Using street theater to inform the public about social issues

Lrubenstein — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:27:31 -0500

The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) stages informance plays—performances meant to inform—on social issues ranging from women’s rights to children’s rights across the Philippines to educate the public. With its mobile theater, PETA uses informance plays as tools to engage the public to confront important social issues that remain unaddressed. In doing so, PETA indirectly forces individuals to seek solutions to their own problems.

Today, one-third of the Filipino population lives below the poverty line. As a result, a majority lacks education. This lack of education is seen with social problems such as family planning, domestic abuse, marital rape, and child abuse. A majority of the Filipino population have come to accept silently these social concerns, relying on tradition to justify the use of violence in families or the growing number of children in impoverished households. PETA’s work has sought to reverse this situation.

PETA was established in 1967. It is committed to social change. For thirty-three years, PETA has presented educational and developmental performances on various issues, from domestic abuse to family planning. PETA has given mobile workshops for marginalized communities as well as for an array of audiences to promote a “culture of peace, social justice and sustainable development” (“Histoire récente du Théâtre,” Online). Through informance plays, PETA has sought to achieve this mission.

Communities, villages, or organizations first request PETA to perform. These requests usually ask PETA to stage their plays around specific issues affecting the community. For example, the Commission on Population asked PETA to stage its informance play around the causes and consequences of unmet needs. PETA then gives the issue a human face by incorporating everyday characters with whom the audience can relate. This may include a male-chauvinistic husband and a desperate wife. In addition, PETA stages the setting of the play in accordance with its audience’s situation. The informance play lasts around seventy-five minutes. The play, however, portrays a social issue without giving any solution to it. PETA’s intent in doing so is to give the audience something to think about. PETA’s work, though, does not finish there. After each performance, actors hold a discussion with the audience. If the audience is small, they discuss the impact of the play in a circle. The actors ask for the audience’s reaction to the play. In many cases, individuals relay to the actors their connections with a specific character. To the actors, this indicates that a connection was made as intended. During this debrief session, PETA listens to the audience’s feedback, personal stories, and initiatives for action. PETA may recommend or provide ideas for the audience to act upon; however, PETA mostly acts as a supporter. PETA wants the audience to find their solutions on their own.

PETA’s work has made the company evolve into a prestigious theater in the Philippines and in Asia. PETA has performed more than 300 productions attended by thousands of individuals. Examples include “Tumawag kay Libby Manaoag,” plays on domestic violence, and “the Libby Files.” The success of informance plays has been so tremendous that requests for PETA cannot accommodate any more performances. PETA’s tactic has left its mark most significantly on its audience. As a result of these performances that touched the heart of many of the spectators, local communities, individuals, or groups have taken action to solve their problems. Issues no longer remain unaddressed. For example, after an informance play on marital rape, a woman went back home and said no to her husband when she did not feel like it. PETA, in other words, has challenged its audiences to re-think conventional, deeply rooted beliefs about issues such as man and wife, gender roles, and population control.

In thinking about how to implement this tactic in another context, i.e. child prostitution or HIV/AIDS, it is important to keep in mind that 1) criticism to one’s theatrical approach may emerge, 2) participation from communities, villages, and organizations is necessary, and 3) funding for the tours is important.

Training grassroots human rights groups in video and communications technology

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:09:08 -0500

WITNESS empowers human rights organizations around the world to incorporate video as an advocacy tool in their work. Rooted in the power of personal testimonies and in the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, WITNESS and its partners’ videos have been used

as evidence in legal proceedings;
to corroborate allegations of human rights violations;
to complement written reports to international/regional organizations that provide a counterweight to official versions of a country’s human rights performance;
to stimulate grassroots education and mobilization;
to provide information for news broadcasts;
to promote human rights via the internet; and
to produce documentaries for broadcast on television worldwide, among others uses.

Founded in 1992, WITNESS has created partnerships with more than 150 groups in 50 countries on a variety of issues, ranging from the “social cleansing” of street children in Central America and sexual abuse of women/girls during Sierra Leone’s civil war to sweatshops in the United States and the plight of people displaced in Burma.

WITNESS chooses partners who seek to build a long-term capacity to use video effectively and also seeks specific campaign opportunities where video can tip the balance between success and failure. Once a partnership is established, WITNESS provides the group with video equipment and training, then follows up with workshops in camera techniques, intensive instruction in using video for human rights work, systemic evaluation of video footage, post-production assistance and constructive feedback to create powerful documentaries.

WITNESS and its partners then create video advocacy campaigns around these videos. These campaigns are built around strategies with many components, including broadcast and distribution platforms, collaboration with other organizations and networks, targeted screenings before key audiences and opportunities for individual viewers to take action. These campaigns may be as targeted as using video to influence a small group of key decision-makers or as broad as trying to mobilize youth around a particular issue. Footage is also kept in the WITNESS Archive, where it is available as a unique resource of human rights information to the global community.

WITNESS’s recognizes that depending on the local context, a human rights advocate may be protected or endangered by using a camera.. WITNESS uses the experience of its staff and partners to help others create policies that are safe and appropriate for their situations. They also stress the importance of the relationship of trust between the person filming and the person being filmed, including a clear explanation of the risks and benefits of speaking to a camera.

One example of a strategic and savvy use of video advocacy is WITNESS's work with Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) to document the deplorable conditions in a Paraguayan psychiatric hospital.

“Julio and Jorge were two adolescent boys being kept in the hospital along with 458 other people – naked, in bare cells without access to bathrooms. The cells reeked of urine and excrement and the walls were smeared with feces. The boys spent approximately four hours every other day in an outdoor pen, littered with garbage and broken glass.

In December 2003, MDRI filed an emergency petition before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) at the Organization of American States (OAS), asking the IACHR to intervene on behalf of the boys, as well as the others in the hospital.

Along with a legal brief, MDRI submitted a video that they had shot and edited with WITNESS. The video was structured according to the specific articles set forth in several international human rights instruments to which Paraguay is bound. Using images that clearly demonstrate how Paraguay had failed to fulfill its obligations, the video put a human face on the issue. The video was specifically presented within a human rights framework to argue that these patients are legally entitled to a minimum standard of living. This led the IACHR to establish jurisprudence on the rights of those in mental health facilities, a legal precedent that can now be used in other countries in the region.

In December 2003, for the first time, the IACHR approved urgent measures to protect the lives and physical integrity of those in psychiatric institutions. MDRI and WITNESS subsequently brought the issue to the general public by streaming the video over their web sites and by collaborating with CNN en Espanol on a follow-up story. The president of Paraguay and the minister of health personally visited the hospital, after which the hospital director was fired and a commission was formed to investigate the issue.

By reaching a broader group of people, MDRI and WITNESS garnered further support for change By exposing these conditions to a broader public, they called attention to the situation of mental health facilities in Paraguay, and the press played a pivotal role in the unfolding of events that brought about significant changes.

Although Julio and Jorge’s ward is still in the process of being renovated as this book goes to press, they have access to showers and clothes, as well as 24-hour nurses. The Paraguayan Health Ministry is working with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to bring conditions up to the most basic standards of human rights.

The collaboration between WITNESS and MDRI has now produced system-changing results, but the challenge lies ahead, in ensuring that human rights advocates pick up the momentum created by the video and follow up on the case to ensure that conditions are improved for all psychiatric facilities in Paraguay. While this case has relied upon strong visual evidence of a violation, it is also important to note that WITNESS partners have successfully used video without relying upon filming such graphic images. For instance, many have created powerful videos by collecting testimonies and telling the stories of those most directly affected, which can have just as a powerful impact within a human rights campaign”

Arts / Cultural resources, English

Using street theater to inform the public about social issues

Training grassroots human rights groups in video and communications technology