KURIS International Theater Festival & Workshops

The KURIS THEATER FESTIVAL is an annual convergence of Negros and Panay based theater groups with invited theater practitioners, scholars and artists from other countries and regions in the Philippines. Formally organized by the Teatrokon – West Visayas Theater Network in 2014, the festival aims to provide a venue for theater artists to showcase their works, strengthen their network and linkages;

and share the different forms of theatre and performance to the Negrense Community as part of the National Arts Month Celebration

The history of the Kuris Theater Festival started way back in 2009 during the conception of the International Playwright’s Forum (IPF) Dramaturgy Workshops in the Philippines out of the small group meeting of Jasen Boko (IPF President) and August Andong (Project Director) with Tanya Lopez (Secretary of the Committee on Dramatic Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts), and the young theater practitioners in Bacolod City. The exchange during the meeting led to the discussion on “What is Dramaturgy?” and “What is a Dramaturge?”

Knowing that community and university-based theaters in the Philippines are thriving, Mr. Boko then raised the possibility of having the IPF in the Philippines to conduct a Dramaturgy Workshops to further boost the Philippines’ Theater Arts movement and to advance the creative expressions of Filipino theater artists. Keeping its commitment to develop potential dramaturges in the Philippines, to establish a stronger worldwide network between the Filipino and international playwrights and to facilitate exchange and stage readings of plays, the IPF conducted the 2012 Philippine Dramaturgy Workshop and Discussion Series and the 2013 Dramaturgy Colloquium-Workshop Caravan. The Dramaturgy Project is the pioneering project of the IPF in order to reach out various countries in the world and to educate and train them on the basics of dramaturgy, playwriting and theater arts. In the first three years of conducting the Dramaturgy projects in the Philippines, the IPF was able to increase the awareness and knowledge of Filipino professional theater artists in Metro Manila on the study and practice of Dramaturgy and was able to train almost 200 young theater practitioners in the regions thereby creating a new generation of theater artists and potential dramaturges in the Philippines. Since the First Dramaturgy Workshop, a performance from community and university based groups participating in the workshops was organized as part of the culminating activity of the Bacolod Workshops with the performance of “Room Service” by the Maskara Theater Ensemble (University of St. La Salle) in 2012. In 2013 two more theater groups, the Kanlaon Theater Guild (Colegio San Agustin-Bacolod) and Kalingaw Teatro Hiligaynon (West Negros University) expanded the performance into a mini festival. In 2014, the Teatrokon – West Visayas Theater Network formally organized the Kuris Theater Festival as supplementary component of the Bacolod Dramaturgy Workshops to provide a venue for regional groups to collaborate, exchange and strengthen their network and linkages as well as expose their performances to the International Playwrights Forum. In 2015, Kuris Theater Festival took another step by inviting the participation of the IPF Dramaturges to read their work thereby exposing our regional groups to foreign style and sensibilities. The activity became three pronged when the organizers invited to Women’s Playwright’s International – Philippines to hold a Satellite Readathon on Women’s Plays to accommodate regional writers who cannot go to Manila for the WPI National Readathon. Women writers who joined the WPI Philippines Satellite Readathon and the young directors featured during the Kuris Festival were mostly graduates of the IPF Workshops conducted in the previous years, thus indicating the impact of the Dramaturgy workshop to its participants and the community at large. In 2016, the 3rd Kuris Theater Festival became the official flagship project integrating Performances from West Visayas Theater Groups with special participation from International Theater Artists; the International Theater Institute (ITI) Int'l Playwright's Forum Dramaturgy Workshop and Women Playwright's Int'l (WPI) Regional Readathon and added Script Development Workshop for emerging playwrights in the regions – to further compliment and strengthen the movement of empowering the regional theater artists to share their stories. Kuris 2017 was highlighted with a Management of Theater Organizations Workshop of Indian Director Vijay Padaki, and a Performance Collaboration for The Birthing Trial, a play written by Ursula Werdenberg (translated through the assistance of the Goethe Institute and Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia and staged by The Performance Laboratory, Inc.). The festival also hosted the World Premiere of the performance of Rising Seas, an original composition of Swedish Musician Anders Paulsson calling attention to environmental protection. In 2018, in celebration of the Arts Month, the National Committee on Dramatic Arts collaborated with Kuris by inviting it to be the festival component of the Tampok: Visayas Theater Festival and Congress which brought together theater artists from all over the Visayas Region. In 2019, Kuris Theatre Festival expanded its reach through the participation of four Canada-based artists who conducted Dance and Theater workshops, lectures, artist dialogue and professional development on administrative and grant writings in. collaboration with the Babaylan Festival or Bago City. In 2020, Kuris celebrated its 7th year with the theme "Theatre Without Boundaries" by showcasing the performances in various spaces, for continued growth and exploration. Despite the threat of the COVID Pandemic, the festival was performed in various spaces and participated by school and community theatre groups.