FOR the performers in the Second Asian People's Theatre Festival, there is no line between art and social politics. It is a world where artistic expression is one of the few ways to effect change.
The theatre festival is part of the Asian Cultural Activism '93: Theatre & Video Festival - an ambitious attempt to bring socially-conscious artists from around Asia together. And with the theatre artists in particular, this translates into a grass-rootslevel approach.
Mok Chiu-yu, one of the festival's curators, said: ''These theatre artists don't just perform, they believe that the common people can express themselves by artistic means.
''They will go around doing workshops in the villages, in a factory or maybe in the schools. And they have developed various methodologies to encourage people to firstly trust one another and then to express, by creative means, the extent that they are dissatisfied or oppressed.'' From the Philippines, for example, comes a piece by Joaquin Yabut entitled Travel, concerning migrant workers living overseas.
From Japan, My Story by Nacco Kiritani relates how a Japanese woman was married to a man in Canada and had to undergo the harrowing experience of internment during World War II.
While most of the other artists will perform solo, Mok said each piece was unique.
''There are a lot of different ways to do a solo performance. There's a Taiwanese woman using traditional Chinese ritual to tell her story. There's a woman from Japan who has a story about a tiger but it is really about the experience of the Koreans in Japan. She'll be using Korean drums and dance.'' Hongkong is healthily represented. Locals Ting Yu and Foo Bing Wing are offering solo pieces and the Anonymity Dramatic Club is contributing what should be the centrepiece of the festival, the Giant Puppet Performance - a spectacle involving 50 people, many of them volunteers.
