Performing Narrative Change: Participatory Theater in the Philippines
Please join the Asia Center and 2025 Artists in Residence Abigail G. Billones and Eric V. Dela Cruz in conversation with Aurélien Bellucci.
Since its founding in 1967, the Philippines Educational Theater Association (PETA) has trained generations of artist-teachers who not only create plays but also empower communities to tell their own stories, both inside the theater and beyond. Through performances and workshops in Manila and across the archipelago, PETA has worked to bridge the gap between stage and audience, art and society.
In February 2025, the association organized a festival on “Changing Narratives” to challenge dominant histories and amplify marginalized voices. The program featured diverse art forms, ranging from puppetry and improvisation to digital drama, and engaged both amateur actors and active audiences. Asia Center researcher Aurélien Bellucci will moderate a conversation with PETA artist-teachers Abigail Billones and Eric Villanueva Dela Cruz about the impact of the festival and the ways in which participatory theater performs narrative change.
Registration appreciated for planning purposes.
Eric V. Dela Cruz is a Filipino performance-maker, dramaturg, and facilitator whose work explores memory, community, and the senses through immersive, multisensory performance. He is the founder of Theater. Applied. Experiential. Immersive (TAXI) Theater and designer of the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW), which developed into Relational Sensory Dramaturgy (RSD) —a practice of immersive, multisensory performance rooted in awe, curiosity, and care. A senior artist-teacher with the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), Eric has presented his practice internationally. His current project Sinag Lahi explores endangered Filipino foodways, beginning with Asin Tibuok.
Abigail G. Billones is Program Director of PETA’s Lingap Sining: Healing through the Arts and a Senior Artist-Teacher. She leads initiatives on narrative change, human rights, community mental health, and youth civic engagement, including Control + Shift: Changing Narratives and Youth Start-Up programs. With over 150 workshops facilitated since 1994, she has partnered with global organizations such as Misereor, Asia Foundation, and UNICEF. A performer and educator, she has appeared in nearly 70 productions. She holds a BS in Human Ecology from the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
Aurélien Bellucci is a postdoctoral fellow at the American University of Paris working on the relationship between theater and gentrification. He was trained at Paris-Sorbonne and Sciences Po before he received his PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University. His research, which focuses on people's theaters in Europe, China, and India, is based in fieldwork with theater makers and active audiences. As an associate researcher at the Asia Center, he has recently focused on political theaters from Taiwan and the Philippines.