Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio

Amelia Lirag Lapeña-Bonifacio (4 April 1930 – 29 December 2020) was a Filipino playwright, puppeteer, and educator known as the "Grande Dame of Southeast Asian Children's Theatre". In 1977, she founded a children's theater troupe, Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas (Mulat Theater), the official theater company and puppetry troupe of the University of the Philippines. Lapeña-Bonifacio served as the President of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People-Philippines (ASSITEJ-Philippines) and Union Internationale de la Marionnette-Philippines (UNIMA-Philippines).

Biography Lapeña-Bonifacio, known as Tita Amel to her students, was born in Binondo, Manila and attended Arellano North High School. In 1953, she completed her first degree, a bachelor's degree at the University of the Philippines Diliman in literature with an interest in set design.

In 1976, Lapeña-Bonifacio published Anim na Dulang Pilipino Para Sa Mga Bata, with her six-year-old daughter supplying illustrations.

In 1977, Lapeña-Bonifacio wrote and directed her first children's play: Abadeja: Ang Ating Sinderela, a puppet play based on a Visayan folktale about the Cinderella-like Abadeja. It was performed in cooperation with Dulaang UP, the theater group of the University of the Philippines Speech and Drama Department, Half of the collection is made up of five plays, while the rest consists of ten stories, several poems and essays.

Lapeña-Bonifacio created some controversy when she commented on Jim Henson's work; she stated that Henson's puppetry approach would not work on the other side of the globe due to three reasons: first, Sesame Street at the time engaged in some violence, secondly, the show’s scenes were too short, whereas a child’s attention span could be held for a much longer time, and finally, the pie-in-the-face antics could be interpreted as a sign of disrespect. Lapeña-Bonifacio added, "If kids have a short attention span, then how come our children back home can watch puppet shows for an hour? And, please, stop throwing all that food around. If that is funny to you Westerners, food for us Asians is almost sacred—it can be a matter of life or death."

Land, Sea and Sky, a 1991 play, was re-launched by the theatre company in 2012 to raise awareness of various environmental concerns that the country is facing.

Recognition In 1995, she received the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award in Literature for One Act Play for Dalawang Bayani. In 2006, a house near the University of the Philippines, which served as Mulat's 100-seat base, was rebuilt and reopened as the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Teatro Papet Museo (Puppet Museum) through government funding and grants from former presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph E. Estrada.

In 2017, she received the City of Manila Outstanding Citizen Award and the Quezon City Most Outstanding Citizen Award in 2013. At the time, she had written 44 plays, 28 of these for children; 136 short stories, mostly for children and young adults; and 26 books, including a 2014 novel for young readers about World War II, In Binondo, Once Upon a War, written from the point of view of an 11-year-old child. She also wrote essays, speeches, poems and songs.