WILFRIDO MA. GUERRERO
National Artist for Theater (1997)
(January 22, 1910 – April 28, 1995)
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero is a teacher and theater artist whose 35 years of devoted professorship has produced the most sterling luminaries in Philippine performing arts today: Behn Cervantes, Celia Diaz-Laurel, Joy Virata, Joonee Gamboa, etc. In 1947, he was appointed as UP Dramatic Club director and served for 16 years. As founder and artistic director of the UP Mobile Theater, he pioneered the concept of theater campus tour and delivered no less than 2,500 performances in a span of 19 committed years of service. By bringing theatre to the countryside, Guerrero made it possible for students and audiences, in general, to experience the basic grammar of staging and acting in familiar and friendly ways through his plays that humorously reflect the behavior of the Filipino.
His plays include Half an Hour in a Convent, Wanted: A Chaperon, Forever, Condemned, Perhaps, In Unity, Deep in My Heart, Three Rats, Our Strange Ways, The Forsaken House, Frustrations.
