ABSTRACT
Theatre in the 20th century started therefore with the shadow of American censorship looming over it between 1902 and 1943. "Seditious" plays were banned and playwrights prosecuted, which led to division of Philippine stage into official and alternative theatrical venues. It was in the where social and nationalistic concerns would be expressed. The social turmoil of the 1960s in the Philippines responded to the first stage of Marcos' rule - the democratic one - in which the president's government was accused of corruption and blamed for allowing a new form of colonisation by the United States. Since the end of the Spanish colonisation in 1898, theatre has constituted an important way of raising social awareness in the Philippines. The sublimation of Jose Rizal and his identification with Christ as a martyr sacrificing his life for the good of his countrymen reached the point where a church venerating this victim of Spanish colonial regime was founded.
