Thanks to dreams & articulations (who just grabbed a spot in my RSS reader because of her Fiona Apple lyrics quote) , I found Roy Lu’s (of Cebu) piece on his Davao performance art workshop trip - Lesson for Teachers.

The way Roy describes this one performance cuts me to the bone. I’m not sure I could have taken the live performance . Reading it brings tears and feelings to the surface that are difficult to put into words - I guess that’s why they call it art.

The performance piece that most impressed me was that of three very young girls, aged 12, 14 and 15. Mitzi Jules, Dhyris Cajes and Sheera Mae Peñaranda, respectively. They are peer facilitators of a group called Anak OFW. Their parents, one of them, are either out of the country or are preparing to leave.

Their performance consisted of them sitting on the floor, in a triangle about 3 meters from each other. They brought with them sheets of white paper that they then made into paper airplanes. These they made carefully, deliberately, slowly. Just as the first planes were finished, the audience knew - or thought so — what was next. Still, they continued making the planes, building up the impatience of and the tension in the audience. This was released only when they flew the planes towards each other, then towards the audience.

It was a short, simple performance art piece. Yet, within that short span of time and that simple set of actions was distilled the emotional experience of children of OFWs. The waiting, the seemingly meaningless activities, the tension, then the flight either towards or away from them. We know it, right? No, we don’t.

Oh. That one hit me for some reason.