Power, Corruption, and Tragedy: Paul Dumol’s The Trial of Mang Serapio
In this essay, I will be writing an interpretative analysis of the Filipino playwright, Paul A. Dumol’s play, Ang Paglilitis Ni Mang Serapio or The Trial of Mang Serapio through the framework of Rene Girard’s theory on group conflict. As part of an assignment for the College course that I’m enrolled in, Art Criticism, I was tasked to write a publishable article on Theatre, specifically one that reflects my interpretation of it. The Trial Of Mang Serapio is a play about a beggar named “Mang Serapio” who is being accused of a “crime” that he supposedly committed by a criminal organization known as “The Federation” that enforces its will on the impoverished community that he lives in.
Throughout the play, Serapio is questioned in a court by two unnamed interrogators and a corrupt judge alongside a number of his fellow beggars from the same community. It is then that the Judge of the court states that his decision on Serapio’s case is but a “formality”, revealing the absurd notion that the whole trial is done for the sake of doing so.
Serapio is accused of the crime of raising children, to which he admits having done so despite his wife’s chest which allegedly holds the child he was raising. To the court’s surprise, the contents of the chest only held a toy doll, which causes the court’s jury to start laughing at him as the two interrogators grow ever frustrated. The play ends with Serapio being unjustly proven guilty of the “crime” of having dreams and aspirations, leading to him losing an eye in the process as part of a punishment.
The adaptation that I watched was directed by a man named Dennis S. Obispo and was performed by the Society of Performing Arts-Talents Development Guild Inc, a Theatre production company here in the Philippines. The performance was recorded in 2015 and its dialogue was spoken entirely in the Filipino language. This play is generally categorized as being part of the Absurdist and Tragic literature somewhat reminiscent of Frank Kafka’s stories.
The play’s cast of characters is largely unnamed except for the main protagonist, Mang Serapio, a beggar with dirty, unkempt clothing and below-average intelligence. The members of the “Federation” in charge of persecuting Serapio are aptly named the Judge, First Interrogator, and Second Interrogator. The other characters found in the play are the female witnesses who claim to have caught Serapio red-handed, the two disabled men who broke his black chest, and countless other unnamed vagrants and beggars of the community.
The setting of story takes place in a makeshift court in a very poor, unknown neighborhood, with almost every other character in the play apart from the Federation’s staff wearing ragged or unwashed clothing. It is a place of complete poverty and destitution. Now, the Federation, as stated previously, is a criminal organization but one of low stature when compared to infamous groups such as the Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza. Not much is stated about their organization other than how they lord over Serapio’s vagrant community with an iron fist and how even the police won’t be able to do anything against them. Ultimately, they are a cruel and unjust group that blinds Mang Serapio regardless of any obvious facts regarding his innocence. Such a community and its living conditions would ultimately be a place of much sorrow and pain for its inhabitants.
Apart from the excellent set and costume design, it is worth giving praise to Obispo’s work with the performances of his primary cast. The execution of their dialogues and tonations of voice are superb in their delivery; carrying with them emotional significance and weight. How the Prosecutors interrogate and psychologically torture and harass Serapio is especially commendable with regards to how it makes me, the viewer, despise the former and sympathize with the latter.
The gloomy absurdity of the court’s decision and the grim dealt to Serapio were further emphasized with the addition of external elements not present in the original script. Director Obispo began and ended his adaptation with a musical performance by a talented male singer (dressed as a beggar in the play) backed by another playing an acoustic guitar. I’m not sure if the song (whose name is unspecified) performed was made specifically for the play or if it was made by someone else but it matched the aesthetics and the story of the play perfectly.
Furthermore, Serapio’s characterization was especially relatable and filled with such natural desire and emotion that stands in contrast to the uncaring inhumanity of the Federation and their vagrant lackeys. His desperation was so prevalent throughout the whole performance as he struggled hopelessly against the scrutiny of his persecutors.
His actor (I do not know his name) was especially brilliant for conveying his pains and helplessness so naturally. Yet, there still looms a proper, reasonable explanation behind the unjust persecution of Serapio, whose “crimes” were of him simply wishing for a better life for himself to the point that he would begin imagining that the doll that he owned was his deceased child.
Being an Absurdist and tragic play, such a case would naturally not make any sense at all, with every aspect of it being just left to the Federation’s corrupt and malicious practices. Furthermore, I noticed that there might be another aspect to all of this which stems from the very structure that the story was written. Upon observing various elements of the story’s plot, its themes, and even the way the characters reacted and treated Serapio, I would like to introduce to the discussion the framework of Rene Girard’s theory of group conflict.
For some background information, Rene Girard (1923–2015) was a French Anthropologist and Philosopher who discovered a series of insights from various novels and famous myths from various traditions such as Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. These insights were observations that he discovered individually throughout his academic career culminating in his theory of group conflict which consisted of three parts: Mimetic Desire, the Scapegoat mechanism, and Ritual Sacrifice. His theory begins with Mimetic Desire, a spontaneous feeling that suddenly emerges when a person sees a possession or object that he doesn’t own.
The object can range from anything being wealth or treasure and can sometimes even be a person, in the context of romance stories. Eventually, a given society may become rapidly “infected” with Mimetic Desire, leading to a conflict that involves various persons fighting the other for sake of owning something that the other possesses. Once people begin to grow weary of the conflict, they begin looking for the cause of their woes and sorrows, leading them to single out a “scapegoat” that proceeds to become the source of all blame and condemnation.
This “scapegoat” is an individual who has become assimilated into a process called the “Scapegoat Mechanism” and is then “ritualistically” punished, executed, or exiled for the results of his actions, whether intentional or not. This then leads to the final part of Girard’s theory, the “Ritual Sacrifice”. To restore the peace and order of a society ravaged by the conflict, the scapegoat is “sacrificed” in a ritual, leading to the temporary peace of the society before the cycle begins once more. Examples of famous scapegoats include Oedipus from Oedipus Rex and the countless Christian Martyrs that were persecuted under the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero.
I noticed this same cycle appears in the plot structure of The Trial of Mang Serapio. Imagine this, a poor community consisting of beggars, disabled people, and other destitute suddenly have their somewhat peaceful lives interrupted when news about Mang Serapio’s trial becomes the issue of the community, their fellow beggar being accused supposedly of having raised a child in secret, which is illegal underneath federal law. Judging from the way they reacted toward him later on, it seems that they too were envious or wanted the child that he allegedly possessed.
Having disrupted the “peace and order” imposed by the Federation, Serapio effectively becomes the Scapegoat of his society, in part mostly because of the malicious intentions of the court. Towards the end of the story, Serapio is punished by the court for what they understand as his “crimes and is blinded with an ice pick before being beaten up by the jury and thrown out by the guards. These two final acts make for a perfect Ritual Sacrifice and thus temporarily quell any conflict or dissent from the community’s members until the next, arranged trial.
Thus it is more than fair to say that The Trial Of Mang Serapio is a play that possesses the major elements of Girard’s theory of conflict and can be argued as a reason why it makes for such a compelling story other than the fact that it has the typical “Man vs Society” literary trope that you see in countless other stories dealing around themes of the “oppressor vs oppressed”.
When Girard began to develop these theories he was reading and studying the structures of other world-famous writers such as Dostoyevsky, Marcel Proust, and Cervantes. The fact that this play possesses such elements and structure that Girard discovered while reading the old masters just speaks volumes of both the talent and skills of Professor Paul Dumol, who also just happens to have been my teacher in a previous Literary Theory class years before.
No, I did not learn about Girard’s theory from him or his classes. Rene Girard just happens to have been a favorite thinker of mine since the pandemic arrived. I do not know if Professor Dumol has ever read Rene Girard or any of the aforementioned authors, which might further prove just how great of an author he is. I am unaware if he has any other published works apart from The Trial of Mang Serapio and would be interested in learning more.
Overall, the adaptation that I had watched ended with a depressing scene showing a young boy sighing and comforting a crying Serapio as a guitar sequence ends the performance. Such is the nature of an absurdist and tragic story, as I find myself drawn to showing compassion towards the poor, childless, and partially blind beggar.