By Michele T. Logarta SUNDAY INQUIRER MAGAZINE, October 13, 2002 Renaissance man STEVEN P.C. Fernandez has been called Mindanao's man for all seasons, a renaissance man, the grand young man of Southern Philippine Theater and, by the late writer Doreen G. Fernandez, Mr. Theater himself. But, truth is, he'd much rather be called just "Tibo." Tibo Fernandez is the moving spirit behind the Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG), one of the country's leading performing groups and definitely one of the best in Mindanao. Under Tibo's guidance, IPAG, a resident company of the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan City, Lanao del Norte, has won various national awards and endowments from national institutions like the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. Tibo Fernandez is one of the CCP's most active partners in the southern region of the Philippines. Tibo has more than 50 productions to his credit as a director, performing artist, composer, musician and playwright. He is also a scholar, animateur, comic artist, and graphic artist. More than anything, he is a raconteur, a storyteller at heart. He weaves his narratives using dance to tell his stories to an audience. (IPAG is known for its signature dance theater format based on the pangalay, a dance idiom from the Sulu Archipelago.) Tibo's work about a local hero, "Ranaw: Isang Alamat," won the CCP Playwriting Award in 1985 and, in 1987 and 1988, as a grantee of the CCP, was toured extensively around the country. "Ranaw: Isang Alamat" is an epic depicting the exploits of Bato Lakungan narrated in dance, music and drama. The success of "Ranaw" brought Tibo and IPAG to national attention. A graduate of the University of the Philippines, where he completed his Master's degree in Philippine Studies, Tibo is completing his doctorate in Fine Arts at De La Salle University. The Iligan-based artist also trained in theater in the US, Sweden and China, and has led eight international tours representing the Philippines in Europe and Asia. This year, it highlighted Philippine Day in Monaco with a command performance attended by Prince Albert. Most performed of IPAG productions is Tibo's "Tales from Mindanao," a collection of dance-theater vignettes that, since its premiere at the CCP Theater Festival in 1991, continues to be retold time and again. Most recently, IPAG won the Grand Prize in the Concourse de Chanson Internationaux, and was the most awarded group of the 13th International Folklore Festival in Port Sur Saone, France. Looking back over the past two decades, Tibo gives credit to the CCP for having been the post that propped up a large network of resources and information for IPAG. "Our close relationship with the CCP, particularly the Outreach Department, started right after the Edsa Revolution when the Center opened its doors to artists outside its traditional coterie. The tour was a success, and several other projects followed." Tibo is also the founding chairman of the Iligan Arts Council, one of the CCP's regional partners in the promotion of art and culture. He's been acknowledged as a pillar in the cultural life of his city. "We've had a lot of important projects that dealt with the development of arts and culture at the grassroots level," Tibo says. "It was like an exchange of resources. To this day, a number of our homebred artists now work as professionals in Manila. Also, our local arts leaders and artists have been further honed by this exchange." Cultural flame Tibo has been called the keeper of Iligan City's cultural flame. "Ours is an industrialized city. But, in the last seven years, things have taken a turn for the worse, particularly in the economy and in our peace and order situation. The closure of National Steel Corporation dealt Iligan a hard blow. Business slackened considerably. But local groups like IPAG keep the cultural flame alive. Call this tenacity, but we refuse to cower in mediocrity." Tibo was one of the artists who participated in the CCP's Exchange Artists Program, which aimed to provide opportunities for region-based artists. Under this program, artists based in the regions were toured in other provinces. Today, the CCP is hoping to revive this program through its flagship Arts for the People Program. The program aims to utilize the arts as a tool for moral transformation and national development, and includes national outreach and community projects in depressed areas; livelihood projects for artists and cultural workers; and productions that will promote Filipino values and development projects for artists and cultural practitioners from all over the country. Despite the recent slash in its budget this year-from 188 million pesos to 95 million pesos, the CCP is raising funds in order to sustain the work. This October 19, the CCP and Citigroup are presenting the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of its new music director Lorin Maazel, in a gala concert for the benefit of the Arts for the People Program. The concert features the brilliant 20-year-old Chinese pianist Lang Lang as soloist, and is part of the Philharmonic's 2002 Citigroup Asian Tour. In the meantime, Tibo is ensuring that the art form is alive and well for the next generations; he still teaches as a Professor of Stagecraft, Drama, Literature and the Humanities at the MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology. "Image is one thing, truth is another," he says. "The arts must become accessible to the majority of our people, or it will always remain 'elitist.''

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