Brecht in Asia and Africa 
 
 
partly stimulated by more efficient working arrangements as everyone is 
only a part-time cultural worker, but greatly encouraged by the need to 
express art through theater, PETA has learned to work as a collective 
involved in a larger national project. 
    The impact upon the audience of the production may never be 
accurately measured but the Galileo alone has brought in people from 
all walks of life - students, professionals, middle class, workers, urban

poor, artists, intellectuals, even enthusiasts of high art. The audience

would wildly applaud, intently listen, laugh freely throughout the about

six performances during the 1981 PETA season. After seeing the play, 
numerous reflection papers, discussions, rave reviews even by the 
establishment publications, debates in a journal followed even as the 
people continued to organize in the schools and the communities. That 
Brecht's social commitment in theater and that-of PETA and the other 
Philippine community theater are similar need not be belabored. 
Perhaps because of that, these groups have found in Brecht's theater 
so much to learn from and dialogue with. Brecht's theater has shown the 
possibilities in theater ranging from understanding the dialectics in and

of theater and society to the suggestive use of props and visual 
symbols and costumes which need not be expensive, something that is 
particularly useful for an economically impoverished country like the 
Philippines. Yet, perhaps, it is in the communities that Brecht's theater

has made more far-reaching impact, in which plays like the Caucasian 
Chalk Circle have been translated and adapted, especially in Mindanao, 
where it holds more significance. 
     The Mindanao problem is rooted in land. It used to be called the 
 "Land of Promise" as its fertile soil provided possibilities for
building new 
 frontiers for Filipinos who used to live in the more congested regions of

 the country. But soon, plantations of multinational corporations began 
 to mushroom on leased land - pineapple, banana, rubber and coconut. 
 When Martial Law was declared and the government gave the 
 multinational companies more incentives for investment, whatever little

 hope was left began to fade for the people as the fruit plantations 
 expanded in area and other transnationals set up new and related 
 industries. Social unrest worsened and protest activities increased so 
 the military came in to repress dissent and protect the multinational 
 corporations' interests and investments in Mindanao. As instruments of 
 the dictatorship and the transnationals, the military forcibly uprooted

 the inhabitants from their lands which were needed by the 
 transnationals for expansion, arrested, tortured and massacred them. 
 Even as the economic and political conditions of the people worsened, 
 thousands of families were lifted from their homes and forced to live in

 hamlets. In response to repression, the people learned to develop new 
 ways of expressing their protests and organizing to defend their rights.

 It is in this context that the community theaters in Mindanao were 
 established. 
     The fishing villages of Davao and Southern Cotabato, the urban 
 communities, parents, out of school youth, the Lumad and the tribal 
 Filipinos have put up their own community theaters, mounting plays that

 depict how their rights were being violated, how they were being evicted

 
 
146