Severino Reyes: Google celebrates the 161st birthday of the “Father of Filipino Drama” with Doodle

Google Doodle celebrates the 161st birthday of a Filipino writer, playwright, and director of plays Severino Reyes on February 11, 2022. He used the pen name Lola Basyang. He was nicknamed “Don Binoy”. He is known as the “Father of Tagalog Plays” and as the “Father of the Tagalog Zarzuela”.

Severino Reyes was born on 11th February 1861 in the capital of Manila. Generally viewed as the “Father of Filipino Drama,” Reyes is internationally prestigious for his well-known zarzuelas, Spanish-influenced works of dramatic musical theater, as well as for his now-classic collection of Tagalog stories.

Fluent in both Spanish and Tagalog, Severino Reyes took a deep interest in language, studying Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and a handful of different languages spoken across the archipelagic country. His acumen pushed him to seek after studies in history, literature, and the sciences. However, his academic career finished with a degree in philosophy, his most suffering heritage was left in the arts.

Severino Reyes wrote 26 zarzuelas and 22 dramas in his career. Reyes helped tracked down the Liwayway magazine in 1922 and is perceived for pioneering the Tagalog literary renascence during his lifetime. His stories under the pen name Lola Basyang were the magazine’s most generally read feature.

Severino Reyes talked both Tagalog and Spanish and understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and different Philippine dialects.

In 1902, Severino Reyes established the Gran Compania de Zarzuela, a theater group committed to extending the art form across the Philippines. That same year, his trailblazing theatrical group staged his second play named “Walang Sugat” (No Wounds), a historical drama that revolved around the Philippine revolution.

The well-known reception of this play denoted the start of the Philippine Golden Age of Zarzuela. Reyes mastered his dramatic expression in the decades that followed with more than 50 zarzuelas.

Notwithstanding his milestone career as a playwright, Severino Reyes additionally served as the editor-in-chief of Liwayway, a famous Tagalog magazine to which he contributed stories under the pen name “Lola Basyang.”

His stories, loaded with apparently old insight, became such an integral part of Philippine society that the name Lola Basyang is as yet used today to depict a grandmother who loves telling stories.

On February 11, 2022, Severino Reyes was praised with a Google Doodle in celebration of his 161st birthday.