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TIONGSON, Nicanor Gadia
Visiting Research Fellow
(Term: May 1, 2009 - Decembr 31, 2009)
Division of Area Informatics
Theatre and Film Studies

Research Interests

I am currently doing studies on the role and power of humor in helping to bring about social change in Philippine society. In particular, I am interested in how the ancient phenomenon of the pusong (trickster) or the pusong spirit has been employed by the “common man” to erode the hegemonic rule of the perceived oppressors of the “ poor and powerless” at critical moments in the country’s history, namely : a) the period before the revolution against Spain in the 1890s; b) the early decades of the 20th century when American colonial rule was imposed on the people; c) the three-years of the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945; and d) the period of the Cold War and the U.S.-sponsored Philippine republic in the 1950s to the 1960s. The studies will focus on the different manifestations of the pusong or the pusong spirit in oral literature, the formal theatre, the comics, and the cinema.

Academic Career

Dr. Tiongson is a senior professor at the U.P. Film Institute of the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines, in Diliman, Quezon City, where he teaches courses on film theory and criticism, film and the other arts, film genres and auteurs, history of the Filipino film, and media and society. He has also taught at the Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University. He was visiting professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (1989), the Osaka University of Foreign Studies (1994-1998), and University of California, Berkeley (2001-2002, 2006). From 1986 to 1994, he was appointed by President Corazon Aquino as vice president and artistic director of the premiere institution of arts and culture in the Philippines, the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He also served briefly as chairman of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (2001) and was dean of the U.P. College of Mass Communication (2003-2006) where he established Plaridel, the only journal on media and communication in the Philippines today.

Publications

Dr. Tiongson has published pioneering books on Philippine theatre, such as History and Aesthetics of the Sinakulo and Other Religious Plays in Malolos (1975, original in Pilipino), History of the Komedya in the Philippines : 1766-1982 (1982, original in Pilipino), Sinakulo (1999), Komedya (1999), and Salvador F. Bernal : Designing the Stage (2007), as well as books on the Filipino film, such as The Urian Anthology 1970-1979 (1983), The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 (2001), and The Cinema of Manuel Conde (2008). He also wrote the book The Women of Malolos (2004) on the pioneer feminists of the 1880s who were praised by Jose Rizal for their courage in asking for a school from the Spanish Governor-General. During his term as Artistic Director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Dr. Tiongson edited and published the 10-volume CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art and the 30-part Tuklas Sining monographs and videos on the literary, visual, performing, and media arts in the Philippines. As a creative writer, he has written three full-length plays (the historical sarswelas Pilipinas Circa 1907 and Basilia ng Malolos, and a contemporary interpretation of Rizal’s novels Noli at Fili Dekada 2000), six librettos for dance (including a contemporary dance production Realizing Rama) and several scripts for documentaries on Philippine theatre, costumes and festivals.

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