‘BALITOK,’ A PLAY ABOUT MINING STAGED BY CORDILLERA YOUTH, IN MAKATI TODAY
Young people from various Cordillera communities are staging “Balitok: Voices from the Mines,” a play that deals with the state of mining in the Cordillera, today, July 29, at the TIU Theater, Amorsolo Street cor. De La Rosa St., Makati City.
The TIU Theater performance is part of a three-part caravan that began in Baguio City, then plays in Makati before heading to Aceh, Indonesia. A postproduction theater workshop will also be held in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
The play is organized through the Cordillera Green Network’s (CGN) Environmental Education Program–Theater Project on Environmental Issues for Indigenous Youth in the Philippines and Indonesia. It continues “Mining Stories,” last year’s theater project wherein young actors went on immersion and research in mining areas in Benguet and Mountain Province.
Miners, community elders and other resource persons were interviewed and mining sites were visited before a workshop series was conducted, resulting in monologues and forum theater performances at the Holy Rosary High School in Kayan, Tadian.
This year’s project, larger in scale and production, will pick up elements from last year’s process-based documentary theater, including forum theater—an interactive theater developed by the late Brazilian director Aug.o Boal. Seasoned stage directors Toshihisa Yoshida and Setsu Hanasaki are back on the helm for this year’s production. Both specialize in experimental and process-based theater production and have previously worked with Baguio-based CGN in facilitating theater projects in the Cordillera Region. Rocky Cajigan does the set design, while Katsu Mizumachi and Adela II Bantasan collaborate on the music.
The play was also staged at the CAP Development Center Auditorium in Baguio City on July 26, and will be at the Taman Budaya Theater in Aceh, Indonesia, on Aug. 2.
Funded by the Japan Foundation Asia Center under the Grant for Cultural Collaboration, the play is supported by Creative Image Foundation, TIU Theater, Urasenke Tankokai Manila Association and Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project.
CGN partnered with the nonprofit organization Komunitas Tikar Pandan for the Aceh leg of the project.