SugaTula performs eight poems by prominent Southern Philippine writers that bear themes revealing the various facets of Visayan and Mindanaon life.

The production highlights the transcreation of poetry -- the creative process whereby a subject expressed in one media is re-shaped in another -- and tests this process’ effectiveness on our audiences. Transcreation is, in this case, poetry that is transformed into performance.

The process dissects the poem beginning with the medium and the structure that evokes meanings and feelings. In dissecting the poem, transcreation seeks to capture both the discursive constructs of the poem in its original language and the meanings these constructs have shaped into the multi-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.

As a venue for popularizing poetry, the performance of transcreated works does not only allow our audiences from the schools to immerse in the experience of poetry. Performance tests innovative canons in the integrative discourses of Philippine dramaturgy, that which merge word with movement and sounds.

Poems transcreate to a multi-media performance of dance, music, chants, and images. Aptly entitled SugaTula, this cross-media production explores the emotive power of the Word in poetry as the Word ‘performs’ in another dimension. In the crossroads of poetry and performance (thus, the term “Sugat”), the production brings to our audiences the exhilarating experience of the poems of our eminent South-based writers, among them Christine Godinez-Ortega, Anthony Tan, Ralph Semino Galan, German Gervacio, and Marjorie Evasco.

SugaTula is part of a larger process that engages the continuing production of other works-in-progress using Bisaya poems (Waray and Cebuano) to widen our audiences’ appreciation of local lore and languages.

The performance crosses other lines, too. Usually, after every performance, featured poets dialogue with our audiences about their works and processes. In some events, IPAG supplements performance with a lecture-demo of transcreation, a principle and process that the guild has developed using SugaTula as its springboard in discussing poetics and dramaturgy.

This manner of production is one way our audiences can be acquainted with our writers and appreciate poetry as an endearing experience.

SugaTula draws popular attention to our region-nurtured writers whose works speak eloquently of life outside the Big City. Local color, provincial moods, the tribesmen’s perspective, and violence under the Faiths are some of the subjects their poems reveal.

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