International performance studies confab at DLSU, UP

Performance scholars, artists, and cultural workers will gather in Manila from November 5 – 8 for the international conference of Performance Studies International (PSi) at De La Salle University-Manila (DLSU-M) and University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD), titled “PSi#21 Philippines: On Tilted Earth: Performance, Disaster, Resilience in Archipelagic Space.”

Theatre Research International Senior Editor Dr. Paul Rae of the University of Melbourne will deliver a talk and conduct a workshop on “Publishing Internationally: The View from Theatre and Performance Studies” at the opening of the conference.

Conference delegates will be welcomed by PSi President Maaike Bleeker and DLSU Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Dr. Raymond Girard Tan and College of Liberal Arts (CLA) Dean Julio Teehankee, who will be joined by Performatura Festival Director Victor Emmanuel Carmelo D. Nadera Jr, and DLSU Department of Literature OIC Chair Genevieve Asenjo. Talaandig artist Waway Saway will have a special performance at the welcome program.

Keynote speakers at DLSU are Datu Migketay Victorine Saway on “Land, Culture, and Security of the Indigenous People: The Talaandig Experience;” University of Wollongong Australia professor Dr. Merlinda Bobis “Sa Tagilid na Daga | On Tilted Earth: A Fluid Balance;” University of Melbourne professor Dr. Paul Rae on “Performing Islands: RoRo from the Visayas to Vanuatu;” PSi President and Utrecht University, Netherlands professor Maaike Bleeker on “Enacting a Sense of These Things that Happened: Performance as Thought-Apparatus.”

Day 2 will open with a plenary session on “Fluid States Philippines’ RoRo Journeys: Archipelagic Encounters” to which UPD’s professor Dr. Elena Mirano will give a response. This is a report on the “RoRo” journeys which were conducted from late March to late July 2015 covering 51 sites in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Throughout Day 2, there will be parallel panels on disaster, memory, media, and research, theatre advocacies for resilience, performance as response to large scale trauma, displacement, encounter, and response, environmental protection in the Philippines, meditations on disaster and resilience, cultural heritage protection in times of crisis,andwomen, spirituality, ecology.

DLSU’s Dr. Jeremy Chavez will moderate the plenary roundtable session on “Cultures of Disaster” that takes off from the book of the same title by Greg Bankoff (Routledge2003). Speakers are DLSU’s Antonio Contreras and poet Marjorie Evasco, UPD’s Flaudette May Datuin, playwrights Bonifacio Ilagan and Rody Vera, and PETA’s Beng Cabangon.

Throughout Day 3 of the conference, delegates will take part in “RoRo Journeys in the City: the Maritime Museum, the Golden Mosque in Quiapo and interactions with the Lumad Manilakbayan, Bahay Nakpil, a food and theatre tour of Quiapo and Binondo, and a boat tour of Marikina and Pasig rivers.

The conference moves to UP Diliman on Day 4 where the delegates will be welcomed at Abelardo Hall by UPD Chancellor Michael Tan, College of Arts and Letters (CAL) Dean Amihan Bonifacio-Remolete, and conference organizers Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and Belen Calingacion, with performances by Kontra-Gapi and the UP Singing Ambassadors.

Adelina Amparo III Umali will moderate the Keynote Panel featuring Kinnari Ecological Theatre’s and Soochow University, Taiwan’s Dr. Catherine Diamond on “Tilting Thailand: Ro-rowing over Land and Water;” UPD’s Basilio Esteban S. Villaruz; and PSi#21 Director and University of Zagreb’s Dr. Marin Blazevic.

There will be parallel panels on “The Archipelago and Beyond,” “Public Space Performance and the Art of Protest,” and “Performance in an Ecology of Contexts.”

UPD’s Dr. Flaudette May Datuin will moderate the Closing Roundtable Discussion on “Performance Studies: Encounters, Engagements, Encumbrances.” At the Abelardo Hall, various artists will perform at the closing program on “Performing Resilience, Remembering Yolanda” on the second anniversary of Typhoon Yolanda, which happened exactly on November 8, 2013.

In both DLSU and UPD, three films will be shown in a panel called“Filming Disaster and its Aftermath” organized by Mr. Teddy Co --Shiftfrom Cagayan de Oro,Nick and Chaifrom Leyte, andDapya Sang Paglaum | Waves of Hopefrom Iloilo -- the first onSendong and the latter two on Yolanda.

"Salt Body", a series of performances at high tide by Mick Douglas of RMIT University, Australia will be running at designated times for the duration of the conference.

Each evening from Day 2 onwards shall be capped by events of “Performatura: Performing Literatures Festival” organized by the Intertextual Division of CCP.Please refer to the CCP web site culturalcenter.gov.ph for more information on Performatura events.

The conference is organized by the Performance Studies Philippines based at DLSU’s Department of Literature, with the help of the DLSU Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, College of Liberal Arts (CLA) Office of Advanced Studies, and the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (BNSCWC); the Office of the Chancellor of UPD, College of Arts and Letters, Department of Arts Studies and Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, College of Music, and College of Mass Communication; the Lusong Luzon Arts and Culture Network, Inc; Back to Square One; and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

The Manila conference is the Philippines cluster of PSi#21 Fluid States: Performances of unknowing, a distributed conference program with events in the Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe, and the Americas all throughout 2015 (www.fluidstates.org).

The conference is open to the public. For inquiries, contact Anne Richie Balgos at 524-4611 local 532 or email Project Director Dr. Jazmin Llana at perform_philippines@yahoo.com.

Press release from Performance Studies International