Kuwentuhan (Talkstory) Collective Performance

Kuwentuhan (Talkstory) Collective Performance featuring: Arlene Biala, Javier O. Huerta, Urayoán Noel, Barbara Jane Reyes, Aimee Suzara, Lehua M. Taitano, Angela Narciso Torres

“How one creates a poem is as interesting as the spaces in one’s life.” —Al Robles (1930–2009)

Our three-day Kuwentuhan (Talkstory) residency culminates in a Collective Performance featuring all seven poet/performers utilizing the extent of the beautiful loft space on the 3rd Floor at McRoskey Mattress Co. in a simultaneous interpretation of their version of Kuwentuhan, involving the audience in a participatory role. The evening’s performance will be documented for an experimental short film by SFSU’s DocFilm Institute.

Kuwentuhan (Talkstory) takes the Tagalog term, a phoneticized form adapted through the colonial Spanish, as its title, proposition, and starting point. Kuwentuhan (“necessary step towards big talk,” by one definition) is orally based, informal in nature, usually spontaneous, and is always an opportunity for people to converge and share. It occurs in all kinds of social spaces as talkstory circle. We envision this collaboration between artist(s), audiences, and the Poetry Center, as a way of enlarging this circle beyond ethnic boundaries, in contested urban spaces.

Many thanks to the Manilatown Heritage Foundation at I-Hotel, Alley Cat Books, the Bayanihan Community Center, McRoskey Mattress Co., The Green Arcade, DocFilm Institute, poster artist Trinidad Escobar, and the Creative Work Fund.