Theater to Spread Awareness Nationwide

The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) utilizes the medium of theater to spread social awareness on different issues present in today’s government to the different regions and provinces of the Philippine archipelago.

In an interview conducted with one of PETA’s directors, theater organizers, playwrights, actresses and artist-teachers, Joanna Marie L. Katanyag, she expounded on the different ways that this theater association has “uniquely” guided many Filipinos to become a better nation as a whole.

Kantayag explains that our Filipino culture is a banig. It is interlocked with the many different cultures the Filipinos have adapted from its colonizers from the Spanish era to the Japanese puppet government most especially the strong American influence, traders and many more. All these cultures have interlocked in what can only be called the Filipino culture. Katanyag explains further that each strand of the banig has its own story and influence. It is a “beautiful mess” made by the Filipino people throughout our history.

With that type of culture present in today’s society, Katanyag poses the question of how do we go from that banig we have?

“Paano mo imamamaximize ang banig natin?”

Katanyag goes on saying that the Filipino culture does not change but rather evolves through time. This can be seen in the fashion of the people and even in the language that has evolved like the jejemon and the bekimon language have inevitably become a part of the banig.

When the Filipinos see a trait that is not a great one, the question of whether or not we must change is must come up.

“Gusto ba natin ipagpatuloy ang ganun klaseng kultura?” Katnyag questioned.

With the question being posed on changing the Filipino culture, Katnayag elaborated on a different angle of looking at theater as a medium that is not only used for someone’s stepping stone to fame, but also a means “as a tool to educate people” and a way to make the youth participate to make our country a better one. By doing so, PETA has shown how they would want to spread the change it wants to present to society in the form of creative performances and workshops.

During the different seasons of the year for PETA’s productions, certain themes and advocacies are prepared for each show in order to make the people aware of the different social problems persistent in our country.

PETA’s current advocacy is “positive discipline”. Katanyag explains that this is the advocacy of not using physical and verbal abuse as the way of motivating the youth. PETA is helping a bill to be passed regarding this advocacy to make it aware that abuse between husband and wife, hazing and death penalty are not the only forms of physical abuse.

PETA believes in a positive environment for every Filipino youth to be able to grow, participate in the Philippine society and become better leaders for the future of the country.

In the time of the 2009 presidential elections, PETA provided a workshop performance entitled Bagong Bilang in partner with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts on voter education. It provided the youth with the correct background of how to vote and the proper way of choosing a correct leader for the country.

Katanyag explained that PETA took the opportunity of taking an estimated total of 5 million youth in our country and turn them into a new generation of good voters wherein she was the director, writer and facilitator of this particular workshop.

The stimulus of this kind of activity is a story telling scenario where in they provide a play about a young person with no knowledge on voting and is interested in doing so. The participants of the workshops are then incorporated into the play by pausing for some activities and lectures.This workshop was a nation-wide tour in the three islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao to be able to reach as much youth in the country as possible

In another instance, PETA provided a workshop on sexuality education during the days when the congress and the senate debated if the Reproductive Health Bill should be passed.

“Luma na ang issues ng teen pregnancy pero hindi ibig sabihin na hindi na siya nangyayari,” Katanyag explained regarding the reason behind the workshop. “Talamak pa rin siya kaya gumawa kami ng workshop performance on sexuality.

This workshop tackled the sexuality as the “whole personhood of a person”. This was inclusive of a person’s biological functions, gender, sexual preferences and personal identity.

Katanyag expounded that the goal of PETA for this workshop was for a person to realize that they are made of different aspects. With these aspects, a person must be able to think critically in order to help not only himself but also his peers and countrymen.

In times of national calamities such as the Typhoon Yolanda, PETA worked on a program on community risk and disaster management entitled Padayon, An Informance on Community-Managed Disaster Risk Reduction. Katanyag was the writer for this particular program.

This program aims to train the people of a community to be able to stand without the government in situations such as this. Tools, qualities and guidelines are taught to the people in order for them to be able to assess their area’s status during a natural disaster and “how to manage and survive from it”.

This program was an “informance” – information performance about community performance and disaster reduction for time that natural calamities will hit our country. This play is currently being shown in different areas of Palo, Leyte and is going to be shown in Tacloban this year.

Paramdam, an interactive site-specific performance on bullying in 2014 is also an example of one of the many advocacies that PETA spreads social awareness to specific groups of people.

Aside from informances and performance workshops, PETA came out with a comics to advocate their advocacy for the rights to safety zones for children. The comics was entitled A-ZONE COMICS: Si Intoy at si Miss Sulit, Pader Issues.