1. Ananda Breed By Christenson, Hannah Diamantopoulou, Angie Molitor, Olivia Nicolescu, Andrei Whiting, Johnny

2.  Youth and adults of the YTP project created response performances to the Yssyk-kule lake folktale, based on the issue of bride kidnapping, a practice that comprises half of all the marriages in Kyrgyzstan.  The tale was used to explore ways to integrate nature and the environment into performance making, and to develop characterization using archetypal figures from Kyrgyzstan’s culture.  The use of the environment is related to the eco-spiritual and eco-consciousness of Central Asian nomadic tribes. The YTP project is examined in relation to environmental aesthetics and participatory practices aiming for tolerance building in Central Asia.  Different tales –manas and trickster tales –incorporate ideas and narratives that are useful in negotiating the ambiguities between differing moral, political and social agendas, and can be used in conflict resolution.  Analysis of the YTP project in relation to Yrjö Sepänmaa’s theorization of environmental aesthetics.

3.  Originated from a pilot project in Indonesia in 2008, called Promoting Tolerance and Dialogue through Interactive Theatre; it was funded by the British Embassy and IREX Europe, and developed into a second US AID-funded project in 2010 for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan called Youth Theatre for Peace.  A third project was then set up, under UNICEF funding, called Interaction of Youth People, with the specific goal to improve the interaction of youth in two Kyrgyzstan regions, Osh and Jalalabad.  In these projects, Breed served as lead facilitator, curriculum designer and consultant.

4.  The structure of each project began with an initial scoping visit, to receive guidance on methodologies that should be used or avoided, to determined who would be involved in the project and the selection process, and to gain knowledge about conflict issues.  Then schools and community-based organizations were approached for interested individuals.  A three-step selection process followed. The first step was to introduce the programme through a community meeting, followed by a participatory workshop. Then members of the FTI –local partner – and IREX interviewed the individuals. The final selection was determined by the necessity for equal representation of age, gender, ethnicity and language.

5.  Partners of the YTP project included a professional theatre troupe, Sakhna, founded in 2002 in Kyrgyzstan, which performs traditional manas –stories and tales –through a mixture of nomadic cultural forms and modern performance practices influenced by Soviet and post-Soviet conventions. Central to their pedagogy and practice is the elemental use of nature to inform characterization, staging and presence, and so their work was used as a model to develop reception to the environment through the use of manas, traditional instruments and evocation of nature.  Sakhna gave actors, dancers and musicians to work alongside the YTP project, in order to develop curriculum materials and provide workshops.

6.  Several exercises in the YTP project, in which cultural forms like storytelling, manas and trickster tales were performed, were adapted and taught in different regions, for people with different ethnic identities.  Exercises such as Regional Exchange provided opportunities for participants to devise workshops based on stories, songs, dances and games from their own regions, that embody the region’s customs.  Ashagulon: folk song that is sung at ritual ceremonies conducted during springtime by residents of the mountainous regions of Tajikistan, addressed to the skies so that rain may fall.  The sharing of the ritual with the other participants encouraged the interchange between cultural practices and allowed connections on relational, phenomenological and topographical levels.  Embodied representation of region: Edward S. Casey’s terminology of how the body integrates itself with the environment through a kind of corporeality based on perception.  Casey: We are never without perception, and therefore we are never without emplaced experiences. Our perceptual apparatus, our sensing body, reflects the kinds of places we inhabit.

7.  Kuyruchuk trickster, a Kyrgyz rendition of Robin Hood. Such tales were often set at historical turning points accompanied by social transformations.  The character was born in Kizil-Tuu village, in the Jumgal region in 1866, and the different tales follow his exploits until his death in 1940. He was nicknamed “Little Tail” for his ability to slip between social roles as a modern trickster character, and is described as crossing the boundaries and breaking social roles and norms.  The YTP project used the Kuyruchuk trickster’s tales to give the opportunity to position oneself between authorities and social structures towards conflict negotiation practices.  Other tales are also used; this includes Manas, an epic tale in several volumes narrating the epic life of the warrior Manas. The context of Manas means that such tales were used in contemporary times to promote girls and women within the society through a framing of cultural forms, performed through theatre, to invalidade bride kidnapping as a traditional practice.  Magic and supernatural powers are present throughout the trilogy, and even in the transmission of the tale, as it is said that the manaschi, or the tellers, are chosen by spirits and the stories are transmitted to them through dreams.

8.  The YTP project has reached over 53,000 community members.  The project gave performers the opportunity to present performances based on local and personal issues, such as segregation of ethnic groups and the neglect of orphans by the government. In the second case, the issue was brought to the attention of the government and necessary changes were made to improve the lives of the orphans.  The project has engaged with social processes to become a productive force in the aesthetic expression necessary for building tolerance.  On the other hand, the same tales that promote unification can also be used to encourage exclusion. For example, the manas epic can be seen as a cultural form to promote nationalism in Kyrgyzstan. ~The End~