This week, our editors-at-large bring us the latest in arts festivals, awards, and innovative adaptations across the literary landscape! From new spins on James Joyce’s Ulysses for its hundredth anniversary to a thriving theatre festival in the Philippines, read on to learn more!
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Ireland
It is festival time across Europe, and Galway, Ireland’s West Coast pearl, is gearing up for its International Arts Festival (GIAF), to kick off in 3 days and go on through July 30. The “balmy, bohemian” city (as ireland.com poetically describes it) is already buzzing with the vibe as events ranging from special-effect-rich theatrical, musical, and circus performances to public conversations with awarded war-covering journalists and writers are boisterously advertised on seafront billboards, dedicated websites, local TV and radio stations, and even on announcement screens on greyhounds across the country.
On the literary front, James Joyce’s spirit looms as large as ever—and particularly so on the hundredth anniversary of Ireland’s most notorious book ever, Ulysses—only now in more playful and cross-artform shades. Ulysses 2.2, a collaborative project between ANU, Landmark Productions, and Museum of Literature Ireland, will be featured with two independent acts. The first one will be You’ll See, an obvious word-play on, and homophone of, Joyce’s title, produced by Branar, one of Ireland’s leading theatre companies for children. You’ll See has been announced as a mix of “live performance, intricate paper design, an original score, and Joyce’s odyssey” that will enchant prior fans as well as all those who haven’t read the book yet.
The second notable act will be an installation created by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara in collaboration with Hatchett Sound Furniture, titled Wordspace. It will be displayed throughout the festival in a very scenic area (on Salthill Promenade) and, as part of Ulysses 2.2, it has been commissioned to ‘illustrate’ the “Proteus” section of the novel and has been devised as both site-specific and intermedia, featuring audio recorded excerpts of “Proteus” (read by Olwen Fouéré and directed by Louise Lowe). The subtitle, also taken from said section, “Watch it Flow Past from Here,” not only reads as a potentially surprising pun that was perhaps not initially intended by Joyce—the past (of Ulysses) as relevant here/now and onward—but also resonates with both the maritime surroundings and the current political and cultural challenges.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
After the success of Bicol’s theatre festival, Pista Nin Teatrong Bikolnon, which was partaken by community and university-based theatre companies across the eastern Philippine region, came the Second Bikol Book Festival (BBF). A product of collaboration among Ateneo de Naga University (ADNU) Press, the bookstore and publisher Savage Mind, academic organisations, and local government units, BBF consisted of performances, mobile book fairs, community book donation drives, start-up and collaboration workshops, dialogues and discussions, art therapy and read-along sessions, which gathered artists, writers, and filmmakers from within the region and beyond.
New ADNU Press titles launched include Franciscan friar-historian Marcos de Lisboa’s Vocabulario de la lengua Bicol, a 700-page, 17th century colonial dictionary co-translated from the Spanish into the English by Naga City-born Evelyn Caldera Soriano (who served as director of the European Studies programme at the Ateneo de Manila University where she teaches Spanish and French) and her mother Leticia Arejola Hilado de Caldera. Joining this dictionary, which was branded as the “most important work on the Bikol language,” were Abdon M Balde Jr’s trilingual Kun Nata Mayong Demonyo sa Malabog: Usipon (Why the Devil Does Not Visit Malabog Anymore: Folktales); diplomat Virgilio A Reyes Jr’s historical novella, Nuestro Perdido Eden; Delfin Fresnoza’s selected stories translated into Gubatnon and (Tagalog-based) Filipino languages; and the latest from the Bikolnon Biography Series—a biography on medical doctor and writer Patricio Janer by Raniela Barbaza. Emmanuel Barrameda’s Virac: Tatlong Sanaysay (Virac: Three Essays) and H Francisco Peñones Jr’s Iriga: Essays were also the latest addition to Savage Mind’s Pangangalagkag Series on place-based essay collections.
Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for Bikol Essay and Translation awardee Fr Wilmer S Tria, former ADNU Press director, served as one of the keynote speakers to BBF’s first day. Danton Remoto, translator of classic Tagalog novels The Preying Birds (Mga Ibong Mandaragit) by Amado V Hernandez and Radiance and Sunrise (Banaag at Sikat) by Lope K Santos, now out from Penguin Random House Southeast Asia, was also present at the literary fora. Virgilio S Almario’s poetry collection Heartland (ADNU Press, 2015) translated into English by Marne Kilates from the Filipino original Muli, Sa Kandungan ng Lupa (De La Salle University Publishing House, 1994) spotlighted the book presentations along with Remoto’s Ranga: Writings on Bikol (ADNU Press, 2017); Sonny Corpuz Sendon’s poetry chapbook Vertigo (Aklat Ulagad); Ira Valenzuela’s young adult novel Alon and Lila’s Last Summer Before Doomsday (Adarna Publishing House); and a new ADNU Press edition of Maria Lilia F Realubit’s Bikol Dramatic Tradition, originally published in 1976. The BBF boasts itself as a region-wide festival as events were held across the municipalities of Calabanga, Camalig, Tiwi, Tigaon, and the cities of Naga, Sorsogon, Iriga, and the islands of Ticao and Masbate.
Two weeks from now, on July 28 and 29, Bicol region’s mytho-history will be transported to the stage through Philippine Ballet Theatre’s 37th season offering, Ibalon: The Love of Handyong and Oriol, at the Samsung Performing Arts Theatre in Makati City. The ballet, inspired by Ibalong, a fragment from a Bicolano epic, tells the story of Handyong (The Warrior) and Oriol (The Cursed Princess). Ibalon (or Ibalong) is also the pre-Hispanic name of Bicol region.
On international ventures, Savage Mind’s An Apartment in Naga (2022), a collection of flash fiction pieces and graphic illustrations by Panch Alvarez, will be translated into the Czech by Lucie Sombra Lukačovičová. This translation project was made possible by Martin Štefko of the Nakladatelství Golden Dog, an indie press in Czechia which specialises in the horror genre. Alvarez has recently represented the country in a collaborative artists residency for a climate crisis graphic poetry project with Filipino poet Joel M Toledo at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre in Lake Como, Italy.
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Read more on the Asymptote blog:
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (July 7, 2023)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (June 30, 2023)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (June 23, 2023)