow and rod puppetry with music by Joey Ayala and Cynthia Alexander and directed by Lapeña-Bonifacio's daughter, Amihan Bonifacio-Ramolete.[13]

Land, Sea and Sky, a 1991 play, was re-launched by the theatre company in 2012 to raise awareness of various environmental concerns that the country is facing.[1]

Lapeña-Bonifacio retired from the University of the Philippines in 1995, after thirty-six years teaching at the university; she was appointed a Professor Emeritus.[6]