KEYNOTE SPEAKER

MARIBEL LEGARDA Artistic Director Philippine Educational Theater Association

Ma. Isabel Legarda is the Artistic Director of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) a leading theater company in the Philippines founded in 1967. As a Senior Artist-Teacher of the company, she has directed and choreographed the company’s major productions as well as conducted workshops for Dance, Women and Children’s Theater both locally and internationally. Her productions of “Hans Christian Andersen Must Be Filipino” and “Dreamweavers” have toured Holland and Hongkong. She has directed the hit musical “Caredivas”, a show that revolves around five gay Overseas Filipino Workers in in Israel who are caregivers by day and drag queens by night. In 2011, Philippine Daily Inquirer Lifestyle Section’s year-end review cited Maribel Legarda as Best Director for her notable plays, “Care Divas” and “Wiliam”. Both plays were also cited as Best Musical and Best Full-length play, respectively. The following year, 2012, PHILSTAGE Gawad Buhay Awards, the

Philippine Theater’s premier award-giving body, named “William” as Best Full-length Play and “Caredivas” as Best Musical. Maribel was then bestowed the award Best Director for the play “William.” In 2013, she directed “Pamana”, the country’s first docu-musical that chronicles the country’s struggles from the Martial Law era up to the present political situation to celebrate the legacy of Ninoy and Cory Aquino. In 2014, she directed “Rak of Aegis,” a musical-comedy production featuring the hit songs of iconic pop-rock band Aegis. The play took the theatre scene by storm with its highly entertaining musical numbers and it’s very relevant story of an urban-poor community struggling with to get back on its feet after months if being flooded. “Rak of Aegis” grabbed the lead in the 1st/2nd-quarter citations of the 2014

Gawad Buhay!, the Philstage Awards for the Performing Arts, with 16 citations in the performance and technical categories. Rak of Aegis, originally conceived with 30 performances had then performed 165 Standing-Room-Only shows and is opening again for another 70 shows from June to September of 2015. Maribel was also the Artistic Director of the International Festival of Women in the Arts (Philippines, 2002), the Mekong Performing Arts Laboratory (Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, 2005-2009), and the recently concluded Mekong Arts and Media Festival (Cambodia, 2009). Though majority of her time is spent with her theater work, she has also been active as an Assistant Director for TV advertisements and has directed three documentaries: “PETA Through the Years,” “Under the Same sky: A Documentary of Women Artist in the Mekong Region,” “Maghuhubad Na Ba Ako Direk? An Unreleased Documentary On the Bold Genre of Philippine Cinema” and recently MTV’s based on the Renato Santos poetry “Ewan lang atbp. kuwan” In 2012, she directed her first full-length as a part of the Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival entitled “Melodrama Negra” which one the Audience Award and was nominated for Best Picture in the said festival. “Melodrama Negra” also received nominations for Best Direction and Best Screen play at the Gawad Urian Awards 2013.

HIROSHI NIRASAWA Visiting Professor of Music, Showa University Former Executive Director, New National Theatre Foundation Hiroshi Nirasawa graduated from the School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. He is now a Visiting Professor at Showa University of Music (Cultural Policy). He is also the Chairman of the Board of Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation. He has 35 years of experience in the Ministry of Education Culture,

Sport, Science and Technology. Through the 35 years, he served as

the Director General of Cultural Affairs Dept., Agency for Cultural

Affairs; the Director of Traditional Culture Div. Agency for Cultural

Affairs; and the Director of Japanese Language Div. Agency for Cultural Affairs. Drawing on his wealth of

managing experience and knowledge of cultural policy, he is the former President of Wakayama National

College of Technology, etc. He is also the former Executive Director of New National Theater Foundation

from July 2009 to June 2016.

SPEAKERS

SESSION 1: The Laws of Attraction: Festival Strategies for Engaging NextGen Audiences

JOSEPH MITCHELL Festival Director, OzAsia Adelaide

Joseph is an experienced arts manager and festival director.

Currently Artistic Director of OzAsia Festival in Adelaide, his first

festival program was delivered in September 2015 and set new

records for audience attendance and introduced a bold

contemporary-focused vision for Asian arts in Australia.

Under Joseph’s stewardship, OzAsia Festival has been referred

to as Australia’s ‘necessary festival’ by RealTime Arts for its

unique focus on contemporary Asian arts and as an avenue to

support Australian-Asian arts collaboration.

Prior to OzAsia Festival, Joseph was Executive Producer at Brisbane Festival (2011-2014) where

he was responsible for supporting the artistic program and overseeing the producing and

production teams of each festival.

Joseph is also an accomplished theatre and opera director with productions presented at State

Opera of South Australia (2019 – 2020) and Queensland Theatre Company (2006 – 2011)

including new Australian works, international classics and devised programs. He completed his

post-graduate education at Victorian College of the Arts, majoring in Dramatic Direction.

Undergraduate study included Bachelors in Communication (Journalism) and Arts (Theatre) at

Newcastle University.

ANDREI NIKOLAI PAMINTUAN Festival Director, Fringe Manila Manila

Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan is a director and

producer. He has divided his time between the

Philippines, New Jersey, and New York City where

he took on various production roles in non-profit

theater, festivals, cultural organizations and other

art related fields. Andrei is the Festival Director

and founder of The Manila Fringe Festival, Inc., a non-profit organization, which produces Fringe

Manila, a multi-genre international arts festival that celebrated its 5th year in 2019. He is

currently the Creative Director of Pineapple Lab, an artist-run creative hub that features

contemporary performances and interdisciplinary arts in Poblacion, Makati City. In 2018, he co-

founded Fringe Cultural and Creative Industries, Inc. or Fringe Creatives – a new company that

produces Filipino productions and mediates international collaborations, highlighting original

and inclusive content with diverse narratives in media, events, and live performances.

Andrei was one of the first Asian recipients of the Australia Council for the Arts Future Leaders

Program. He jumpstarted an Inclusion and Access Plan Toolkit for Melbourne City’s Arts House

for artists and audiences with a disability. He was also part of the first contingent of the Japan

Foundation Asia Center’s Next Generation Producing Performing Arts Program (2017-2018).

Andrei completed a Directing and Producing Program at the New York Foundation for the Arts'

Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (NYFA-IAP) in Brooklyn, New York (2015) and represented

the Philippines and USA as a delegate to the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators

in Austria in October 2016.

SESSION 2: "Engaging Next Generations to Cultivate their Physical and Mental State through Performing Arts"

GLEN S. FUKUSHIMA Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Washington D.C., San Francisco, Tokyo Glen S. Fukushima is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American

Progress, a public policy think tank headquartered in Washington,

D.C., where he focuses on U.S.-East Asia relations. He divides his time

between Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Tokyo.

He has served on numerous corporate boards of directors, advisory

boards, and government advisory councils in the United States,

Europe, and Japan. He has served as Chairman of the Mori Art Museum Best Friends, member of

the Director’s Circle of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and of the Jade Circle of the

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and co-founder of the Tokyo Committee of Human Rights

Watch. He also serves on the board of the Washington Bach Consort, PostClassical Ensemble,

and American Friends of the Bach Collegium Japan. In 2016, he was appointed Commissioner of

the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, and in 2018, he was invited to join the

board of the Mori Art Museum.

A native of California, Mr. Fukushima was educated at Stanford University, Harvard University

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School. At

Harvard, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He was a Stanford/Keio

Exchange Scholar at Keio University and was a Fulbright Fellow and a Japan Foundation Fellow at

the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo.

“Make the Garden Grow: Developing the 21st Century Audience” RACHAEL CHAN Cellist, Orchestra of the Music Makers Singapore City

Rachael is an avid orchestral musician, and has been a cellist with Singapore's Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) since 2013. She served as Chairperson of OMM's volunteer Community Engagement Team from 2017 to 2018, which curates both offstage and onstage encounters that aim to enhance the public’s appreciation for the art form. Rachael studied the cello at School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA) under the tutelage of Dr Park So Youn, where she received prizes for chamber music, music history, music theory, and composition. She is now reading Geography at the University of Oxford. Music continues to hold a central place in her heart, and she hopes to continue creating opportunities for others to fall in love with orchestral music. LUTGARDO LABAD Founding Artistic Director, Kasing Sining Foundation Manila

Lutgardo Labad or Gardy is a multi-awarded theater and film composer, a theater director, and a cultural development specialist in the various fields of education, governance, and community development work. He has directed around fifty plays, composed for about 90 movies and music theater, and conducted hundreds of community arts capability building programs across the country and abroad.

From the seventies to the early nineties he trained in and nurtured the progress of one of the major national theater groups in the Philippines, the Philippine Educational Theater Association or PETA. He conceived the basic foundations of the PETA Creative Pedagogy called BITAW or Basic Integrated Theater Arts Workshop. He was Pedagogy and Artistic Director of PETA for many years leading the faculty of artists-teachers in creating workshop curricula for communities, schools, groups all over the country, in Asia, North America and Europe.

In 1994, he left PETA and settled in the Visayas region, in his home province of Bohol, where he has become engaged in cultural development work. As a member-officer of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts or NCCA, he led the use of the creative theater arts pedagogy approach in developing community arts workshops and production programs across the region.

In the last ten years, he has concentrated on the establishment and organization of community theaters in Bohol and in other provinces of the Visayas, as a major component of sustainable community development, and a people-based model for community-based ecological and cultural tourism.

He is the international manager of the internationally acclaimed Loboc Children’s Choir and a founding leader of the Bohol Arts And Cultural Heritage. In 1997, he established a repertory theater company in Bohol, the Kasing Sining Teatro Bol-Anon Ensemble.

His national awards include Film Scores for a number of significant Filipino movies from national award-giving bodies like FAMAS, the Metro Manila Film Fest, URIAN, and the Film Academy of the Philippines, and an award for Best Theater Director in 2010 from the Aliw Awards for his direction of the PETA production Post Office. He was a senior grantee of a Fellowship from the Nippon Foundation as an Asian Public Intellectuals (API). Most recently, Philstage awarded Gardy the Natatanging Buhay Award 2019 for his lifetime achievement in theater, and the Film Development Council of the Philippines has chosen him as one of the national luminaries who have contributed to the development of the Philippine film industry.

Currently, he is a member of the NCCA Task Force for Cultural Mapping, Special Program for the Arts for DepEd, and Philippine Values. He is Artistic and Pedagogy Director of the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage (BACH) Institute, and Cultural Consultant for the master plan of the Region VII Regional Cultural Hub, and for the forthcoming NCCA Teleserye on Philippine Values.

SESSION 3: Mavericks Or Madness: Innovation In Performing Arts Production And Presenting

JOE SIDEK Raintree Fringe Festival Penang Best known as director of the George Town Festival (GTF), Joe Sidek has established himself as one of Malaysia’s strong advocates for the arts. GTF is an annual month-long festival that turns the town into a brilliant canvas for local and international performances, visual arts, culture and community-infused activities. Before taking up the position of festival director, Joe Sidek played major roles in various forms of art expression - from event management, art curatorship, restaurant ownership and even costume design. A lesser known fact about Mr Sidek is that he still runs his family-owned textile chemical factory. With his industrialist background, entrepreneurial nature and his visionary passion for the arts, it is no surprise that 8 years after his appointment as Festival Director of GTF in 2010, the festival has grown incrementally ever since. Alongside GTF in 2018, Joe also directed the 2-year-old Rainforest Fringe Festival in Kuching, having founded the festival in the previous year. He has also helmed the Butterworth Fringe Festival for 3 years (2015-2017) and earlier in 2014, he brought Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival to Southeast Asia and showcased the inaugural Tropfest South East Asia in Penang. Elsewhere, he has been invited to speak regionally and in cities like Brisbane, Taipei, Seoul and Yokohama about his role in the creation and continued growth of GTF. He also sits on the Industry Advisory Panel of CENDANA (Cultural Economy Development Agency), which was initiated in June 2017.

EISA JOCSON Contemporary Choreographer and Dance artist Manila Eisa Jocson exposes body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the unique socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. She studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move – be it social mobility or

movement out of Philippines through migrant work. In all her creations – from pole to macho dancing and hostess to Disney princess studies – capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into spatial geographies.

Eisa Jocson is a contemporary choreographer and dancer from the Philippines, trained as a visual artist, with a background in ballet. She has been commissioned by and toured extensively in

major contemporary festival with her solo triptych: Death of the Pole Dancer (2011), Macho Dancer (2013) and Host (2015). Macho Dancer won the prestigious Zurcher Kantonalbank Acknowledgement Prize at the Zurich Theater Spektakel in 2013. Her new series HAPPYLAND (2017) is a study on Disney Princess and the production of fantasy within the ‘happiness empire’. A recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Awards, she is commissioned to do a new performance work in Sharjah Biennale 2019.

SESSION 4: Performing Arts on Display: Expositions, Markets and Creative Parks

HIROMI MARUOKA Artistic Director, TPAM Tokyo Hiromi is the Director of TPAM – Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, President of PARC – Japan Center, Pacific Basin Arts Communication, and Vice President of ON-PAM – Open Network for Performing Arts Management. She established the Post Mainstream Performing Arts Festival (PPAF) in 2003 and introduced such groups as PME-ART, Forced Entertainment, Maison Dahl Bonnema and Hotel Modern to the Japanese audience. In conjunction with TPAM, she held two IETM Asia

Satellite Meetings (2008 and 2011) and Performing Arts Presenters’ Network Conference (2009)gathering Asian presenters. In 2012, she established a festival, Sound Live Tokyo.

謝玲達 LINDA SUSAN HSIEH

Producer, EPPAX She is currently a producer at EPPAX in Beijing,

responsible for building up the company’s online

presence through website design, social media

content managing and connecting and building a network in Asia for business development. She

also leads in providing strategic planning and consulting performing artists and artist managers

who are seeking opportunities in Asia.

An experienced manager for artists, she has also worked at AC Orange as Chief Talent Manager,

identifying booking opportunities for international artists in China. She is also in charge of

business development with brands, venues, and other artist-managers. Her professional career

started after graduating in the United States. Since then, she has worked for Park Avenue Artists

as Associate Artist Manager, Primo Artists, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and at IMG Artists in New York

City.

She took trainings on Event/Concert Photography at the School of Visual Arts and enrolled at the

Martha Graham Contemporary Dance in 2014. She also studied Teacher Training, Piano and

Viola Performance, and Composition from 1996 to 2012. She was a recipient of scholarships

from the Eastern Music Festival, North Carolina in 2009; and from the Aspen Music Festival and

School, Colorado in 2013.

She finished Bachelor of Music in Classical Viola Performance from the Tunghai University,

Department of Music 台中東海大學音樂系 in 2012 and took a Master of Arts, Music Business

Graduate Program at the New York University where she graduated in 2015.

BRIAN JOHNSON LOWE Co-Founder, My Performing Arts Agency Kuala Lumpur

Brian is the Co-Founder of My Performing Arts Agency, a privately

owned arts consultancy & arts events management agency with the

express goal of supporting the continuing development of artistic &

cultural efforts in Malaysia where he leads the overall goal and vision

of the company, company values and philosophies, measures of

success quantitatively, short to long term business and financial

strategy, high level execution plans, co-development of brand

strategy and identity of MyPAA.