I am so glad to have had a chance to collaboratively reflect on the translation and essay-to-performance process for Austere Rex Gamao’s Ambot sa Essay Kwoah. This essay was first commissioned in English by dear friend Erika M. Carreon for Cordite Poetry Review (see it here) before I picked it up for an experimental translation to Sward in Art+Australia. Queen Ian Rafael Ramirez was brought on board to do a further experimental translation from the Art and Australia archive (Tony Tuckson’s “Primitive Art” in ART and Australia) and worked directly with the Baklang Kanals to stage the performance in University of the Philippines Diliman.
Australasian Drama Studies is currently behind a paywall. This issue can be found here.
Alternatively, shoot me a message and I can email it to you.
The formal abstract for the article as follows
This collaboratively written article highlights the care work at play in the authoring and staging of an agi’s experience by writer Austere Rex Gamao and Manila-based genderqueer collective Ang Mga Baklang Kanal (BKNL) respectively. It includes a first-hand discussion of discomfort experienced by Gamao in the process of textually translating the written essay from English, published in Cordite Poetry Review, to Sward-Hiligaynon, published in Art+Australia. Gamao’s discomfort, mirrored by the uncertainty of BKNL’s audience, is eased but not fully released in nervous laughter whenever performers and stage elements give permission to laugh through linguistic context, lighting and other stage and performative cues. These linguistic and dramatic translations of humour are discussed in relation to Glissant’s notion of opacity and as strategies of resisting queer erasure. We underline the laughter that results from this to open up the potential of experiencing queer time, a glimpse of queer futurity in the here and now.
My personal growth in this project, from the initial approach to this final article, has been immense. I learnt a lot from the generosity of the people I worked with, who were willing to show me sass and accept my illiteracy in Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Sward, and the community. I hope that I may have other opportunities to work with these artists and scholars in the future.
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