IPAG in National Theatre Festival

CEBU, Philippines - Seven outstanding university-based theatre groups selected from all over the country highlighted the 4th Tanghal National University and College Festival in Manila for the Philippine International Arts Festival (PIAF).

The festival is the flagship program of the Committee on Dramatic Arts that celebrates the February Arts Month.

IPAG, Mindanao’s lone representative in the mainstream category, opened the festival last February 1 with a hybrid theatre-poetry production entitled SugaTula.

SugaTula is a multi-media dramatization of eight selected poems by poets nurtured in the South. Called transcreation, this process of transplanting poetry to the stage is a process whose principles were developed, documented and practiced into a pedagogical system by IPAG and its Artistic Director Steven Patrick C. Fernandez.

The production crosses the roads between poetry and performance, hence the term Sugat.

Poems performed were Christine Godinez-Ortega’s Pamahra, Camp Bushra’s Mosque on Inquirer Page One and The Legend of Maria Cristina Falls, Ralph Semino Galan’s Southern Cross, German Gervacio’s Kung Paano Maging Makata and Pampambo Tusok-tusok, Anthony Tan’s Crossing the River, and Marjorie Evasco’s Origami.

In 2008, IPAG also represented Mindanao in the 2nd outing of Tanghal in Zamboanga City with Fernandez’s well-acclaimed MingMing, 1st prize winner in the 2006 Palanca.

Joining the artists’ team of SugaTula are actors Leilani Monterola-Fernandez, Kenn Erwin Velasquez, Melvin Pascubillo, Dianne Clemente, Phoebe Jean Gayanelo, JV Espenido, Kassandra Suazo and Hobart Savior. Arlem Abanes manages the production while Hermie Dico stage manages. Designs are created by the IPAG Design Team of Clint Jordan Sabate, Tres Roldan Cartera, and Jan Christian Pagarigan, and headed by Vicmar Paloma who also handles the production’s technical direction.

Fernandez directs from his scenario and music. The vignettes are choreographed by Monterola-Fernandez, Velasquez, Pascubillo, and Amado Guinto.

After the festival, SugaTula performs in February 8 and 9 at the MSU-IIT Min-Theatre in Iligan City.