Ricky's Garden of Achievements

Sociology and theater arts ran deep, entwined, and unremitting from the foundational education of Ricky Abad and throughout his impressive professional life. Upon getting his AB Sociology degree in 1966 with a Cum Laude and Gold Medal for Excellence in Sociology at the Ateneo, he had to make a hard choice: to pursue further studies in sociology as part of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship at Fordham University in New York or to engage in theater at the Cultural Center of the Philippines under mentor and future National Artist Rolando Tinio. He chose sociology, but his love for theater remained. He remembered many a time taking the subway to Manhattan to watch, often in awe, at the offerings of Broadway, the avant-garde Off Broadway and Off-Off- Broadway, and his favorite summer event, Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park. There was also The Thalia, home to instant nostalgia and offbeat, stimulating cinema. Sociology and the arts lived out in the iconic New York, New York.

While in Fordham, Ricky met Elizabeth Uy Eviota who was then studying for the masters in sociology at the New School in New York (she would later obtain her PhD in sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey). They were married on 26th December 1973 and returned to the Philippines in 1975. A PhD in sociology in hand, Dr Ricky Abad came back to the Ateneo to teach.
His distinguished work as a sociologist, recognized early in his career, led to his appointment as Director of the Institute of Philippine Culture in 1977, his designation as Chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology from 1979 to 1987 (then again from 2014- 2017), his election as President of the Philippine Sociological Society in 1981 and in the same year, an invitation to become a member of the Executive Board of the Philippine Social Science Council, and his appointment as Editor of the Philippine Sociological Review from 1981-1991. Social scientists also widely acknowledged Dr Abad’s expertise and commitment to serving others. The Population Center Foundation invited him to be its consultant as did the Social Weather Stations (SWS), to be a Senior Fellow. The SWS was to be a major source of his data in writing about contemporary social behavior and in comparing Philippine demographic trends with those in other countries.

In 1981, Ricky accepted an invitation from Rolando Tinio to act for Teatro Pilipino’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And while still affiliated with Teatro, in 1984, he took over as Artistic Director and Moderator of Tanghalang Ateneo (TA) continuing in this role for the next thirty years, while also teaching and doing research at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

As moderator of TA, Ricky rejuvenated the college theater scene. When he joined the Ateneo in 1975, almost all of the plays on campus were in Pilipino, most of them works by local playwrights – an effect of the nationalist movement that swept the country before and during the martial law years. Ricky kept this nationalistic thrust in Tanghalang Ateneo, and though he added plays in English to the company’s repertoire in keeping with the University’s bilingual policy, his artistic work remained focused on Pilipino, especially the staging in Pilipino of canonical plays of Western drama. In 1990, Ricky broke the Shakespeare hiatus and directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream/Pangarap sa Isang Gabi ng Gitnang Tag-Araw, which used Filipino mythological characters as basis for the fairies.