During 12-17 July 2019 KCD was happy to have visitors form Nepal.  Three guests from Mandala Theater (Kathmandu, Nepal) visited Phnom Penh during the hot sunny days in July. KCD staff were extremely lucky to spend those days with high theater professionals, exchange experience and learn valuable performing skills.

Mandala Theater is a group of theater artists in Kathmandu – capital of Nepal. They have regular performances on social issues inside the country. They also have a mobile theater – a special truck that moves around the country and can be transformed into a stage, thus bringing theater to remote rural areas of Nepal. In their work, Mandala Theater are using the methodologies of Classic Theater, Forum Theater and Playback Theater. KCD Peace Team was extremely interested to speak with Nepali partners about their experience.

On 14th July KCD took guests from Nepal to our target area – Prek Chrey commune. They had a short excursion around the neighborhood and observe some of the issues with their own eyes. Lucky guests also had a chance to enjoy some local food inside the traditional local house.

Later on our Nepali guests had a meeting with our youth Forum Theater Group and share their professional knowledge with our young actors. They have also visited a Forum Theater performance in Pak Nam village and gave us valuable feedback on how it could be improved.

On 15-17th July Mandala Theater team conducted a Forum Theater workshop at KCD office. KCD staff were able to improve their performance skills, learned the effective techniques for scenario and scenes development and could practice some useful theater exercises which would be used in our work in the future.

Mandala Theater group has provided us enormous assistance in preparing our ambitious upcoming Forum Theater event. We are very grateful to our partners from Nepal for their time with us and valuable knowledge that we were able to get from them. We are looking forward for future cooperation and experience exchange!

If you want to learn more about Mandala Theater and their activities, visit their Facebook Page.