During the first Mekong Performing Arts Laboratory in Manila in 2005, I asked the question why Manila-based PETA was chosen to run a program that deals with the peoples and cultures of the Mekong sub-region, which covers such ethnically and culturally diverse countries as Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Towards the end of 2009, the fifth year of PETA’s handling of this program, the answer to that question has become much clearer to me. PETA has been using its special blend of talent, skill, and experience to develop artists to work in the communities they are part of.

They provide hands-on help in building a network of artists from across the Mekong sub-region that is multicultural, transnational, creative, energetic, interactive, and starting to show signs of being self-sustaining.

My participation in the 2009 Mekong Arts & Media Festival showed that not only does PETA have a long history of organized advocacy theater and strong management skills, it also has more things to offer to participants from the Mekong sub-region that they can use in their own work, and which indeed they have done during the last five years. The fruits of their labor and collaboration with artists and others from Mekong and beyond were ripe at the 2009 Festival in Phnom Penh.

As a fitting opening, the festival began with a parade of young artists, showing through their classical music and dance, and guiding a gigantic naga (Sanskrit and Pāli word for a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very great snake—specifically the King Cobra, found in Hinduism and Buddhism) and two big elephant puppets, along with a real and famous Phnom Penh elephant parading through the Cambodian capital. The artists also showed circus talent and exciting music for the general public. The whole festival was interspersed with various art exhibitions, circus shows, classical dance pieces, and international events from six countries bordering the great Mekong River and other countries from Asia.

All the youth programs were run by young people who brought leadership skills given them by their work with PETA in the last five years, while artists from different countries shared new techniques and knowledge, and collaborated with these young people on stories, arts and experiences.

The Festival brought the city of Phnom Penh to life in great spirit, and energized the streets and the people with joy through the power of the youth. Most of the local kids attending the Festival came from the Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang.

As I worked in the formal Festival conference and observed the other activities, I saw and listened to diverse artists and scholars from Japan, Cambodia, China, Myanmar, and Thailand as they showed their work and shared their innovative ways of creating and collaborating with their communities.

Around 270 delegates came to this festival to perform and share their art, knowledge and progress in their thinking and form; many were involved in the previous laboratories. Many of them learned from the laboratory the importance of good management to create an environment for creating dance, theater, and puppet performances that would inspire society, provoke questions even as they entertain audiences.

After working for five years with PETA, the confidence and abilities of these artists-cum-managers have matured considerably. Most of the young artists – especially those from Phare Ponleu Selpak – have become full-grown teenagers or young adults and are now strong circus artists. During the festival, these artists inspired each other and most clearly learned from and shared with each other.

I now realize the benefits of PETA’s involvement in the Mekong Partnership Project better. PETA works through others. It also gives opportunities for young artists to grow and learn from senior artists about channeling inspiration and creativity with discipline and management to do arts projects that are both fun and suit their local audiences.

Most aspects of the projects deal with young people as artists collaborating in workshops aiming to promote self-esteem, empowerment and health education needed in communities along the Mekong river. They also share ways of fundraising and managing the organization to promote and clarify the needs and works of the artists and their communities, helping to make other people become aware of their work.

It was wonderful to see the various peoples of the Mekong sub-region mingling together through the support and care of PETA which also saw the value of opening up the festival to artists from Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan. We know that creating a self-sustaining partnership takes time, and PETA has laid the foundations of doing just this.

The hard question “why PETA for the Mekong?” has also another answer. The program and the participants benefited from the activities and the laboratories and the festival provided them a distinctive blend of PETA’s passion for the arts, its sincere and deep concern for others, its practical set of managerial and organizational skills, and its outsiders’ look and international perspective.

When we are seated together in a room, we don’t know and don’t deal with who is part of and not part of the Mekong sub-region, since we all are part of a common working process aiming to improve the lives of those in the Mekong area through better creativity, organization, and inspiration.

*This is an abridged version of an article with the same title that forms part of a publication summing-up Peta Mekong Partnership's five year work in the Mekong Subregion.

Photos by: Ludovic Gueriaud and Phoonsab Thevongsa

The Festival was made possible with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Save the Children-UK through the European Union, and Japan Foundation with additional scholarship support from Terre des Hommes-Germany, Heinrich Boell Foundation, Center for Community Health Research & Development, and World Vision.

PETA SEA Group
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