“Artistic Exchanges in the Constellation 1”. “Accumulation”: Performance, Workshops, and Dramaturgical Conversation

This project consists of a series of interconnected activities designed to foster international artistic exchange and community-engaged theatre practice. On August 11, 2026, artists from Canada, the Philippines, and France will participate in a knowledge-sharing event focused on ecological dramaturgy and community-based theatre practices that engage questions of peacebuilding and social transformation.

The two subsequent events, scheduled for December 5, 2026, and May 1, 2027, will be dedicated to the development and public presentation of a new theatrical work by playwright Pepito Sumaya, whom we have commissioned for this project. These events will provide opportunities for artistic dialogue, community engagement, and the dissemination of creative research emerging from the collaboration.

(1) PSi Antiracism Advisory Committee: PSi Antiracism Advisory Committee: Under the direction of the Officer of Antiracist Actions and Practices, the committee collaboratively works on projects, events,
and opportunities with the purpose of continuing research and education on issues of race and performance, considering pathways to engage the organization more effectively in antiracist and anticolonialist practices.

(2) Sining Kambayoka: Sining Kambayoka is a university-based theatre company at the Mindanao State University Marawi under the artistic directorship of Pepito Sumayan.

(3) Co.ERASGA: Founded by choreographer and dancer Alvin Erasga Tolentino in 2000, Co.ERASGA has a distinguished international reputation with its vision of hybrid dance, diversity and collaborations with other artistic practices and multimedia.

MSU IIT Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG)

Pepito Sumaya is a folk form theater practitioner and faculty member of e-Turo Dula Online Course Program of National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) – National Committee on Dramatic Arts in Mindanao in 2020 to 2022 and initially trained in performing arts and theater directing at the Sining Kambayoka of the Mindanao State University (MSU), Marawi City. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Public Administration, Diploma in Theater- in-Education, Master of Science in Community Development and master’s in public administration* at the said university, respectively. He obtained his post-graduate course in Anthropology at the Uppsala University, Sweden in 2022 and Heritage Study course at the University of Tartu, Estonia in 2024 being an OCSEAN scholar under the EU-European Commission with Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Grant. Currently, he is the artistic director of the MSU-Sining Kambayoka Ensemble of the Mindanao State University, Main Campus, Marawi City, Philippines.

Alvin Tolentino is an award winning Filipino Canadian choreographer and founder of Co.ERASGA Dance Society. With extensive international tours and artistic collaborations, Tolentino has featured dance works across the world with showcases in venues in Canada, the Philippines, Japan, Belgium, USA, France, Dominican Republic, Croatia, Switzerland, Singapore, Venezuela, UK, Thailand, Laos, China, Uruguay, and Germany.

Dr. Maurice Moore is a first-generation Black and nonbinary scholar, artist, performer, and educator whose interdisciplinary practice moves across drawing, performance, visual poetry, and sound. Grounded in Black and nonbinary ways of knowing, Moore’s work explores mark-making as embodied research, using euphoria, dysphoria, and numbphoria as critical strategies. Their practice—often articulated through the ongoing project Drawing While Black—treats drawing as a performative, relational act that collapses boundaries between studio, stage, and classroom. Moore is the author of Drawing While Black Mixtape Vol. 1 (Versal Journal, 2022), winner of the Amsterdam Open Book Prize, a book of visual poems investigating queer mark-making as a site of resistance and possibility. Since 2011, Moore’s work has been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at venues including the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD) in London, UK; Calabar Gallery in New York, NY; the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC; the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, CA; the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC; Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC; and the Modern Art Museum Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, Korea.

Dr. Dennis Gupa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre and Film. He is also a theatre director and applied theatre practitioner. He received his Master’s degree in theatre at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Masters of Fine Arts in Dircting for Theatre at the University of British Columbia, and his PhD in Applied Theatre at the University of Victoria.