The Courageous Turtle – Dealing with the Past through Modern Theater

Overview

The Courageous Turtle is the title of the theater play of the Community Theater and Peace Dialogue Project which aims to raise young Cambodians’ interest in the Khmer Rouge past, especially their understanding of the conflict, and thereby contribute to a culture of memory and respect for survivors. Since dealing with the past is a productive force for change in today’s society, the Khmer Rouge conflict should not be seen as an isolated event, but rather as integral part of society’s on-going evolution. Therefore, this project encourages young Cambodians to reflect on the root causes and consequences of the conflict, and how they fuel protracted abuse today. It does not exclusively focus on atrocities committed under the Khmer Rouge but also deal with human rights violations in society today. Moreover, youth is empowered and inspired through the theater which makes them courageous and active in problem solving, eliminating injustice and preventing future atrocities. Through youth engagement, communities are able to do a better job in creating the services, opportunities, and support that young people need. Youth engagement is important because youth has a right to represent their own interest, and to contribute to the democratic development of society. 

The project foresees a series of community theatre plays on both past and current forms of abuse. The script was developed by a gender-balanced team of one national and one international writer. The theater plays uses of the “Two-Hander” approach. This theater form comes from the English theater tradition, in which two actors switch into the role of several characters. This creative approach is usually an effective way to deliver civic education in more informal yet emotional ways. To further strengthen youth engagement in terms of commemoration, reflection, and truth telling, this project also foresees community dialogues with youth and survivors. Here, youth has the space and time to discuss and gain knowledge on past and current forms of abuse.

The project is funded by IFA and implemented by three different organizations, Meta House (KDKG), Youth For Peace (YFP) and Khmer Art Action (KAA). The play has been performed in the city and across many Cambodian provinces, particularly in NGOs, high schools and universities. Access to the state schools is ensured through a Memorandum of Understanding with the Cambodian Ministry of Education. In Cambodia, this is an unprecedented cooperation to conduct educational activities on the Khmer Rouge past at schools. 

Summary of the Story

Scene 1: Panha, a timid boy studying in grade 10, standing in the class, showing his turtle and his drawing of a Ninja turtle and claiming that the turtle is definitely courageous and always helps others in emergency, but he suddenly hides himself when he hears that Sna, his aggressive classmate, comes to find him for his homework. However, since Sna cannot find Panha, he threatens Pov, another coward student, to do his homework instead. At that moment Sna is being called by an unknown man who tries to convince him to be the witness of his son’s car accident since Sna witnesses the car plate, but he refuses to get involved because he thinks it is not his business. When Sna leaves, Panha comes out with a feeling of regretful that he could not help Pov because of his weakness.

Scene 2: Panha is in the garden. He meets uncle Thom, who comes from a province to cure his illness at nearby hospital. Thom is interested in Panha’s drawing since he likes civil courage. A dialogue between them starts when Panha asks what civil courage is, why it is important, and how it can be practiced. Panha understands and the dialogue finishes when he hurries to go home without taking his drawing. 

Scene 3: Thom realizes the drawing and then takes it to Panha’s home. He met Panha’s mother, Sophea. Sophea recognizes Thom who used to help her and her mother, Champei, during Khmer Rouge regime. 

Scene 4 (Flashback): Thom, a Khmer Rouge prison guard who is wearing black clothes, shows his disappointment and regret to be Khmer Rouge cadre since he cannot help people and make the peaceful society like he intended. Sophea is in the prison, begging Thom to set her mother free since two of them were excused of stealing fish. By seeing Sophea’s courage and remembering regretfully that he did opposite when his father was being killed, Thom decides to help Sophea and Champei successfully and safely escape. 

Scene 5: Panha is trying to hide his turtle when his grandma comes in. Grandma insists him to set the turtle free since turtle used to help her during Khmer Rouge time when she was commanded by a Khmer Rouge cadre to take the turtle to cook, and it escaped but come back when she prayed. Panha wants to know more about Khmer Rouge and asks grandma how to prevent that tragedy from happening again. Grandma advises him to study the root causes and not to hate or revenge. Later, she told Panha to hurry to meet Thom since he has to go back to his hometown today after Sophea and her paid hospital for Thom’s treatment as gratitude. 

Scene 6: Panha meets Thom in the garden and asks Thom the reason why he worked for Khmer Rouge. Thom is amazed by Panha’s question since Panha didn’t like talking about Khmer Rouge before, but happy to see Panha’s interest. After a short conversation, they leave each other.

Scene 7: Panha comes to class. He hides himself as before when Sna comes, but later decides to stand up confidently against Sna while Sna is threatening Pov in relation to his homework. Sna is shocked by Panha’s courage and tries to threaten Panha to do his homework, but Panha denies and offers to teach him instead.

Scene 8: Panha is in the garden preparing to set the turtle free and Sna come in with wounded leg from immediate car accident. Panha explains Sna about civil courage. Sna understands and decides to be witness when the man calls him again. They two go to release the turtle together and make a wish. Sna wants his parents to stop argument and pass exam and Panha wants all Cambodian people to love each other and guarantee the absence of future tragedy.

The Process of the Event

Before every actual performance is conducted, ground preparation must be done. First of all, an official letter requesting for organizing the performances in state school must be written and taken to the Department of Education Youth and Sport in the province to be approved. After the approval, another official letter attached with the MoU from the Ministry, the letter received from the Department, and the agenda of activities must be taken directly to the target high school for the approval and cooperation. During that time, it must be taken into consideration that the school knows what the event is about, the exact date, and the number of students needed. Moreover, the class given should be checked whether it is suitable and comfortable enough for the event without disturbing other nearby classes and whether there is a free class or space for actors to change their clothes during the actual performance. One day before the actual performance, there must be follow-up with the school’s director. 

When that day comes, the event starts after all the students are in, snack is distributed and registration paper is given. And the performance starts after the actors are ready. Normally, the whole performance started with short introduction by the school’s director, and continued by a YFP facilitator who briefly shared some information about the project and its purposes, self-introduction, some information about the organizations in cooperation, some information about the story of the theater, the Pre-test, and ground rule. The play is around 45mn and will be performed by two actors with switching roles, and then it will be followed by a group dialogue, experience sharing by victim-survivors or civil parties, the Post-test, closing remark and group photos.

How it works

Through concrete observation, participants were attracted by the theater and eager to join the activities of the event as they came with smiles and happy faces. They actively involved in the activities since the beginning.  Although they were not familiar with the event, they tried to conquer their shyness and quietness to actively engage in the activities. They were very interested in the theater, especially in the scene of Khmer Rouge. Obviously, during the play they expressed their mix of feeling by the story, including laughing, sadness and sympathy. They were fearful with laugh when actors yelled and joked. They looked curious and sorrowful during Khmer Rouge scene. Some were going to tear, but felt released by taking deep breath when the scene ended. Moreover, some took note key words that the actors uttered while others were capturing photos and videos by their mobile phones. They responded to the actors and sometimes played with actors happily. Remarkably, in most of the performances, other students from other classes came to see the play outside the doors and windows as they were attracted by the play and the number of students kept increasing during the play. Sometimes the school's director and teachers also asked to have a seat to see the play too. The participants attended respectfully, watched attentively, listened carefully to what had been told, thought critically, and clapped their hands many times during the play. They understood what civil courage means by nodding their head when actor explained. They replied immediately when actors asked and were not afraid to ask questions back and share their opinions during the whole group discussion. 

During the dialogue, they first admired the play which was interesting and had high educational value. They also showed their utmost interest by appreciating actors and shared what they had learned from. They could not only describe and identify characters either good things or bad things and how they transformed from bad to good but also analyze characters with a bravery to speak out on stage about characteristics and attitude of characters they liked the most. Besides, they shared their personal experiences in helping other people and environment within their family, community and NGOs they are volunteering in, especially its core value and how it works to help improve their community and society. Additionally, they committed to help others by starting from helping themselves and when they have enough ability, they will go on helping their family, community, and country.

They were very interested in Khmer Rouge since they asked many questions during discussion. They expressed their excitement that Khmers escaped from Khmer Rouge and committed to prevent future Khmer Rouge from happening again. They appreciated when a main character of the play could change from not being courageous to be a brave person and another character from being so ignored and careless to be helpful with courage. Importantly, they understood the reason why Khmer people fell into it. 

They understood and were able to assume the meaning of the story and reflect to what they have heard from their parents about life during Khmer Rouge regime as well as how to help other people with personal security. They particularly focused on civil courage, helping each other, helping others in emergency, gratitude, acceptance of what we did, especially recognizing mistakes, recognizing and facing the truth, the need to learn about the past, loving each other and love animals, preventing Khmer Rouge from reoccurrence, standing up to confront problems, being responsible for ourselves, respect each other’s rights, no forcing others and no overusing power, preserving instinct animals, wrong behavior of students, guiding others to the right path as positive change, studying hard, no throwing rubbish, origin of Khmer Rouge, how bad people lived in Khmer Rouge, and comparison between courage with morality and courage without morality, solidarity, being brotherhood to each other, not to act like turtle in the shell when faced problems, individuals’ ability to develop country, obedience of rule of law, doing good things, courage to be witness, avoidance of illegal acts, knowing the root cause to avoid repetition, having gratitude, so on and so forth. 

Furthermore, they claimed to accept that after watching the play they knew a lot, especially about Khmer history. They were more interested in the character that told the story of Khmer Rouge to young generation and advised other to have courage. They impressed the necessity for old people to share history with young people. Moreover, they reflected to the current issues, including domestic violence which influences the behavior of the children. They talked about helping acts in time even during Khmer Rouge regime. They also shared their personal experiences in how they solved problems.

  

More importantly, they shared information they know about Khmer Rouge and human rights abuse, such as living in collection, no private property, no rights to choose partners, no rights to protest/against, no sympathy, insufficient eating, no rights and freedom, lack of rights to speech, overwork, prohibition of education in school, killing intellects, lack of clothes and medicine, separation of people from family, violation and elimination of religion, physical and mental abuse, children’s rights violation, improper living places, no rights to make decision, being forced by Angkar, cruelty and  immoral acts, forced marriage, forced labor, working as slavery, struggling lives, fearful lives, living under investigation by Khmer Rouge’s cadres, no medicine, evacuation, bad living condition, injustice, being accused of guilty or killed by just making small mistakes, excommunication of monks, elimination of love from family, destroying building and institution or transforming to prisons or killing sites, and so on. To know more, they also asked some questions – who is Khmer Rouge? Why Khmer killed Khmer? How people were tortured? etc. When asking about rights in Khmer Rouge, there was once a debate between two opinions. A student claimed that there was the respect of human rights because people were provided with equal status; however, many students against that opinion since people lived under suppression of Angkar and if there was respect of human rights, revolution wouldn’t happen. However, their contrasted opinions were clarified later during experience sharing session. In addition, reflecting to their daily lives, participants shared some issues youth face every day, which includes domestic violence, gangs, rights and freedom violation, traffic accidence, drug consumption, bullying in schools, crime, and being irresponsible, etc. 

After the dialogue, civil parties or victim-survivors shared their experiences in Khmer Rouge time and their engagement with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (ECCC). They shared about their struggling lives before, during and after that time. Students listened to them attentively and asked questions. Some students kept asking many questions as they were so much in curiosity although they were alerted by the limited time, and some students continued asking them about Khmer Rouge after the event ended. Some civil parties also encouraged students to read more documents, ask old people, and do more research on Khmer Rouge because they didn’t want them to forget and didn’t want the regime to happen again.  

When the event ended, some participants requested facilitators to suggest them some books, documents and websites which they can find more information about Khmer Rouge, some requested to visit crime sites like Tuol Sleng as well as ECCC, and they shared their interest to see the play again next time. Some organizations asked for the event to be organized in their places with their youth as they were interested. Amazingly, a few participants asked to volunteer  in the project in order to help educate others. 

Game
Some short energizing games were also introduced if necessary and the time is available.

Challenges, solutions & Lessons learned 

Challenges 

The challenges encountered were various. The performances were conducted with all kinds of people with different background, capacity and ages, including kids. When the performances were conducted with youth in the community, kids also came and made facilitators hard to control as they were playful, noisy and disorderly. Similarly when conducted with kids, they sometimes made noise and moved in and out and some kids were not able to write properly. Their knowledge is also limited. Usually, there was disturbance from late comers during the performance and there was negative noise from environment nearby. The time for the event was a little bit short for victim or civil parties to share about Khmer Rouge and for participants to ask. The hot weather made participants and actors sweat; in contrast, the raining season made the situation worse. Sometimes, the participants were less or over than expectation. The performance was normally organized in the classrooms, but when it was conveyed outside and the stage was in a large open space and there was strong wind, the challenges would be the low sound of actors and facilitators. Since the performances were for everyone, foreign participants could attend, but the thing was they couldn’t understand Khmer. Occasionally, some participants reacted to some small errors of clothes, words, gesture and so on since the story is long and the actors had to remember the script and hurry to change the clothes to play another character again and again. 

Solutions

Every challenge has its solution. The facilitators and actors must prepare themselves and be ready for all kinds of participants. When conducting in the community, we proposed ground rule before starting the whole performance and fined kids who made noise to sit alone. We only allowed them to see the play, but separated them to another place during discussion and experience sharing. When there were many kids, and some were not able to write, the facilitators offered them assistants and not-so-deep question was applied or we skipped Pre and Post-test in written form, but we measured their knowledge increase by verbal communication. When there was disturbance noise, we kept their attention on the activities by trying to provoke questions and increased the voice to deal with external sound. Facilitators and their teachers sat as audience among them and told them to be quiet with order. When they were late, we waited late comers until they all arrived and spent that time to arrange the chairs for all participants, and actors could spend for warming- up. We cut off some not-so-necessary activities if necessary, but encouraged them to ask their parents or other old people in their community. When there were many participants, we randomly selected participants to do Pre and Post-test. When participants were not familiar with the topic and kept quiet, we tried to elaborate by using simple statements and encouraged them to think and speak more, and shared their personal experiences of their daily life. We opened the windows when it was hot and there were no fans or air-con in the class. When there was rain, we tried to speak louder and let participants sit closer to us. When the time was strictly limited, we proposed help from their teachers and sought for cooperation with them. In order to save time, we went before starting time to arrange the place. When participants criticized the mistakes, we accepted it, explained the reasons after the play and promised to be careful for next performances. We interpreted some and script was also provided for foreigners if needed. However, the solutions were also flexible depended on the real situation. 

Lessons Learned 

• It is a need to understand the condition of the school before conducting activities
• It is a need to be ready for the over number of participants when performance is conducted in communities
• It is a need to be careful when the performance was conducted with skillful participants, especially in Arts
• To create good environment and successful performance, we need to propose ground rule before starting the activities
• There is a need to be flexible with the time and materials that are not available
• We need to be flexible with the activity and ability of the participants
• Playing energizing games can refresh their feeling and make them fully participate
• Participants feel more comfortable with huge space and formal stage
• Youth cannot concentrate more on the play when many kids attend
• There should be more fun activities to attract kids’ attention
• Young people are more interested in the play, more courageous and more active than old people
• It’s also important to let foreign participants know about the performance and understand our activities. It can raise awareness, spread outcome and build connection

Quote by School’s Representative 

Ms. Ros Chanthorn, 51 years old, vice president of Chea Sim Takeo High School, said that “This program is good; it educates people to love peace, have unity, to recycle. Students received education through the play. They understood. I want many students to attend because they are more interested in watching rather than reading more books. Students like and they will study more about Khmer Rouge, to find good and bad points of the past. They see and they know. We don’t support Khmer Rouge, but I won’t educate them to hate.” 

Quotes by Participants

Mr. Pich, 17 years old, said that “I gained knowledge about the past. I learned about how people lived in Khmer Rouge time, solidarity, positive change and history. It’s important to know about the past because if not, Khmer will repeat it again. For Youth, if they don’t want to repeat, they must know history. Youth must have courage and try to study. I will do more research about Khmer Rouge and study about the past, especially the causes, what Angkar is, who supported, and why eliminated other nationals. I will try to be courageous. If possible, the program can show video about Khmer Rouge to make us know that Khmer Rouge is real.”

Ms. Damrey Srey Oun, 17 years old, said that “I feel happy, but shocked during Khmer Rouge scene. I learned about solidarity, helping others, confronting problems. In Khmer Rouge, there were no rights, people worked hard, no rest, were forced to work even children, people ate less, were accused as guilty when people tried to get food to survive. This program is good – let us know about Khmer Rouge and current society. It’s important to know about Khmer Rouge because we can compare it with today. I want the organizations to continue the play, inside and outside the schools with all secondary schools, high schools and universities.” 

Comments by Civil Parties

“The play reminded me about the past. The play is the best. I used to tell young people about Khmer Rouge and once I had problems when I told students in class about a perpetrator who are living in the village.”

“The play is good. It shows solidarity, but regrettably in Khmer Rouge time, we couldn’t fight back. The story is good. The Khmer Rouge is stronger than this in reality. Morality is dropping down in today society. We can prevent Khmer Rouge from happening again as long as young generation changes their attitude. We want courage and freedom.” 

“The atrocity is enormous. It cannot be forgettable. We request this play to include in curriculum of public schools for students to know why they killed people, to remind them not to forget, to have courage, to find justice, and to against cruel ill-treated acts. The play is very good.” 

“I remember about the turtle in the shell; it reminds me about Khmer Rouge. It reminds me that I was a turtle in the shell, followed everything they commanded. They killed people; we lost freedom because we didn’t dare to show courage, fight against or speak out. But now I won’t be a turtle in the shell anymore. Millions of people acted like turtle in the shell (in Khmer Rouge time). We must be courageous, and have solidarity. The play is the best. It includes all – courage, being frighten, standing up, solidarity, unity and fighting against.” 

“Today I have a chance to see the play. I want young generation to have solidarity, help each other. I regret that I didn’t help my brother when he was killed. Today I want to send message to other young generation to love each other and have solidarity. I wish organizers and all people success.” 

“I really satisfied (to the play). Millions of people in Khmer Rouge time were turtle in the shell. No one dared to fight against. The play is very good; it reminds youth to be courageous, and dare to fight against. But I want you to add another cruel Khmer Rouge cadre to the play to show how Khmer Rouge tortured people to make students feel suffer, painful, afraid, not to act like Pol Pot, dare to fight against/protest and not allow it to happen again since the Khmer Rouge cadre in the play is so gentle. If no cruel Khmer Rouge cadre, they won’t believe.” 

“The play shows the past and current society. I used to attend the performance and shared my experience in the class when it was conducted in Kampong Chhnang. They (students) understood and know more about Khmer Rouge, but I want more. We old people know, but they are young, they don’t know. Beside the play in class, I want it to be included in the curriculum in school in Khmer Rouge session. I want it to be quick promoted. I also want old people to share and show youth more.”