Eric V. Dela Cruz

12/16/2025

Thank you, UP Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts! 💖💖💖

𝐃𝐒𝐂𝐓𝐀 𝐀𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐧𝐢 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

As the department values and celebrates excellence and impact, we would like to congratulate one of our alumni for his outstanding achievement!

Filipino theater-maker and UP DSCTA alumnus Eric V. Dela Cruz has been chosen as Artist-in-Residence for 2025 at Harvard University’s Asia Center, becoming one of the first two Filipinos in the program. He co-led “Sensing Stories, Shaping Change,” an immersive workshop exploring how sensory awareness transforms lived experiences and social issues into participatory performance. Culminating in the panel “Performing Narrative Change: Participatory Theater in the Philippines” and his talk “From Participation to Attunement: Reclaiming the Senses in Philippine Theatre,” Dela Cruz demonstrated how Filipino frameworks of care, storytelling, and relational practice expand participatory theater into intercultural spaces. His work connects community engagement, sensory dramaturgy, and social imagination, showcasing a vibrant example of Philippine theater on the global stage.

We are proud of you. Mabuhay!

11/15/2025

Thank you, UP College of Arts and Letters!!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

UP College of Arts and Letters alumnus, theater-maker, educator, and dramaturg Eric Villanueva Dela Cruz has successfully concluded his transformative tenure as one of the inaugural Filipino artists selected for the prestigious Harvard University Asia Center Artists in Residence Program (2025). Dela Cruz, alongside co-resident Abigail G. Billones, Program Director of PETA Lingap Sining, was celebrated for bringing a unique, community-rooted practice into one of the world's leading academic institutions.

The residency, designed to support Asian artists whose work intersects culture, identity, and social transformation, provided a critical platform for Dela Cruz's process-based framework: the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW).

Dela Cruz's methodology, honed over two decades of artistic practice and research in the Philippines, is characterized by its distinct interweaving of performance, sensory design, and community storytelling. CSAW integrates embodied listening, participatory theater, and sensory dramaturgy to actively engage participants in narratives of collective recovery and care.

“This residency allowed me to deepen my inquiry into how the senses can become tools for empathy and repair,” says Dela Cruz. “It was also illuminating to see how a Filipino framework of care and storytelling resonates within an intercultural academic setting like Harvard — opening new possibilities for dialogue and shared imagination.”

(L) Dr. Vicenzo Bollettino, Director, Program on Resilient Communities, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; Abigail Billones, Program Director, PETA Lingap Sining; Rachelle Walsh, Executive Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Professor Michael Puett, Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Eric V. Dela Cruz, Creative Navigator, TAXI Theater / PETA Senior Artist-Teacher; and Aurelien Bellucci, Associate, Harvard University Asia Center

https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/announcements/interview-asia-center-2025-artists-residence-abigail-g-billones-and-eric-v-dela-cruz

11/07/2025

Last night, I led an interactive seminar for PETA’s Artist-Teacher Training, “The Actor as Revolutionary: Context, Contradiction, Creation — tracing the evolution of acting and performer training from ancient ritual to contemporary practice.

Rather than just running through techniques, I wanted to open up why these systems emerged — how each technique was created to answer a specific problem in its own time and context. That question — of what each technique was really trying to solve — is what continues to guide my work on Ganap na Pagganap: Acting for Filipinos and the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW) / Kalik(h)asan.

With PETA’s artist-teachers, the conversation naturally deepened — beyond performance into how these techniques help us sense, teach, and transform our own contexts in the Philippines. Because for artist-teachers, acting isn’t only about telling stories; it’s also about shaping the ways we listen, connect, and make meaning together.

Grateful to share space with my PETA family and welcome the new batch of PETA artist-teachers — and to keep reimagining what acting and teaching can become in our evolving world in our context as Filipinos.

10/07/2025

TAXI Theater turns 9 today. 🚕

My journey in theater began in PETA, where I learned that theater is never just what happens on stage — it’s what happens around it and after it. That ethos — of linking art with lived realities — became part of my DNA.

Years later, I found myself extending that spirit into new terrain: the sensory dimension — where taste, touch, sound, and smell become tools for connection, care, and imagination.

On October 7, 2016, I launched TAXI (Theater. Applied. eXperiential. Immersive.) — first as a platform, then as a living practice. It became a vehicle for collaboration across disciplines, a space to reimagine how stories can be co-authored through presence and participation.

Over time, TAXI grew from a series of projects into an ecosystem — an ever-evolving inquiry into how we stay alive to each other in a world that keeps fragmenting. Along the way, through collaborations, residencies, and encounters, pieces of a puzzle began to form. After years of reflection, a picture started to emerge — a set of interwoven practices that now guide TAXI’s constellation.

What I see now is not an organization, but a constellation — people, places, and processes connected by shared sensibility. From these constellations surfaced three living practices:

🌿 CSAW / Kalik(h)asan (Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop)
The way of training — cultivating awe, presence, and material agency. Awakening the senses, re-grounding communities.

🌊 RSD / Dramatuhiya ng Buklurang Pandama (Relational Sensory Dramaturgy)
The way of making — crafting performances through sensory montage, where touch, sound, smell, and silence shape the structure of relation.

✨ Talangkas (Constellatory Scoring)
The way of composing — a navigational method that maps connection through fragments and resonances rather than linear lines, tracing how meaning moves between people, senses, and events.

Together, these form the ecosystem that continues what TAXI has always stood for — transforming social connection into sensory architecture, and community into a choreography of care.

Something is revving quietly again — slow, steady, alive.
And I’m grateful to everyone who has shared this road with me.

Here’s to the next intersection.

10/07/2025

05 Oct 2025

Exploring Cambridge and downtown Boston courtesy of this amazing couple . 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼
- Radcliffe Yard
- Loeb Drama Center
- Boston Common
- Boston Public Garden
- Church of the Covenant

Thanks for opening up your home to us with your friends and preparing a delicious Filipino dinner! Sinigang and Pinoy spag FTW! Thanks Annie, Bino, Tricia, Mela 🫶🏼

10/05/2025

Today was full of community, culture, and connection. 🫶🏼🫱🏼‍🫲🏽

Grateful to join the Filipino Community Conference by NU Barkada today — huge thanks to Lady Aileen for inviting me.

The speakers were so inspiring and gave me a different perspective on the FilAm community.

Virginia B. Johnson — Keynote Speaker (Emmy nominated & Cambridge-based costume designer) 
Sarai Ricciardi, Tricia Robredo & Mica Rose — Panelists

Also got to attend the workshop led by Sofia Roman.

The FilAm students even cooked Filipino dishes — everything delish. GJ Sevillano’s adobo chocolate chip 🍪 were awesome!

Wandered around Harvard afterward:
- walking through Harvard Yard remembering how many have walked those paths
- brief encounters with squirrels,
- got my pic with John Harvard (yes, the foot-touching tradition is real 😄).

Ended the day with dinner at Nine Tastes Thai Cuisine with Lady Aileen — perfect way to cap off a meaningful day.

10/04/2025

03 October 2025.
Finally at Harvard!!!
Took tons of 📸. Got an early tour from a dear friend, Aurelien.
Saw the Harvard University main gate. Apparently, there is a superstition you’re supposed to only cross it twice - when you enter the university and when you graduate.
And of course the Widener Library where I got to see one of the original prints of the Gutenberg Bible. Harvard has two.

10/02/2025

Honored to be part of this upcoming panel at Harvard Asia Center: 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲: 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 on October 9, 4–5:45 PM ET.

This event is a space to reflect on how participatory and community-centered theater can challenge dominant narratives and amplify voices often left unheard. For my part, I will share how my practice has evolved from gradual weaving of performances, workshops, and collaborations — learning how the senses can open memory, create connection, and reimagine the way we tell our stories.

Excited to exchange ideas with colleagues and reflect on how theater, in its participatory and embodied forms, can perform narrative change in our communities.

Event details + registration: https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/performing-narrative-change-participatory-theater-philippines

09/23/2025

Tuesday, October 7 & Wednesday, October 8, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m. ET
Sensing Stories, Shaping Change: An Immersive Theater Workshop
Room 030, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge
Join Asia Center 2025 Artists in Residence Abigail G. Billones and Eric V. Dela Cruz for Sensing Stories, Shaping Change--a two-day workshop that explores how our senses can awaken memory and imagination, and how these become raw material for storytelling. Through movement, sound, image theater, and collaborative exercises, participants will discover how everyday experiences can be transformed into narratives that build connection and understanding.
Follow the link below to sign up:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvIKEUnUTlGKndrKFSyb1UjKhHIND_x8k6F3u0WFWAGSEl1g/viewform

09/23/2025

✨ Sensing Stories, Shaping Change ✨
Immersive Theater Workshop | Harvard Asia Center

Last September 2024, I was invited to submit a proposal for the Harvard Asia Center Artist-in-Residence. By November, we finalized the application, and in February came the confirmation that we had been accepted. Today, I can finally share it publicly. 🙏

I am deeply grateful and humbled that such a prestigious institution has chosen to recognize the creative practice I’ve been developing quietly through my collaborative platform, TAXI Theater. This opportunity greatly affirms and encourages me to keep deepening the practice and to share it more widely — not only globally, but also in regional communities in the Philippines. Of course, it also features PETA’s community and development work through Lingap Sining.

The upcoming workshop, Sensing Stories, Shaping Change, builds on the changing narratives workshop that Gail and I first facilitated in Bicol for the Pista nin Teatro Bikolnon. For Harvard, I’ve expanded it with methods from the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW) — attuning body, space, and materials through awe, curiosity, and care. The result is a participatory, multisensory experience where the senses themselves become tools for reimagining and reshaping narratives.

If you are part of the Harvard community, you can register here:
🔗 asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/sensing-stories-shaping-change-immersive-theater-workshop

And if you’re in Boston around this time, let’s connect. 🌎

09/22/2025

🎭 14 Aug 2025. CSAW with Kasing Sining
Had the privilege of conducting a sampler session of the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW) with the members of at the HMU Balay Kabilin. 🌿✨

Through the process of Relational Sensory Dramaturgy (RSD), we explored how the body listens—how we connect and communicate more deeply by attuning to our senses, to the spaces we move through, and to the everyday around us. From there, participants layered their discoveries into a short, improvised performance that was as playful as it was profound.

Grateful for the openness and generosity of the group, and for the presence of multidisciplinary artist Raz Salvarita (Balangaw Collectives, Western Visayas), whose insights enriched the session even further. Thank you , , and for the opportunity to share with this talented group.

Always exciting to witness how simple exercises in sensing and attunement can spark creativity, collaboration, and new ways of telling stories. 💛

Additional 📸 from