Poetry re-formed, poetry performed
SugaTula performs poems by prominent Southern Philippine writers that bear themes revealing the various facets of Visayan and life in Mindanao.
The Poetics of TRANSCREATION
SugaTula highlights the transcreation of poetry — the creative process whereby a subject expressed in one medium is re-shaped in another – its meanings expressed in transmedia.
Poetry performed dissects the poem from the source medium and the structure to evoke similar meanings and feelings. Transcreation seeks to capture both the discursive constructs of the poem in its original language and the meanings these constructs have shaped into the trans-media platform of performance.
The transcreation of poetry is not translation nor is it adaptation. It is not about transforming meaning from one medium to another as transcreation keeps the poet’s intention. Insight, meaning, and feel in the poem, despite the transposition, remain in the second form.
Transcreation, too, differs from transformation because transformation reshapes and redefines meaning different from that of the original.
The performances, besides capturing the intangible inner logic of the poem, also reclaim the poetic experience the poem evokes.
The performance of transcreated works allows our audiences to immerse in the experience of poetry. Performance tests innovative canons in the integrative discourses of Philippine dramaturgy, which merge word with movement and sounds.
A transmedia performance of dance, music, chants, and images explores the emotive power of the Word in poetry as the Word ‘performs’ in another dimension.
SugaTula draws popular attention to our region-nurtured writers whose works speak eloquently of life outside the Big City. Local color, provincial moods, the indigenous communities’ perspectives, and violence under the Faiths are some of the subjects their poems reveal.
Among other Southern Philippine-based poets is Marjorie Evasco’s “Origami” that engages the production of other poems to mainstream our audiences’ appreciation of local lore and languages.
Having been performed in major national festivals, this production represented the country in the 2012 UNESCO-ITI Asia Pacific Bureau (APB) of Theatre Schools at the Taipei National University of the Arts.
SugaTula was IPAG’s audition production that received the Board’s unanimous nod, accepting it as a member of the APB in 2012.