The invitation to the Cebu Lit Fest on June 27 at the Ayala Mall Activity Center was short and succinct.
“Come,” Hendri Go, head of Little Boy Productions and the brains behind the festival, said.
Interested but noncommittal, I said, sige.
Fresh from auditing the 2014 Silliman University National Writers Workshop, I had prose and poetry in my mind and this was most definitely about that.
I hesitated only because after a long dry spell caused by the deluge that was Tropical Storm “Ondoy,” big-ticket writing projects were finally coming in, and I wanted to be available when clients came a-calling.
Hendri sent me the festival schedule—which further piqued my interest. The blurb read: “A full day of everything literary—talks, moderated conversations, exhibits, demos, presentations, a book launch, and a music and poetry jam at end of day.”
It featured Cebuano writers—to my shame, people totally unknown to me—many of whom were not just Palanca Award winners but also published and performed in the US.
The festival also includes young writers who used music, technology and art to further education and promote advocacies. I had to hear them, read their work, meet them!
So I began shuffling schedules and reallocating budgets. I would be cutting things close, but, just a few days before June 27, I booked my flight and a hotel then called Hendri to say I was going.
I sauntered through Cebu’s Ayala Mall on the way to breakfast and caught the producers putting the final touches to the venue—Kenneth Cobonpue furniture were being arranged on stage and in an informal lounge area; a cupcake tower was being set up on buffet tables; merchandisers were setting up books and Lit Fest swag; and a sculpture piece reminiscent of the Iron Throne was brought in as centerpiece of the stage.
Called “Children and Kings, ” it was created by Mark Deutsch of Happy Garaje, who also made the Cebu Lit Fest logo, visuals and video teasers, and is made of what looked like wood, bamboo and children’s toys. Of course, I just had to have my photo taken on it.
The day had exactly 14 scheduled activities coming one after the other in quick succession with no breaks in between. The whole point was to pick and choose which ones you wanted to listen to and take lunch and/or pee breaks whenever.
I was resolved to listen in on everything. After all, Little Boy Productions had prepared canapés, cupcakes and pizza for the guests and I wasn’t going to starve.
New Yorker in Cebu
First off was a talk by Linda Faigao Hall, an New York-based Cebuano playwright, who spoke about “Ten Things You Need to Know about (What Else but) Being a Cebuano Playwright in NYC.”
A short previously unscheduled “Playwrights One on One” followed that between Linda and I. Yes—once Hendri heard I was coming, he asked if he could put me in the program and how could I say no?
The conversation was on the differences between getting produced in the US and here… and though our experiences were vastly different (she had to push to have her plays produced while mine were largely commissioned and thus assured of being performed), the processes were similar.
From then on, my plans of listening to all the talks went haywire. I was introduced to some of the other speakers, students approached me with questions, and I met several very interesting women—writers as well as teachers—who were in support of the Lit Fest.
I had a chance to talk briefly to Ligaya Rabago of Cebu UP about the lack of material in Cebuano; ways and means to resolve this problem; the state of Cebuano theater in particular and Philippine theater in general.
Seated at a table eating pancit bihon and sipping tea with venerated Cebuano author Erma Cuizon and a balik-Cebu poetess recently back from the US, Allene Angelica, we shared each other’s work methods and processes; discussed blog writing, the state of education and literature in the Philippines and the world; thought of ways to make the 2015 Lit Fest bigger and better, while making running commentaries on whatever was going on onstage.
At one point, Linda Faigao Hall joined in—as did Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, another US-based Cebuano writer featured in the day’s activity.
I missed several talks and moderated conversations because of these more intimate conversations—Moderated Palanca 101 (A Basic Guide to Joining the Palanca Awards); Andrew Buenaviaje of iLearners’ Promoting Literacy across the Mountains and Seas; How to Get Published (the trials and travails of getting one’s work “out there”); Lawrence Ypil’s talk on Seashells, Shorts and the Poetry of History; and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s discourse on how Cebu inspired her writings.
Standouts
Special standouts in the day’s program were presentations by:
Cris Evert Lato of the Basadours, which promote reading through storytelling in various parts of the Philippines—many of them so remote they receive little or no attention from the educational power-that-be.
Jay Chiongbian on Pechakucha—something I had never heard about till the Lit Fest but is apparently all the rage. Wikipiedia calls it “a presentation style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total). The format, which keeps presentations concise and fast-paced, powers multiple-speaker events called Pechakucha Nights.” The samples shown that day were fascinating and that is one more thing definitely worth looking into.
Cattski Espina’s Interactive Demo on Storytelling though Songs—the subject matter was not only riveting; her voice was also compelling. She had me totally convinced we should be doing much more of this!
A very informative conversation with Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Linda Faigao Hall and Lawrence Ypil about Writing in Diaspora, moderated by a she-can-give-Kris-Aquino-a-run-for-her-money-and-win-hands-down Jude Bacalso.
At about 6:30 p.m., my college best friend swept me away for dinner, so I totally missed Hope Sabanpan Yu Book Launch of “The Other(ed) Woman”—I did buy the book, though—and the Lit Fest Jam, a concert celebrating Cebuano music and poetry, showcasing local performers and students, and I heard with Cebu’s Mayor Mike Rama himself (who gave this project his full support) rendering a few songs.
Even with all the things I missed, the Cebu Lit Fest was already well worth the trip. I felt what Hendri and crew must have felt like when I chanced upon them on my way back to the hotel. They were all slumped in various positions of exhaustion on the now empty stage and the fast emptying mall. They looked tired and happy and, yes, proud of what they had accomplished! And I, too, went home with that feeling—tired, happy and proud of what had been accomplished that day!
Because, if based only on what I learned, whom I met, what I saw, then Philippine literature is alive and well and flourishing… and Cebu and the Cebu Lit Fest have got a lot to do with that!