Organized by the EcoWaste Coalition, a waste and pollution watchdog, the street drama will focus on the theme “Plastik: Pasakit kay Inang Daigdig” and feature performers from the Cavite-based Malikhaing Landas na Magpapayabong sa Sining at Kultura (Malaya) youth theater group.
The Lenten-inspired street play will dramatize the adverse impacts of the unchecked consumption and disposal of plastics to the environment.
To symbolize the plastic problem, which is turning into a global environmental and health concern, youth artist Jane Bongon as Mother Earth will wear a crown of trash and carry a cross made of plastic discards.
“Plastic pollution is the modern-day cross that Mother Earth has to bear on a daily basis,” lamented Aileen Lucero, Coordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition.
“Today, we find our streets, esteros, beaches, mangrove forests and landfills awash in discarded plastics,” she pointed out.
“Plastics recklessly disposed of in streets, dumps and waterways eventually find their way to the seas damaging the ocean ecosystems and contaminating the marine life with hazardous chemicals and micro plastic particles,” she said.
Through this street play, the EcoWaste Coalition hopes to encourage critical reflection on what has become of the environment with the increasing “plasticization” of our way of life and ever-growing throw-away mentality.
“This Lenten activity would hopefully contribute to the much-needed ecological awareness, discernment and conversion among the faithful,” Lucero added.
Michael John Testa will direct the play written by Vhinz Saladino, founding chairperson of Malaya.
The street play is part of the ongoing campaign of the EcoWaste Coalition to prevent and reduce plastic garbage and pollution towards the envisioned Zero Waste society.
Last Friday, the group launched the report “Everything you (don’t) want to know about plastics” published by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation with inputs from the EcoWaste Coalition and environmental groups from Bangladesh, India and South Africa.
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