More than 200 artists from seven Asian countries will take part in an eight-day arts festival in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap town this month.
“Spotlight: An Asian Festival of Inclusive Arts” will consist of stage and visual arts events presented by artists with and without physical disabilities, starting with a parade in Siem Reap town Saturday, where 300 participants will join the artists.
International performers will include the Hitomi Deaf Puppet Theater from Japan, which uses music and gestures to talk of a changing world; the Koshu Roa Taiko group, which plays Japanese traditional drums; deaf percussionist Lily Gohof, of Singapore, and partially disabled dancer Laxmi Kharel Basnet of Nepal.
At the opening night party Saturday, Feb 23, Thai jazz pianist Yuttana Srimulchai, who is blind, will join Cambodian chapei master Suon Peng, himself physically impaired, in a performance at Gasolina in Phnom Penh.
Sunday, at the Chenla Theatre in Phnom Penh, the Vietnamese Together Higher Dance Troupe will combine songs and dance in “Stories of Us” about the segregation and isolation physically disabled people often experience.
Also dancers—with and without disabilities—of the Laotian Lao Bang Fai & HIB Laos hip-hop crew will share the stage with circus/theater artists from Cambodia’s Phare Ponleu Selpak in Siem Reap town Sunday and with the Cambodian Epic Arts Youth group in Phnom Penh on Feb 29.
Events will include workshops, films and art exhibitions at the Sovanna Phum theater, the French Cultural Center, Bophana Audio Visual Resource Center and Meta House in Phnom Penh and The Art House in Siem Reap town.
The festival took a year to set up, said festival producer Hannah Stevens of Epic Arts, an NGO using arts to bring people together in Cambodia.
The idea for the festival—which is sponsored by the Tokyo-based Nippon Foundation and supported by various organizations including Handicap International Belgium—came out of the Epic Arts troupe performing in a two-show event featuring disabled artists in Ho Chi Minh City and Vientiane in 2006, she said. The NGO then started discussing the possibility of a similar event in Cambodia, Stevens said.
“It had so much potential: It seemed a shame to just have one night in a theater. Why not have three days, a weekend? Then it became five days, and finally we’ve got eight days,” she said.
The theme of the festival is “See Ability Not Disability,” Stevens said. “I really, really believe that what we are doing…can change people’s perception of people with disabilities.”
The artists at the festival are of international caliber, which will provide disabled Cambodians with role models, Stevens added.
All events during the festival are free. But people wishing to make sure they have seats for performances—such as such as the comedy “Let’s Talk About Love” produced by Cambodia’s Amrita Performing Arts and staged at the Chenla Theater on Feb 27—may get free tickets at Amrita’s office and, after Friday, at Gasolina, the festival headquarters, Stevens said.
Information is available at www.spotlight-inclusiveartsasia.org.
