The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) is ready to make another milestone as the company launches its first-ever online arts festival FESTIVAL OF WINDOWS 2020: LOCKED BUT LINKED, which proudly showcases creative works and unafraid expressions about Filipino’s stories of triumph and survival.
Despite the devastating effect on the performing arts of the pandemic, PETA remains steadfast in its mission to create meaningful art.
PETA began its pivot to the online space after the sudden closure of its show Under My Skin, and cancellation of its annual Summer Workshops. The company began with its online workshop series, Let’s Get Creative, before branching out to other activities like live music jams, live streams, webinars, and weekly streamings of its Storytelling Sundays series, which aims to celebrate our culture and heritage of storytelling while teaching children Filipino values through literature.
PETA Executive Director Beng Santos-Cabangon shares that PETA has creatively adapted its work to be able to continue its mission to use the arts for reflection, healing and collective action, “PETA and our partners have remained committed to using the arts as a force for goodness, courage and hope. In these times of uncertainty and disconnection, now more than ever, we need the arts to nourish our human spirit, to help us interrogate and make sense of what is happening around us.”
Led by PETA artists, together with its partner communities and networks, as well as guest artists and celebrity advocates, the FESTIVAL OF WINDOWS 2020: LOCKED BUT LINKED features multiple windows of stories and ideas presented through performances, workshops, lectures and other creative expressions. It aims to open windows for introspection, dialogue, meaning-making and imagination while tackling the themes and issues of children rights, youth participation, and upholding democracy and human dignity.
“Windows are portals through which we see the outside world. Windows symbolize light, illumination and freedom,” says Beng Santos-Cabangon. With a fragmented socio-economic and political environment highlighted even more by the ongoing health crisis, PETA recognizes the crucial role of the arts and education to bring positive and meaningful impact to a challenged nation and society.
Festival of Windows 2020 comprises four sub-festivals strewn across the last four months of the year:
sulYAP Kabataan PLAYlist
September 19 to 26
A platform for both teachers and young artists to meet, learn, collaborate, and share creative work! Now on it’s third year, the YAP Festival will feature online round table conferences discussing theater education and the role of young artists in the “new normal”, online mini-workshops and lecture discussions on the different fields of theater making, and a culminating program featuring the creative outputs of PETA’s participants and partners from various cities and provinces like Bataan, Cavite, Batangas, Pampanga, Infanta, Antique and Bicol.
3G, Connect! Community Arts Festival – Online
October 10, 11, and 17
3G, Connect! will feature keynote and inspirational messages from distinguished partners, guests, and celebrity artists. It will also showcase performance outputs developed by community partners from on-ground and online workshops, as well as performances by PETA, PhilPop and other surprise guests. Connecting with a wider audience online, 3G, Connect! shall foster an interactive and engaging platform for leaders, partners, and the public to share ideas, challenges, practices, and possible directions for youth participation and community resiliency towards healing and nation building.
START: A Quest to Find Our Safe Space
November 17 to 22
PETA’s positive discipline campaign program, the Advocate Right to Safety Zone for Children (ARTS Zone), takes the spotlight with START: A Quest to Find Our Safe Space. ARTS Zone recognizes the worsening poverty, economic decline as factors in the increase in the number of children being abused during the pandemic, and therefore shifted its Positive Discipline Day to an online sub-festival featuring webinars, workshops, and performances. It is a creative synergy of, for and by children and the youth highlighting positive discipline, and child safety and protection.
KE-POP: Kalinangan Ensemble Performers Overcoming a Pandemic
November 23 to December 10
Capping of the online multi-arts festival is PETA Kalinangan Ensemble’s yearly tradition of the PETA Laboratory. “In this platform, we’re trying to create stories that resonate with the times, but we’ll also be introducing our actors and the people behind PETA that give a face to what we do as artists,” says PETA Artistic Director and PETA Laboratory Director, Maribel Legarda. “This is a tribute to the artists – their capacity to be creative and resilient.” For two weeks, PETA will stream a collection of short and full-length plays on the virtual stage. This will include fresh and exciting new works that will focus on the vast theme of humanity and human rights, plus a collection of past theater performances, beloved classics, adaptations and musical hits.
With an exciting and varied series of activities and performances lined up, PETA welcomes everyone to the Festival of Windows 2020: Locked but Linked, where we tell our stories of triumph and survival through the arts. “We would really love and need the energy that audiences bring to us because, of course, we miss that,” says Maribel Legarda. “That’s the gaping hole that will never be filled, but given the situation, PETA is more than willing to accept this challenge, explore and create new ideas and stories, and reintroduce who we are as artists.”
No quarantine will stop us from creating, no lockdown will keep us silent. Join us in the remaining months of 2020 as we bring the theater’s spirit of joy and community – from live to the virtual world – until the curtains rise for the Filipino people once again.
