Theatre for Development @ International Theater Institute-Unesco

TAG-ANI PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY, INC.

PREAMBLE

Every performance equates with harvesting or bringing into being that which best inspires, serves and strengthens artist and audience.

1. Do you have another professional activity aside from your theatre work?

Yes. We do cultural researches and multimedia services.

2. How would you define Theatre for Development?

Theatre for development includes popular theatre as a means of empowering communities to understand and overcome oppression. It may also be a kind of participatory theatre that encourages improvisation and audience to take roles in a performance. It is used for education or propaganda, as therapy, or as a participatory tool. It is also a means to awaken and politicize the audience for a just society. It is a political expression.

3. How did you enter the field of Theatre for Development?

We were first exposed to community theatre and experienced formal theatre in the universities. But we learned and unlearned theatre for development from a cultural institution outside the university. We got immersed in it and chose it to be our profession.

4. Where and who do you work with? (countries, types of audience)

We practically work anywhere (countries in Asia and Europe) as long as we best serve the interest of the majority of the people. We work with nationalist and people-oriented artists, rural people and urban poor, activists and indigenous peoples, church and development workers. We even work with government workers. They are also our audience.

5. What issues do you deal with primarily in your productions?

The issues we deal with in our productions concern indigenous peoples, women, peasants, politics, and workers.

6. What languages do you use?

Filipino and a mix of colonial languages (English, Japanese, Spanish)

7. Who are your main artistic and financial partners?

Cultural Center of the Philippines, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Women Playwrights International - Philippines

8. What has been your greatest challenge in this field?

Filipino arts can only be world class if they first become a class for the Filipino people.

9. What has been your greatest success?

Empowering indigenous women to write their plays in their own languages and mount them and perform them in their communities.

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E-mail Address: marilif@yahoo.com, sarapiph@yahoo.com