Steven Patrick Fernandez’s Transcreation of Poetry and the Integrated Performing Arts Guild’s SugaTula/Crossing Poetry: An Autotheoretical Analysis

This is an analysis of Steven Patrick Fernandez’s transcreation of poetry through the Integrated Performing Arts Guild’s SugaTula. I use autotheory as I retell, examine, and reflect on my experiences on SugaTula and on Fernandez’s transcreation of poetry. From my autotheoretical analysis, I then situate Fernandez’s and IPAG’s SugaTula in the field of translation studies. The study reveals that Fernandez’s transcreation of poetry through SugaTula is a concept which is not only significant for theater practitioners but also for reading and literature teachers. Transcreation can also be used as a method to explore not only poetry but other various literary pieces. Fernandez’s transcreation may overlap with distillation but it is in the overlapping of meanings of these creative processes that research and experiments can be done. Furthermore, SugaTula may involve the process of poetry translation but in its entirety, it is a trans-media performance in which the original poem is used with other mediums such as music and dance; thus, SugaTula is transcreation and not translation.