PETA’s GOLD | Gaming the Nation, Changing Asia

PETA’s GOLD | Gaming the Nation, Changing Asia¹

Glecy C. ATIENZA

PETA’s Gold

In 2017, the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) celebrated its golden anniversary. As one of the country’s premier theater groups and recipient of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2017, it has built its mark as a forerunner in producing original Filipino plays which embody its vision of a truly liberating culture. Through its trailblazing efforts in using theater as a tool in effecting social change, it has produced more than 500 plays and has reached countless viewers from all ages and walks of life. It has pushed for the recognition of local culture as an inalienable resource in fortifying the national culture amidst the rush of global change. It has given voice to the voiceless and marginalized through performances that speak about the urgent concerns of the times. Moreover, it has provided venues for people to come together as a community of creative collaborators—ready to put in their time, resource, and knowledge to help their kapwa (the self in the other)—and has fostered a learning and caring environment that is accessible to all (de Guia 2005, 8-9).

PETA’s gold is both rare and common. It is rare as the Magsaysay award is usually given to an individual of meritorious regard and it was only in 2017 that an organization of artists-cultural workers was given such recognition. It is common as this achievement is shared by a community of artists-cultural workers who have taken part in the group’s programs and advocacies. PETA’s gold has created a sense of pride, not only for the organization, but for the numerous artists-cultural workers in far-flung communities, schools, workplaces, streets in the Philippines, in Asia, and other parts of the world. PETA’s gold is an inspiration to communities of “creatives” among the common tao (people)—artists-cultural workers, educators, leaders, academics, politicos, workers, peasants, teachers, students, street vendors, service workers—who have taken the path of innovation in advocating programs for the improvement of people’s lives.

PETA’s pitch on theater for education and social change has only matured and flourished in the last 50 years. The “theater-for-all” philosophy was a brazen move to alter the rules in the social and cultural landscape, which had been maneuvered by the powerful, moneyed, and learned class. Past social movements pushed for social emancipation through arms, political restructuring, economic control, and the arts. Their ways were serious, persistent, passionate, and skilled, with carefully laid out advocacies for poverty alleviation and freedom from colonial rule. With the growing number of ilustres (the respected, well-known, and usually lettered and moneyed class), there was a clamor for emancipatory education. The use of the arts and letters was in consonance with the moves of the highly-revered nineteenthcentury heroes-artists-writers—Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Apolinario Mabini, Macario Sakay, and Aurelio Tolentino—who employed theater and literature to arouse popular participation in pursuing national sovereignty and freedom.

PETA, however, introduced new perspectives and new ways of pushing people to action. Play and games became tools of education for social change. These methods were as lively and fun as they were serious and directed in advancing certain causes. Local games and cultural expressions served as frameworks of alternative education to counter a colonial, foreign, and service-oriented mindset by weaving local issues and concerns into dynamic theater activities. PETA is convinced that play provides avenues for participants’ learning by experience and a setting for critical study as well as analysis of a given problem situation. It primes people for action, compels them to engage in the creative process, and allows them to experiment with possible approaches to fulfill an objective. While games are usually done for fun with no necessary lofty goals, PETA incorporates them in a mode of theater-making that transforms the artist into a taga-ganap (fulfiller) of change. Theater, then, becomes a playing field where rules of the game are recognized, broken, and reconfigured for advancing emancipatory aims.

The Game Lingo: Re-inventing Learning, Re-engaging the Nation

Wolfgang Kramer (2000) defines games as anything which is executed for pleasure and without any conscious purpose. Games have components, rules, and goals; they operate on chance or luck; they require participants to dive into the world of the game, have fun, and enjoy the sense of the imaginary which defines the game world and leave that world behind when the game is done (Kramer 2000). Mellie Leandicho Lopez (2001) shares these views as she notes that in the Philippines, laro is the term used to refer to any game or play for fun without concern for consequence. She cites Elliott M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith’s definition of games as “an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.” Lopez likewise cites Johan Huizinga’s take on the interweaving of play and culture’s role in developing civilizations. Huizinga refers to play as a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place according to rules freely accepted and absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the unconscious that is “different” from “ordinary life.”

Lopez (2001, 1-3) further identifies the general characteristics of games as follows:

• games are make-believe
• games are voluntary in nature
• games involve two or more forces
• games are governed by rules
• game’s outcomes are uncertain
• games teach rules to society while providing an escape from its restrictions
• games are generally fun
• games offer an exclusive domain for those who are involved in it and anything outside that realm is irrelevant to the game

Interestingly, these qualities can also be found in theater as it provides a chance for speculating “what if ” situations and putting together available means and meanings in the exciting process of creation. Also, theater’s imagined world requires that its rules be followed even as it also provides an escape from everyday rules. This special domain allowed by theater engages not only the artists but also the audience to become participants in the world created by the theater experience.

In the Philippines, the term dula in the Tagalog language is used to refer to theater and theatrical play. However, the term dula in the Visayan language, pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, is closer to the meaning of “game,” particularly as it pertains to activities of exploration done by children. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Tagalog dula would surface in manuscripts of plays that asserted nationhood and identity. In an earlier study, I forwarded the idea that dula evolved from the term tula, a generic reference to engagements with movement and poetry such as riddles, mimetic dances, and poetic jousts (Atienza 2014). Dula embodies the sense of joy, community collaboration, and multi-disciplinal learning that has been sidelined by continuous encounters with colonialism and the uncritical adoption of new technologies.

In pre-colonial communities, before our nation was named Filipinas by the colonizers, riddles, mimetic dances, and poetic jousts provided opportunities for creative exploration and fun learning. Critical faculties, as well as sensory adeptness, were developed through physical explorations in the mimicry of animals like the monkey dance, logic exercises through narrative formation, and creativity enhancement by translating sensory experiences to oral poetic narratives. Poetry, as the performance of sound, rhythm, and movement, provided the technical anchor in bridging sensory reception, critical understanding, and transfer of knowledge and values in the young. Riddles, considered by National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera as one of the early forms of theater, were lessons in the natural world while proverbs were codes of ethics embedded in poetic lore (Lumbera 1986, 3), as shown by the following examples:

Sample of a local Riddle (Bugtong):

Bongbong cun liuanag Cun gab-i ay dagat. banig
A bamboo reed by day, the sea by night mat

The riddle calls a youngster’s attention to shapes and texture—the bamboo reed is long, tubular, and smooth—and relates these features to the concept of time indicated by the presence of the sun, which is visible in the morning. The state of the sea when calm—flat and still—refers to the shape of the mat at night when light is absent.

Sample of a local Proverb (Salawikain):

Ang ligaya ay bulaklak ng pagtitiis.
Happiness is the flower of suffering. (Eugenio 2002, 252)

On the other hand, the proverb above considers happiness as a state of being. In presenting achievement as the “flower of suffering,” the adage propounds that a change in one’s state is a slow and arduous process. It calls a youngster’s attention to the value of perseverance despite difficulties, thus the use of the term pagtitiis, literally, “to endure suffering.”

Words providing the needed talinghaga (trope) encouraged the seamless integration of knowledge of the natural world, the social ways of life that go with the experience, and the consequent social values which the community regards as the mark of a truly “learned” member of the community. Tula was a generic term used to refer to oral lore with characteristic rhyme, meter, rhythm, and trope, whose variety depends on the occasion. The introduction of colonial Spanish rule paved the way for the adoption of new norms and standards of learning— Catholicized, Hispanized, and formalized in schools. Even the tula, which came to be used as a generic term for local poetry, adopted new metrical patterns brought over by a colonial poetic tradition and in the process lost its ludic connotation. Rhyme and imagery, however, remained true to local sensibility—a quality that can be attributed to the “orality” and “movement” inherent in the native language and local tropes.

Some critics would claim that Francisco Baltazar, the impromptu poet who crafted the famous anti-colonial poetic narrative Florante at Laura, got away with anti-colonial messaging because of his mastery of the Tagalog language’s talinghaga, which the local Spanish censors did not understand. Jose Rizal bested his Spanish opponents in an unusual display of knowledge of the Western classics and excellent command of the Spanish language when he won the first prize for his play El Consejo de los Dioses (1918), literally, “Council of Gods.” Revolutionaries of the Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (KKK) utilized theater as a venture into independence from Spanish rule. Andres Bonifacio, the leader of KKK, was in fact a moro-morista (moro-moro actor) who localized the metrical romance “Bernardo Carpio” when he replaced foreign names with local names of people and places for the local performances of his Tondobased community theater group Teatro Porvenir (Agoncillo 1956, 67). Aurelio Tolentino, famous (or infamous, depending on whose point of view) for his seditious anti-American “chameleon” plays, used theater to stoke the fire of anticolonial resistance by alluding to revolutionary and nationalistic images (Manlapaz 1975, 1-13). American-trained theater pioneers, such as Lamberto Avellana, Daisy Avellana, Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, and Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, utilized their newfound skill in the art by adapting the English language for the local audience through plays that drew on historical themes and social commentaries (Cruz 1971, 157-186; Guerrero and Bonifacio 2017). Peasant uprisings, such as the Hukbalahap through its cultural information division, utilized lightning performances to engage support for the movement against the Japanese occupation, a model which would later be emulated by student theater groups in the late 1960s through the 1980s as social unrest soared high amidst poverty, labor, peasant and student unrest, and a foreign-dominated state (Maceda 1996, 134-151).

Harking back to when poetry and play were integrated engagements in the local culture, PETA’s theater workshops reflected a paradigm shift in doing educational theater by employing game and play as framework and design. The target was to create a space for the poor, marginalized, and disempowered to develop their critical faculties for understanding issues that needed to be addressed and enhance their creative prowess to find alternative ways of improving their quality of life. While games immediately connote competition, PETA’s creative pedagogy focused on collaboration to achieve a common goal.

In the 2017 publication “Basta Masaya, OK Na (If it’s Fun then It’s OK): Theater-based approaches in the Philippines,” Guevara and I discussed the transformation of theater games from being simple fun activities (basta masaya) to actual (ganap) participatory community action. I proposed the usefulness of the term ganap in understanding local theater practice.

The old Tagalog term, meaning “realization” and “equality,” is also the root word of an old term meaning “to make things happen” or “to realize” (Noceda and Sanlucar 2013). Ganap also alludes to performance, that is, to play a role or be an actor. It is a familiar term among those of us in Philippine theater. Sadly, it is something that we have not really appreciated due to the convenience of using the English term “act” or “perform,” which naturally lacks the local nuance of ganap especially as it pertains to a movement of meaning from “the reality of life” or buhay, to “living one that is fulfilled” or buháy (see below).

Danas ng Buhay (life experience) tungo sa (towards) Danas na Buháy! (living experience)

Nagaganap (taking place) GANAP (transformation) Ginaganap (being realized)

Transformation of a life experience, a raw sensorial event, into a level that is conscious and meaningful, living experience, transpires in the moment of becoming ganap. Translating the danas ng buhay (life experience) to danas na buháy (living experience) is a necessarily creative event. With the aid of tools of expression, such as those provided by theater-based intervention, a life experience that is merely taking place is re-created, rehearsed, and re-lived to become a lived and living experience that is actively being realized (Atienza and Guevara 2017, 193-209).

PETA’s Pitch: Re-inventing Systems and Concepts²

PETA’s holistic creative approach revolves around the idea of danas na PETAng- PETA (literally, a very PETA experience) where theater is designed to be fun, relevant, collaborative, and enlightening. The danas na PETAng-PETA starts with personal encounters as “free play,” which are then brought to a level of guided critical analysis. Resulting insights become nuggets of wisdom, embodied in artistic expressions which participants keep in their hearts as guideposts in facing struggles.³

The Basic Integrated Theatre Arts Workshop or BITAW serves as PETA’s teaching framework and can be considered one of the major approaches to the use of theater as critical pedagogy. Fajardo and Topacio (1989) discuss at length how BITAW, earlier called the integrated arts workshop, started out being framed by the middle-class liberal view of self-expression and self-awareness. Refined and validated through interactions with communities all over the country and insights from members who brought in lessons from various disciplines and organizations, the BITAW framework is committed to helping an individual break out of her shell not only as a way of self-expression but ultimately, with the use of the arts, for social emancipation. Guided by the philosophy of participatory learning and liberating education in addressing the questions “for whom” and “for what,” the BITAW evolved from a simple line-up of activities using theater games, local folklore, and history to the holistic theater arts pedagogy that it is today. The practice of BITAW persisted despite curtailment from martial law in the country. Its acceptance among the basic communities in many regions, battling militarization and human rights violations, pushed the BITAW even further to evolve into a theater design that serves as an antidote to an ultra-silenced Westernized consciousness made worse by a repressive military rule.

In PETA’s BITAW Manual (1984), activities are lined up according to themes and creative outputs such as dramatized poetry or dula-tula, historical module, allegorical module, and a synthesis of these explored forms leading to a final showcase of original dramatic pieces. Participants are engaged in physical exercises to allow them awareness and exploration of their body as the main tool for expression—starting with simple limbering exercises that develop into more complex movements taken from martial arts, ballet, and modern dance. Comprising the crucial aspects of the creative process, ideas, feelings, and personal insights are treated as indispensable and are therefore acknowledged alongside values related to teamwork, openness, and willingness to learn. Critical and analytical faculties are likewise harnessed through both simple and complex exercises using the various art disciplines as means of investigation. Ideas and creative outputs become experiments of critical collaboration among participants, with their audience—their kapwa—as co-creators in making theater.

The PETA theater framework has been its creative playing field for decades, governed by principles which the organization has developed through years of practice, aiming to harness participants’ social awareness and commitment to social change, advance their artistic skills, and pave the way for the actualization of their full potential as agents of change in their communities. PETA’s workshop design abides by the RAESMA formula (Release, Awareness, Exploration, Selectivity/ Synthesis, Mastery, Application) as a conceptual guide while OAO (Orientation, Artistry, Organization) serves as touchstones in doing theater work. Developed during a workshop by PETA facilitators, Lutgardo Labad, Manuel Pambid, Rosalie Matilac, and Wenifreda Gamboa, with church workers, students, and community artists in Mindanao in 1978, the OAO framework highlights the importance of having a clear objective and vision when addressing the question of “for whom” in fulfilling creative work (Orientation); points to the creative mode as inseparable from the objective (Artistry); and, refers to the system of implementation of a project or plan of action, characterized by collaboration, democratic consultation, and participation (Organization).

Creativity rules in the PETAng PETA workshop experience as it offers everyone a chance to share in the creative process. Ultimately, the goal is to transform one’s resources—knowledge, ideas, and objects—into possibilities of addressing a concern by exploring and rethinking one’s limits and potentials. In Lutgardo Labad and Cecilia Garrucho’s An Invitation to Growth (1983), the PETA workshop experience presents each person as possessing untapped potential who when properly motivated and developed becomes a potent force in social transformation. A deep sense of community, anchored to the Filipino value of kapwa, or the self in the other, alongside a deeply rooted concern to serve and engage others, is developed through creative cultural activities. Unpacking local concerns and mobilizing participants for action through collaborative work, the theater process becomes a rehearsal of revolution, as Augusto Boal claims (Boal 1979, 141).

The process of creative drama provides a venue for spontaneity, free expression and transformation. It seeks to overcome one’s fear of making mistakes as free play treats them as opportunities for learning. The free play employs improvisation that itself is premised on openness to possibilities, adaptability, commitment, and full participation in the efforts of the group or community. Applying the principles of improvisation allows for the exploration of the “what if,” shoring up possibilities to transcend hurdles in achieving a goal, working with givens, and taking risks to transform them. These givens pertain to cultural assets ranging from personal experiences to social concerns as the wellspring of local narratives; local sounds, words, and movement that harness the community vernacular in uplifting local culture; local dramatic forms that give way to fresh modes of expression— bold, daring, and unconventional as they are original, emergent, and responsive to relevant issues; mundane personal experiences that are given depth through recontextualization and dramatization—one day in the life of a doormat, the travelogue of a rubber sap made into a shoe, or the story of ants who united against a tyrannical leader. Allegory, satire, documentary-historical materials, popular culture, and folk forms of expression breathe new life into weary bodies and deadened spirits. At the same time, participants are immersed in local research to ascertain information through exposure trips, participant observation, community integration, library and museum visits, interaction with ordinary people as well as with well-known personalities and resource persons. Thus, learning comes from the exploration, awareness, reflection, and creation of/in danas-dula (playful experience), which in the long run is more than mere obtention of life skills but a rehearsal for life and its many possibilities.

Fields of Play: the Rajah Sulayman Theater and Beyond

PETA’s stance that theater is for all necessitates transforming any space to make theater. Workshops are held in the likeliest and unlikeliest of places—in schools, religious centers, community halls, or any other location which can be modified to serve the pursuits of collaborative artistic creation.

The Rajah Sulayman Theater, designed by National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin, best exemplifies how theater-making, literally and figuratively, could be realized anywhere. Described by Vladimier F.I. Velasco (1973, 76-80) as “an open-air theater in the round in the reverse,” it was built from the ruins of an old Spanish garrison in Fort Santiago, Intramuros, Manila and served as home to PETA’s plays for many years. It is worth reminiscing the uniqueness of Rajah Sulayman Theater in the following observation:

It was the perfect venue for the group’s experiments in set design, blocking, and a signature aesthetic that simulates all the senses. When it staged a Filipino translation of Virginia Moreno’s “Straw Patriots”—Bayaning Huwad—in 1967, patrons saw and heard actual horses trotting from the entrance gate of Fort Santiago and into the stage. In the 1970s, PETA also produced the long-running Larawan, a translation of Nick Joaquin’s “Portrait of the Artist as Filipino,” and released fireworks up into the sky during a festive scene. When Soxie Topacio directed Malou Jacob’s “Macli- ing” in 1988, Rajah Sulayman’s entire T-shaped stage was transformed to look like rice terraces, and the village of Cordillera elder Macli-ing Dulag. (Cruz 2018)

The Rajah Sulayman Theater epitomizes the game-changing field of theater experimentation. Its location is a constant reminder of the nation’s roots and history, as the brick walls and cobblestone paths evoke the Filipino people’s struggle for self-determination. The theater’s position at the mouth of the mighty Pasig River, the main entry point and the trading site even before the colonial period call to mind the collaboration and exchange among the locals and its neighbors. Turning this garrison into an open-air theater is continuing this legacy as Rajah Sulayman Theater did not simply provide a setting for PETA’s numerous productions in its early days, but was itself a living versatile space for artistic innovation and served as a training ground for PETA members to learn both theater and life skills to embody the essence of “Artists-Teachers-Organizers- Researchers” (ATORS) that PETA expects of its members.

For instance, the Rajah Sulayman Theater’s location in Intramuros, Manila was a challenge to each member’s determination, perseverance, and commitment to the theater for social transformation. Senior members will never forget the challenges of attending daily rehearsals and training that begin at dusk and end at the wee hours of the morning, especially when one had to come from work in far areas of the metropolis. During the martial law period, members had to race against the clock, sprinting from the jeepney stop to the Rajah Sulayman Theater to be at the rehearsals on time or chase the next available ride home in order to beat the midnight curfew. One’s dedication to both the craft and cause was tested in managing time and money since actors virtually did volunteer work when taking part in productions and training with the very little transportation allowance provided to support them.

Further, adaptability and a transformative imagination were needed. Doing theater not only entailed learning one’s lines or perfecting one’s blocking but also doing social investigation and analysis through exposure trips to communities where actors would meet real-life characters as studies for their roles. Members were likewise trained to perform different kinds of production work including setting up the lights and putting them down through the barracks, clearing the ground of floodwater and lumot (water moss), setting up the chairs at the start of the season, and putting them away at the season’s end, doing the dishes and keeping the make-shift dressing room clean and tidy, designing props and costumes, painting murals, soliciting funds, and mobilizing audience support. One had to learn to mingle with different kinds of people, to work for a goal, and surpass all the hurdles that go with it. It was indeed a test of physical agility and endurance as well as mental and emotional fortitude. But most of all, it was an opportunity to commune and establish friendships with people from all ages, sectors, geographies, beliefs, and genders: to be an artist is to go through a difficult, yet worthwhile, learning experience.

Learning was further developed when artists were subjected to the challenge of teaching. During the early decades of PETA, month-long training workshops initiated by its training arm, the CITASA, required participants to share what they had learned to communities in the regions and among the less privileged sectors. Hence, the playing field, so to speak, was extended outside the comforts of the familiar Rajah Sulayman Theater, to unknown communities of workers, farmers, fisherfolk, urban poor settlers, out-of-school youth, displaced families, and other disadvantaged groups. Being an artist-teacher meant facing the task of helping untrained individuals acquire theater skills that they could use to rediscover their own capacities. PETA artist-teachers had to do research, design lessons, and prepare modules to make sure that exercises and concepts adhered to the “theater for empowerment” philosophy. Most of all, artist-teachers had to learn where their participants were coming from—their urgent concerns, limitations, needs, and potentials.

The vision of establishing a theater-for-all practice was honed by the larger “playing field” during PETA’s early years. The intensifying clamor for nationalism stimulated by the challenge of nation-building after the Second World War and the persistence of an inutile colonial and Americanized culture prompted finding new paths of social transformation. Free thinking and freedom of expression, stifled by colonial and feudal impositions, were in search of new avenues for growth with impetus from technological innovations and developments in communication. The Marcos dictatorship and EDSA People Power movement which spelled the former’s end further heightened the need to create a field of critical study and free expression as a means to cope with the changing demands of the fast-expanding global order.

The urgency of social issues such as poverty, labor unrest, brain drain, human rights violations, land usurpation, colonial education, and environmental assault were only some of the problems begging for change. These issues were magnets for creative collaboration and dynamic linkages that were fostered by communities in the country and among communities of artists and cultural workers abroad (Labad 1988, 3-10). In Manila, for example, the teen theater arm of PETA, Metropolitan Teen Theatre League (1969-2010), became a wellspring of artistleaders who trained as artists-teachers-organizers-researchers (ATORS) in their high school years. Through festivals among youth theater groups, such as the Dula-Daluyan (literally, Theater Way), these young people epitomized the potency of PETA’s theater training system in molding potential leaders and cultural workers (Atienza 1983). Similarly, PETA involved workers in the industrial sector through productions and training programs with the Kilusang Mayo Uno (May 1 Movement) and the Teatro Pabrika (literally, Theatre Factory) from 1988 to 1995, demonstrating the vital place of cultural work in realizing the important role of the working class in nation-building (Atienza and Redublo 1993). The formation of the BUGKOS, a national network of theater and cultural groups in the 1990s was likewise inspired by numerous collaborative training programs conducted by PETA in the regions in partnership with local civic organizations (Magtoto 1988, 3-8; van Erven 1992, 9-11).

It is safe to say that the said collaborations helped inspire people’s theater in many communities, spawning theater groups in schools, churches, and even local government units. PETA’s recent programs aimed at addressing specific concerns brought various stakeholders to use theater for social advocacy. For instance, the Lingap Sining program promoted community disaster risk reduction and the creation of safe schools in Leyte after the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan (Typhoon Yolanda for the Philippines) while the ARTS (Advocate Right to Safety) Zone Positive Discipline Project advocated children’s right to safety and protection from corporal punishment and other forms of violence and abuse through a creative campaign (Katigbak 2015).

PETA’s commitment to the theater for social change expanded the field of “play” beyond the confines of the native soil, leading to partnerships with likeminded artists and cultural workers across nations. The Asian Theater Forum in the 1980s paved the way for linkages with people’s theater artists like Japan’s Black Tent Theatre which shared practices with PETA artists and their partner groups as well. Also, theater artists from other parts of the globe like Duk Hyung Yoo of Korea, Brooks Jones of USA, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe embarked on productions such as Antigone, Alamang (Small Shrimp), and Sebiong Engkanto (Enchanted Sebio), adapted to and enriched by local cultural expressions. Theater artists from Asian countries would attend summer training workshops and return to their homes fired up to do theater for emancipatory work (Samson 2008). In 2002, PETA’s Women’s Theatre Program organized the Changing She-Images: Women Re-imag[in]ing the World 2003 Women’s Theatre Festival and Conference in Manila with more than 200 women artists from Asia, North America, India, and Europe joining local cultural artists to focus on women’s theater as a platform for community development. Collaboration among Asian artists was further enhanced when PETA ventured into the Mekong River Project, where PETA’s philosophy and ways of theater-making were integrated with local theater practices of the Asian women artists and cultural workers from Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Yunnan, China (Magtoto 2003). These opportunities were testaments to how social issues, such as domestic violence, war, poverty, ignorance, lack of education, gender assault, and discrimination, yields narratives of hope and transformation using theater (Plantilla 2011). In the same vein, the recently concluded PETA Festival of Windows featured new groups, such as the Sigma Performing Ensemble of Capiz, Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts of Dumaguete, and new collaborative projects in education, mental health awareness, positive discipline alongside well-known Asian artists, such as National Artist Ligaya Amilbangsa, National Artist of Thailand Thepsiri Suksopha, Wandering Moon Performing Group, Crescent Moon Theater, Cambodia’s Phare Ponleau Selpak, among others. Clearly, PETA has evolved games from being mere tools of enjoyment into ways of learning theater for social change and expanded its “playground” to transcend borders of sectors, cultures, and convictions (Atienza 2003).

Theater has likewise evolved to become a living repository of memory, a cultural anchor, a living mirror of reality, an armor against falsity, a conscience, an engine for servitude, and a vision for a better life (M-A-M-A-C-E-V), key concepts synthesized by Cecile Guidote-Alvarez and shared by Lutgardo Labad in the recently concluded PETA Festival of Windows (2018).

Gold Nuggets at Play

The vision of a national theater movement, which was articulated by PETA founder Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, has been tirelessly advanced by members since its establishment in 1967. PETA is convinced that there is “gold” in everyone and PETA’s gold mine lies in everyone’s capacity to develop and contribute to social change (Labad and Garrucho 1983, 1-3).

The theater-for-all project is fulfilled by harnessing this gold mine of valuable artists-teachers-organizers-researchers not only for putting up excellent plays but also for training critical and socially aware artist-leaders. PETA’s numerous partners and institutional linkages are living proof of the potency of this theater training system and its distinctive process has made its way into cultural institutions and educational settings as shown by former participants becoming partners and collaborators in various endeavors. Further, workshop participants have moved on to become leaders in their communities in various disciplines. PETA members have likewise established themselves as leaders and trailblazers in theater and the arts—as artists, teachers, organizers, and researchers—who serve as models of socially committed cultural workers.

In hindsight, the impassioned urge to create, be of relevance to one’s community, and sustain collaborative work in theater and the arts may be explained by the artist’s “grit,” which is defined by Angela Lee Duckworth as the new mark of intelligence (Duckworth 2016, 130). Moreover, Duckworth asserts that grit is a salient component for success which children have to learn although she admits to having no answer as to how this can be developed.

I propose, then, to have children undergo the creative theater process if we want them to develop grit. The theater realm presents a purpose for creation that is beyond the personal and is grounded on social concerns that transform desire into urgent action. I believe that passion and perseverance or the “grit to create” cannot be realized without a reason for being, the impulse to move forward, and a cultural ground from which all movements take off.

Community life is the rule and reason for pursuing a goal and sustaining action. It is also the basis for breaking rules, when and if the need arises. There is no rule, however, that states that passion and perseverance in pursuing an action need to be grim and tedious. Since grit spells persistence, there should ultimately be no room for gloom but only for happiness and fulfillment in realizing a vision of a community that is transformed and empowered.

Let the games begin!

References

• Agoncillo, Teodoro. 1956. The Revolt of the Masses. The Story of Bonifacio and the Revolution. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
• Alvarez, Cecilia Guidote. 2003. Theater for the Nation: A Prospectus for the National Theater in the Philippines. Manila: De la Salle University Press.
• Atienza, Glecy C. 1983. Ang Karanasan ng PETA-MTTL sa Pag-oorganisa ng mga Haiskul sa Metro Manila 1975-1981 [The PETA-MTTL Experience in Organizing High Schools
• in Metro Manila 1975-1981]. Unpublished undergraduate thesis, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines.
• Atienza, Glecy C. 2006. “Changing She-Images: Women Re-imag(in)ing the World.” Selected Papers from the Conference Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Festival Conference on Women in the Arts, Manila, Philippines, March 4-8, 2003. Manila: PETA.
• Atienza, Glecy C. 2014. “Ang Salitang Dula Talinghaga ng Di-Nasupil na Diwa ng Paglaya.” Daluyan Journal ng Wikang Filipino (Online) 20: 139-189. http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/djwf/article/view/4359/3958/
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• Atienza, Glecy C. 2018. “Ang Wika ng Ina Mo. It’s Grit 2 Cre8” [Your Mother/Mother Tongue says It’s Grit to Create]. Keynote speech presented at the Philippine College Radio Congress, NISMED Auditorium, University of the Philippines, November 27.
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1. An edited version of this essay will soon be published by PETA in the book entitled Repleksyon.
2. This section relies heavily on Atienza and Guevara (2017, 193-209) and Atienza (2015).
3. Glecy C. Atienza (2003). Tatak PETA Tahak PETA. PETA’s Theater Aesthetics. Unpublished document, PETA files. Glecy C. Atienza (2017). PETAng-PETA. Unpublished document, PETA files.