Short-term Courses in Theatre, Dance, and Arts Management
The Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) shares knowledge and experience it has drawn from its long years as a production company. These are products of exposures evolved from 3 decades of creative work and collated into these modules. Drawn from our local conditions, these lessons prove their relevance and applicability to participants in similar settings.

IPAG’s growth in the academe augments the practical lessons in these modules. The Guild is based in the MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), acknowledged as one of the top 10 Philippine educational institutions. IPAG’s roster of lecturers and facilitators include some of the more distinguished artists and academicians in Philippine Arts and Letters.

The IPAG is a benchmark of exceptional and trailblazing works widely recognized here and abroad. Like many local groups, it has been organized from oftentimes inadequate conditions that have spawned these lessons.

These short-term programs are pilot courses for a proposed Academy of the Arts that will be based in the MSU-IIT. These programs consider the local conditions we know too well where we create and manage our art programs.

Filling in the immediate needs for art and culture-related courses, these programs service our teachers, administrators, organizers, and practitioners.

The course introduces the basics of theatre and its vocabulary. It uses local expressions as the mediums for creative production and works within available resources and local conditions. Modules, which depend on community- or school-based needs, direct towards the production of a recital of original works. Theories and production management studies augment practical knowledge. 3-/ 5-/ 15-days (approx. 8 hrs day)

Indigenous Mindanao dance-music is translated to the stage. While many dance workshops instruct where a facilitator simply dances and the participants follow, IPAG studies the cultural contexts in the dances’ features and execution. The pedagogy treats dances as living expressions using “bio-mechanics” (the study of muscle and gravity forces on the body in motion) and a background on these source communities’ lifestyles that evolve the dances’ features. A course teaches 5 dance-music expressions of selected lumad and Moro communities. The headline piece is the Tausug pangalay, which is also the IPAG signature idiom. A recital culminates this course. 5 days

Applying the case studies of homegrown dance, theatre, and art groups, this course presents solutions in the management and sustenance of culture- and art-oriented organizations. The lessons are developed from IPAG’s continuous 30-year experience as a company. IPAG’s sustenance is complemented by its large network of auxiliary institutions. This course takes IPAG’s own product-service-client experiences to conduct a hands-on workshop for already-existing groups or for those wishing to organize groups or programs. The course treats production-stage management separately from the management of organizations that discuss topics on visioning, strategies, marketing tools, procedures of operations, sustenance, and the strengthening of intangible resources. These tools of management are studied on a level comprehensible to the inadequate local conditions of homegrown groups. 3 days.

Focus here in on how ideas and expressions transform to the performance space. This course in the intermediate level assumes that participants will have available material for their translation to the stage. The director (and/or choreographer) takes the roles of re-creator, interpreter, and manager of tangible and intangible resources he forges. Practical abilities merge with theories (from Western, Asian, and Philippine Aesthetics) to wield an acceptable dramaturgical skill. Snippets of plays, dance vignettes, and scenarios are the laboratories for mounting and evaluation. A recital culminates this course. 5 days.

Creative Writing: Poetry / Fiction

Playwriting / Scenario writing / Scriptwriting

The Creative Writing sessions in these genres will conduct classes in 2 levels: appreciation and application. Samples will be evaluated. The participants are required to submit their works beforehand as these become bases for their craft’s improvement. Clear, concise writing, employment of devices, studies of technique, and criticism are some of the topics the study of creative writing takes. Handling the Creative Writing courses are the mainstays of the Iligan National Writers Workshop. A readers’ recital culminates this course. Lectures, too, are conducted for participants wishing to learn about the appreciation of Literature. 3 days (but will depend on the number of participants)

Mindanao Traditional Music

The course offers experiential learning in music-making on the gong ensembles of Mindanao: Maranao kulintang, Maguindanao palabunibuniyen, and Manobo ahung tangungguan. Number notation is used as the strategy of teaching traditional music in these gong ensembles. Level I – 3 days / Level II – 3 days / Level III – 3 days

Field Music Research

The course introduces the students the rudiments of field music research and the methods for transcribing these into music notation. The field study includes methods on how to interview people on the context of music-making (vocal and instrumental), and answers to how the instruments are played, when these are played, where these are played, and who plays what instruments. The functions of music in the community.

NOW AVAILABLE: Making Theatre: The Craft of the Stage by Steven P.C. Fernandez, DFA, 128pp. Price: P250.00

The textbook documents and shares theatre making practices in our local conditions and includes topics on making theatre, directing, organizing, and correctly appropriating indigenous elements for the stage.