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and on Next To Normal: Which brings me to Pangan, who’s the best that I’ve seen him here. Without the trappings of a more complex because highly fictionalized or fantastic role, with only the seeming simplicity of a father and husband character, what’s here is pure unadulterated Pangan, and a voice that can move from optimism to helplessness to nostalgic in equal turns. But it’s in that breakdown scene that Pangan proves himself theater actor, with anguish that echoes with… Continue reading »
TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here. Aureus Solito and his search for magic what struck me about Aureus Solito’s TEDx talk… Continue reading »
<…> if these two talks of Dalisay are any indication <…> what our texts have and what ails our texts by default given colonial history <is that> we are out of the Commonwealth loop <…> and while American colonization gave us the English that we use for our writing, we all seem to have forgotten that, and we’re like the bastard children that appear at the family Christmas dinner. There are no favors to be had from our colonial fathers… Continue reading »
It seems like a foregone conclusion: how else would Singapore do a writers’ festival but with seriousness and business-like professionalism? What’s striking about the first few days of the Singapore Writers’ Festival (SWF) though is this: while business sense would dictate the selling of books in relation to the event, there’s also a clear sense here of going beyond that. And the SWF does so by showing us how literature and writing might on the one hand be celebrated as… Continue reading »
and how art criticism fails in this country. stop talking to the artists! start looking at their work! The endless gaze in Digging In The Dirt In literature we always say the author is dead, a convenient and highly questionable concept really that allows the reader a pretense of reading only the text, ignoring as much as possible the notion of the writer as center of truth. In reviewing art, it still seems like a contradiction to do an interview with… Continue reading »
<…> Enjoy the stories, admire the craft. Then put it in your backpack and go. As far as you can, for as long as you can afford it. Preferably someplace where you have to think in one language and buy groceries in another. Get a job there. Rent a room. Stick around. Do something. If it doesn’t work out, do something else. Whatever it is, you will be able to use it in the stories you will write later. And… Continue reading »
and questions on national and cultural, and the crisis that is Philippine dance, that can only resonate for the rest of culture industry in this country. excerpt from the piece by Myra Beltran: <…this> greatly changed environment <…> also signals that the bill can be examined in terms of its assumptions about the “national” and “culture” (Philippine culture). These are the discourses which inform the bill. These discourses summoned by the bill then imply that a deeper discussion on this… Continue reading »
A text like Peter Pan banks on wonder, given an audience of children who would be overwhelmed by the idea of flight. But it also banks on an adult audience that can go back to an amount of youthful innocence, given the familiar. Of course this familiarity can also be this text’s undoing, owing to its many versions, some more iconic than others (think Robin Williams as Peter). Any staging / rendering / version then can only really be successful… Continue reading »
this was previously published in Metakritiko when it was still cool and fearless (haha). and because i don’t like repeating myself, and we were brought up to not talk about ourselves, am posting it here as tribute to pinoy music on the one hand, birthday greeting on the other. for Kuya, without whom this blog (and therefore my writing) wouldn’t be possible, and who should really be writing more often, too. cheers! Mix Tapes for the Story of Distance: or OPM? Music… Continue reading »
because i’ve been thinking about, which is to say struggling with, writing and self-centeredness, this can only be serendipitous: a piece on poetry, but which is really about writing, from mabi david: To write is to come to an awareness, says Carolyn Forché, which I believe wholeheartedly. I write because it is the way available to me of thinking about the world, of apprehending experience. Thus is the self implicated in the poem. We must write with vigorous self-reflection and… Continue reading »
In the age of doing Manila runs of foreign plays versus doing the more creative task of adapting these for local audiences, Dulaang UP’s Titus Andronicus: Tinarantadong Asintado can only be valuable. Directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio and adapted into Filipino by Layeta Bucoy, what’s remarkable about this work is that it does justice to the Shakespeare original while delivering a contemporary narrative that by all counts is a success. The moment pop/street music filled the theater, the moment the clown… Continue reading »
it’s been quiet here, which isn’t to say that it’s been quiet where i’m at. been finishing up an MA thesis that’s gone on for too long, and is more about closure to a life lived in the academe more than anything else. while that’s happening, i’ve had more interesting conversations than usual, including conversations about art and the state of things in this country, ones that are kept off the record, unspoken of. sometimes it’s limited to Facebook, other times… Continue reading »
we don’t. but let me give you some proof. Enjoy Division is a group exhibit not just with a wonderful title, but which had a curatorial note by Antares Gomez Bartolome that the Light&Space Contemporary gallery decided to put down. the said note was critical of Malaysian curator Adeline Ooi’s assessment of Philippine contemporary art which looked down on us, i.e., “We already know you were conquered by the Spanish, sold to the Americans, raped by the Japanese and totally fucked… Continue reading »
it was daunting more than anything else, though at some point all that operated was an amount of yabang: i’ve seen friends do this before, i’ve seen wonderful beautiful local books happen without a big publisher behind it, without press releases coming out in papers. and this book, i knew, deserved the major major effort of blood/sweat/tears because it is about family and history. because it is unconventional in form, an almost refusal to fall within the genres that are familiar,… Continue reading »
let me skip the fact that this artwork is old, i.e., this is the nth version of it that’s been exhibited. let me not do a review of the whole exhibit Kulo here, as i hope to still be able to do that with more time in my hands. in fact, this i feel is more urgent. elsewhere i praise pinky webb. since two days ago, i have completely changed my mind about her. by this fact: upon a complaint, and… Continue reading »
I’ve got faith in Soxy Topacio. Always have. Especially after that wonderful comedy that was Ded Na Si Lolo (2009) that could only rock the world of anyone who follows local movies – local comedies in particular. Topacio brilliantly captured the tragicomedy that is death and the family in a lower class setting without making it seem like a judgment, or an apologia for that matter. Ah, but maybe that was a movie that was by most counts about being an indie,… Continue reading »
had an infinitely emotional conversation with this non-fiction narrative of a review of Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa. The teacher of literature, Karen (Jean Garcia), is enigmatic for a reason, but effective like every literature teacher should be. She reads poetry and it comes alive, she asks questions about it with certainty. She is unsurprised by any of her students’ assertions, even as these are necessarily about sexuality and desire, love and intimacy, the act of gazing. Even as… Continue reading »