Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
I love the fact that in Dumaguete, I can tell myself: “I want to end this busy week by watching opera.” And watch I did, straight from my last class of the day.
In the photo, that’s Rodolfo and Mimi in this barebones production of Puccini’s La Boheme at Silliman University’s Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium, presented by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and featuring the performers from Viva Voce Voice Lab. The entire opera was staged, but it was not a full-fledged production — there was no orchestra [only a piano] and there were no elaborate costumes — but all there was were performance, gusto, and the beauty of the human voice. Often, that’s enough.
The show was packaged as an educational outreach program, to teach contemporary Filipino audiences about what opera is all about, and to make a traditionally daunting art form be accessible to those who have only heard about what opera is like and are too intimidated to watch any. Hence, the helpful introduction by artistic director Camille Lopez Molina before the show began [she was very funny]. Hence, the simplicity of the staging. Hence, the supertitles projected on screen that directly translated the Italian lyrics the performers were singing.
Truth to tell, this was my first opera, and although it was done in this format, I was grateful for what it was — because everyone in the audience truly enjoyed the musical spectacle onstage: an audience of mostly students awww’d at the lighting quick romance between the two leads, arrrgh’d at the seeming red-flagness of Rodolfo when he wanted to break up with Mimi, and ohhhh’d at Mimi’s final demise.
[Molina also explained that the company specifically sought out a performance at the Luce because this was Viva Voce’s experiment with raw voice projection, no amplification, in a suitable theater: the Luce remains the only theater in the country with the best acoustics.]
I can readily tell when a Luce audience is appreciative [and Dumaguete is notoriously hard to please], and tonight was one for the books.
At the end, I also realized that this show signaled the end of the pandemic for me. At least culturally speaking. The last show I watched at the Luce before lockdown started in 2020 was Rent, the Jonathan Larson musical that borrows heavily from La Boheme. Four year later, I am watching the OG material on the same stage. My pandemic has been properly bookended.
P.S. It’s now funny to me that when I listened to opera before, the Italian lyrics and the melodic voice made me think they were singing of very important pronouncements. Now I know that they’re just singing of the most mundane things, like: “I left a pink bonnet underneath your pillow. Please pack it for me.”
This is the zine of my literature workshop for the CCP Arts Academy. It compiles their final output: a balak, siday, or binalaybay about a heritage item relevant to their hometown. The participants were junior and senior high school creative writing teachers, but this is the first time most of them have written something creative in their own language. Link to download here.
12:51 PM |
A Grand Finale to the 2022 CCP Arts Academy
Have you ever had that feeling that you've done your best, and now it's up to the fates for that one last go to end up at least satisfactorily? We — the mentors for literature, dance, theatre, visual arts, music, and film — workshopped and workshopped and workshopped for five days straight, and now it came to this: a recital involving all the participants for the closing ceremony.
With barely half-a-day of rehearsals to iron out the kinks and to determine what needed to be done [choreography, choice of pieces, etc.], we were in it because everyone wanted it. In fact, we started the week thinking a final performance was going to be optional for each workshop. By Wednesday, all the mentors were keen to do at least something. By Thursday afternoon, we had some idea about what to do. By Friday morning, the rehearsals began. By Friday afternoon, the performances were on the slot.
AND IT WAS TREMENDOUS. It was like watching a concert of all the arts coming together in a spectacular and unexpected grand finale, with everybody doing their best to make everything work. You couldn't tell that most of the dances — sometimes paired with poets or with theatre artists — were improvised on the spot. It was just all seamless, certainly not without its flaws [a missing cue, a missing mic, etc.], but altogether fantastic. This is why in this video, as the last performers took a bow, we are all so generous with our applause, because we recognized that we just did something magical — and that all that hard work actually went to something tangible.
I think I echo my other co-mentors when I repeat what I said to myself at the end of the program: "Oh my God, they all actually learned something from us." We actually observed that our participants — 188 teachers from all over the Philippines — were hungry to learn, were willing to absorb something new and challenging, and most of all were generous to share their [sometimes newfound] talent in front of everyone. We made them dance, write, act, direct, make music, make art — and in the end, we were all very happy.
Thank you, Cultural Center of the Philippines Arts Academy [Chris Millado / Ron B. Mirabuena] and Silliman University Culture and Arts Council [Diomar Abrio] for making this possible. And congratulations to all my co-mentors [Dessa Quesada-Palm, Cheenee Vasquez Limuaco, Angelo Sayson, Aiken Quipot, Elvert Bañares, Juni Jay Tinambacan, Joseph Albert Perez Basa, W Don Flores, Ramon del Prado, and AK Ocol] for forming such a formidable group of resource speakers.
5:58 AM |
An Arts Academy for the Nation’s Teachers
One of the most dynamic, and humbling, things I do in my vocation as both writer and cultural worker has been moderating writing workshops for teachers. I cannot recall when this exactly began for me, but it has been a while. And my general takeaway has always been that of supreme fulfilment, a matter of giving back, so to speak.
In one of the most recent workshops I’ve given, I was asked by a participant how I knew I was a writer. My answer was immediately forthcoming: I had no idea I could write well until my teachers told me I could, paving the way to a career devoted mostly to creative writing.
In grade school, I remember enjoying doing the themed compositions my teacher, Ms. Bennie Vic Concepcion, made us do on an annual rotation—and missives devoted to “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” or “My Best Friend” became ripe ground to explore, in a creative manner, my childhood rumination on those themes. Ms. Concepcion, who was my English teacher from Grade III to Grade IV, also equipped me with the fundamentals of the English language, making my facility in it adept enough to be able to tell stories well. I was later appointed to become editor-in-chief of the school organ, The Western Star, although I had no idea I could do journalism as well. The same thing happened in high school, with teachers like Ms. Tessie Sedigo, Ms. Gina Fontejon, and Prof. Alejandra Bañas validating my writing, that I could also be tasked with editing the school paper. In college, Prof. Ceres Pioquinto took me under her wings, and under her I learned the nuances of literary criticism. When I was a freshman, Prof. Timothy Montes approached me after his BC 11 class one day, and essentially “ordered” me to apply for The Weekly Sillimanian [which I did, and years later, I would become its editor-in-chief]. It was also Tim who “ordered” me to apply for the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 2020, where I rubbed elbows for the first time with many of the luminaries in Philippine literary circles. That essentially began my writing career.
My teachers were the ones who recognized something in me I did not even see in myself. They inspired me, they goaded me, they made me believe in a talent I never even knew I had. Thus, in giving these writing workshops for teachers, I am only coming full circle. These workshops have been a privilege and a pleasure.
The Arts Academy of the Cultural Center of the Philippines has been an annual tour-of-duty for me—vacated only by the pandemic in recent years. In past editions of this academic outreach by the CCP, I’ve taught regular writing workshops in poetry and fiction, but when I was invited to teach again in 2022, I decided that I wanted to pursue something I’ve been an advocate of in recent years: writing in Binisaya—in other words, mamugnaong katitikan sa Binisaya.
I felt it was necessary. I felt I could make a difference if I use Binisaya as the lens with which to do a workshop in creative writing, and succeed not only introducing obscure texts to a new audience of teachers [who might go on to teach these very works to their classes] but also in rekindling in them the often-ignored truth that when you write in your own mother tongue, you will discover a different kind of depth you can never really fathom when you use a borrowed language.
And frankly speaking, it also helps jumpstart a curiosity in learning the grammar and orthography of the native tongue—something we don’t learn at all in school. I always find it heartening when people who have been speaking Binasaya most of their lives eventually find out that there is actually a difference between “og” and “ug,” between “putli” and “ulay,” or between “ni” and “kang”; that you are actually using a Tagalog-corrupted lexicon when you say “nilugaw” [correct usage: “linugaw”] or “nilabhan” [correct usage: “linabhan”], “niluto” [correct usage: “linuto”], or “nilung-ag” [correct usage: “linung-ag”]; or you’re basically entertaining bad grammar when you say “taga-i” [correct usage: “hatagi”], or “tuho-i” [correct usage: “tuohi”], or “palikero” [correct usage: “palakero”], or “dalunggan” [correct usage: “dulunggan”]. What accounts for the mistakes we regularly make of our own language is the fact that for most of us, it has remained largely oral—thus, when we mishear something, we automatically use the spelling of that misheard word—and we are not used to reading the words or the “pulong” on the page. It’s about time we take seriously our own language, which also means using it correctly as much as possible.
While creative writing in both English and Tagalog continue to flourish—and helped by the fact that these are taught in schools and published widely—regional language literature always seem to be neglected in the larger scheme of things. Our writings in Binisaya, Bikolano, Waray, Hiligayon, Kiniray-a, Akeanon, Ilocano, Chavacano, and others are certainly not dead—of late, they have actually seen a resurgence [if limited] in popularity and in scholarship. But the fact remains that in terms of development it has lagged behind English and Tagalog. I’ve written in English most of my life, and I’ll probably continue doing so, since this is the language that I am most comfortable with—but I’ve become cognizant of this sense of responsibility of becoming an advocate of the literature of my own language because, to borrow the wisdom of two my mentors, this specific kind of literature is a valid building block in our continuing effort to build, and understand, the nation, which we should do city by city, province by province, language by language [something I learned from Tim Montes]; and learning the language as part of the culture of the place where we’re from helps us distance away from using outside models [e.g., Manila culture, Western culture] to understand ourselves [something I learned from Rosario Cruz Lucero].
In the past five days, I’ve been immersed in learning the nuances of Binisaya, and in crafting the balak, the siday, the binalaybay—all contemporary forms of poetry in Binisaya, Waray, and Hiligaynon—with an assortment of teachers from all over the Philippines, counting among them Bernardino P. Magno Jr. [Digos City], Beverly L. Deque [Bais City], Edwin Garcia [Baybay, Leyte], Eloisa Jane Ramos [Las Piñas City], Guia May D. Flordemarlin [Tagum City], Jeepee Magallanes [Bonifacio CIty, Misamis Occidental], Joseph O. Montajes [Baybay City, Leyte], Katybeth P. Sumalinab [Caraga, Davao Oriental], Kezia Keren L. Cagalawan [Tudela, Misamis Occidental], Leizel C. Quiatchon [Bacolod City], Marliel P. Castillejos [Pasig City], Maryjean T. Susaya [Jaro, Leyte], May D. Castino [Catbalogan City, Samar], Narciso Ogaya Jr. [Pasig City], Niña Rose D. Inoferio [Dumaguete City], Ninfa Jael Hopilos [Iloilo City], Patricia Villanueva [Iligan City], Rene Puson [Baybay City, Leyte], Rey D. Calo [Valencia City, Bukidnon], Rolinda Judith Carlobos [Butuan City], Roma Medina [Masbate City], Shelamar C. Garrucha [Bais City], and Tess Sedigo-Bernal [Siquijor], who was actually my freshman English teacher in Silliman High School way back in the early 1990s.
They are only a part of a bigger contingent of teachers [about 180 of them] who have been in Dumaguete the past few days, and here to sharpen more their classroom know-how in the teaching of Theatre Arts [under Dessa Quesada-Palm], dance and dance production [under Ronnie Mirabuena, Cheenee Limuaco, Angelo Sayson, and Aiken Quipot], film [under Elvert Bañares], band conducting and music production [under Joseph Albert Basa and Juni Jay Tinambacan], and visual arts [under W Don Flores and AK Ocol]. I’m sure I’m not the only one among the mentors who are gratified in the heartening response of our participants—I love my workshoppers’ hunger to learn, and I love their capacity for absorption and reflection, for their humor even in challenging activities, and for their willingness to also teach me in things that I lack.
A confession: I teach because I want to know. This springs from the adage: “If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.” Hopefully, in doing a creative writing workshop in Binisaya, I am on the way to that last of lofty goals.
7:00 PM |
Teaching Binisaya Literature for the CCP Arts Academy
From Day 2 of the CCP Arts Academy, where I'm teaching a workshop on Binisaya literature, using regional language as the lens to teach creative writing. [I think it's needed.]
My workshop is being held at the Silliman Library, and I have about 30 participants — all teachers from all over the Philippines, from Davao to Iligan, from Bacolod to Baybay, Leyte, from the NCR to Masbate, from Bais to Iloilo. This is most interesting, and I'm also learning along the way.
Yesterday, I lectured on a sense of place in literature, and today we touched on Binisaya orthography and the various literary forms [from traditional to contemporary] in Katitikang Binisaya. This afternoon, we began our writing workshop, where I asked them to write a balak/siday/binalaybay. We also did an exercise on crafting the sambingay [metaphor]. Can't wait for Friday, where we will see the fruition of all these efforts.
With some of the resource speakers for the workshops on the various arts ranging from theatre to dance, visual arts to film, music to literature.
10:00 PM |
La Boheme at Silliman
