In conferring the Tanglaw ng Lahi award to Noriega, Ateneo De Manila stated that “The significance of Noriega’s achievement in Theater and Film will be impoverished unless it is put in place with his career in banking and government service. Here one does not find the simple case of competition between work and avocation or between two careers or even loves. Noriega was expert in his two occupations – as writer and technocrat and he managed to put them together in his person.”
“Noriega has put form to the Filipino’s search for a sense of place in these works. His characters often find themselves out of place--literally and in every aspect. In probably his most popular play, Bayan-bayanan, they are Philippine Embassy staff, government employees training abroad, overseas contract workers, and other Filipino travelers exiled in Geneva. There each of them has to contend with not only the bitter cold but also their individual fates and the usual situation of the exile, and their different responses to this plight are what Noriega is able to masterfully orchestrate.
“Poverty makes Ramona Reyes, a household help in the play bearing her name, out of place in Forbes Park where she works. Ironically, going abroad as a domestic helper appears to her as her only escape. The myriad forms of exile are more directly depicted in Takas, a play about friendship between a Vietnamese refugee who comes to shore and the Filipino boy whose family takes in the stranger. In no time, the boy discovers that he too is a stranger in his own country. Batang Pro, a controversial work about child prostitution, portrays the tragedy of children pushed out of their very childhood by dehumanizing destitution, while the film Soltero shows the anguish of an aging single male in a culture centered on family. 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. The Filipino family takes center stage in Ang Mga Propesyonal and Kasalan sa Likod ng Simbahan, romance in Kenkoy Loves Rosing and W.I.S. (Walang Ibig Sabihin) and politics in Bongbong at Kris.
“ It would be a mistake to think that Noriega’s sole achievement lies in having given voice to what every Filipino feels. His writing broke new artistic ground because the voices of his characters were neither the hysterical sobs of traditional Filipino melodrama nor the rhetorical protest of propaganda pieces. He wrote plays of differing structures and styles. Some are one-acters, others full-length. In few, the influence of Chekhov appears; in others, that of the expressionists. The role that music played changed from play to play. 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.
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