New Member Feature: Dennis Gupa
Dr. Dennis Gupa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film. He is a theatre director, applied theatre practitioner, and Performance Studies researcher. He directs and devises transnational/intercultural and interdisciplinary performances. Using applied theatre and diasporic performance making inquiry, his practice-based-research deals on relational and decolonial processes of mobilizing communities in refuturing climate change.
Learn more about Dennis in the short interview below:
CRiCS: What brought you to academia and, more specifically, Cultural Studies?
DG: When my family moved from a coastal community in Luzon Island to an urban center in Manila, my life has changed. I began to understand from my own lived experienced about the disparities of life. I grew up in a neighborhood lacking basic social services and health programs. Early on, I witnessed community members fighting to protect their land from forced demolitions by the local government. During the rainy season, our area often experienced flooding. Interestingly, we lived very close to a well-known public university. Scholars from the university frequently visited our village for community outreach and research. Every time I saw them, I felt a rush of emotion—like love at first sight. One of our neighbors was Medardo Roda or endearingly called, “Ka Roda”, a well-known political activist who had been imprisoned during the martial law era under the late authoritarian president, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. He appeared to me as the most erudite person in our village. After his release, I would see him around the community and observe him from a distance. One day, a group of international artists performed a pantomime in our village to the delight of the locals, and I was captivated by its expressive power. Despite the disparities and aggregated inequalities looming on the horizon within our community, I saw the potential for change and the potency of creativity for social connection. While many of my childhood friends dropped out of school due to poverty, I pursued my education at the university and studied theatre.
CRiCS: What are your areas of research interest?
DG: I am a trained theatre director and performance maker. I use applied theatre as a research method to raise questions about climate justice and migration. The focus of my research is to explore a more ethical and decolonial approach to performance-making that addresses issues and questions related to the climate crisis, local ecological knowledge, migratory experiences, and transnational labour. These interests emerge from my own positionality as a scholar originally from the archipelagic Philippines and an (im)migrant in Canada. Like many transnational scholars of Filipino descent, I incorporate and complicate epistemology of home, identity formation, and migratory imaginaries vis-a-vis settler colonialism while examining climate justice and world-making in the diaspora.
CRiCS: Are there areas you would like to study or considered working on in the past, but probably won’t get to? Have you ended up doing research in an area that you didn’t expect to?
DG: I have always been intrigued by mathematics and geometry. They are beautiful academic disciplines. Perhaps if I weren’t in theatre and the arts, I would be studying algebra and fractals. Nevertheless, theatre has a distinct way of weaving different fields and connecting people together. In the past, I had this enjoyable collaborative project with a mathematician, agriculturalists, nutritionist, and geneticist. I never imagined co-creating performances that bring together various disciplines including mathematics and food science to tackle issues on colonialism and migration. My collaborations with scientists were my first taste of interdisciplinarity, an approach of knowledge making that I never thought I was actually doing even before I came to Canada as a graduate student in 2013. When you open your craft to other intellectual disciplines, it’s like opening your heart to unknown possibilities.
CRiCS: What research projects are you currently working on or plan to work on in the future?
DG: This summer I conducted my field research in the Philippines along with Asian theatre performers and scholars from India, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines. We developed a series of performances that came out of place-based inquiry and workshops with community members interested in putting theatre into action particularly around the issues of climate change in Southeast Asia. I gathered artists, marine scientists and science teachers to create applied theatre performances using traditional Asian theatre forms as pedagogic strategies in communicating ecological stewardships. We were asking questions around the ethical practice of collaboration that intends to deal with climate change and work with communities directly impacted by climate crises and ecological destruction. Thanks to Internal Research grants, I am able to begin this research that connects Canada and Asia.
CRiCS: Why do you think it’s important to have an intellectual community and the opportunities for research collaboration that CRiCS might offer?
DG: CRiCS offers opportunities for epistemological kinship. It is always exciting to find colleagues from CRiCS who are passionate about the possibilities of co-creating knowledge that allows an interweaving of discourse. The shared intellectual kindness and generosity can certainly inform our pedagogy and strengthen our research. Having been a recent member of CRiCS encourages me to reflect on creative ways of making and circulating research that broadens the agency of communities impacted by injustices, and re-center narratives, and people who continue to experience erasure and marginalization due to colonizations.
CRiCS: What has been one of your most meaningful research encounters?
DG: When I met the fishers of Tubabao Island in Eastern Samar, Philippines I began to realize that knowledge is embodied and lived. My encounter with them changed how I viewed knowledge. Most of them did not finish their secondary education but they possess elegant mathematical facility in constructing their fishing traps which underscore vernacular marine knowledge on ecological stewardship. They were generous in sharing their practice of fishing and ecological knowledge to me which taught me intellectual humility. I lived on their island for almost six months and I witnessed how small island communities operate with refusal to die from climate crises through their rituals and storytelling that demonstrate the persistence of creativity amidst social, political, historical, and economic oppressions.
CRiCS: Has any particular book/film/work of art/etc. influenced your approach to your academic work and your perspective more generally?
DG: I benefited a lot from the incisive and powerful storytelling in the films of Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, and most currently Lav Diaz. Both Brocka and Bernal were influential in my interest in the arts. Bernal filmed one of his dark comedy films in our neighborhood that addresses class disparity during the authoritarian period of that time. I think of the films of Bernal, Brocka, and Diaz as a historiographical account of a post-colonial country (read: Philippines) that struggles to find its soul under the sun. I also love the films of Zhang Yimou and Majid Majidi. I saw their films in various film festivals in the Philippines and my world expanded. The authors Dwight Conquergood, Ben Okri, Dorrine Kondo, Ann Bogart, and Doreen Fernandez are my inspirations in my academic writing. These artists put extreme attention to freedom.
CRiCS: What do you do in your free time (if you have any!)? Do you have any hobbies or pets?
DG: In my free time, I walk a lot and connect with my friends. I enjoy going to The Forks and appreciate the Red and Assiniboine rivers. When I hold their beauties in my heart, the world feels calm and vibrant.