YATTA (Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts)

YATTA is a youth-based theater organization in Dumaguete City, Philippines established in 2005.

📍SAPNAY, YATTA Creative Sanctuary
https://maps.app.goo.gl/spandF6K8PhE7bGB7?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy YATTA is a youth theater organization formed after a theater workshop in November of 2005 facilitated by PETA artist-teachers Dessa Quesada Palm and Jeff Hernandez. It was held in Dumaguete Ci

ty as part of a nationwide campaign organized by End Child Po*******hy, Prostitution and Trafficking or ECPAT and the Philippine Educational Theater Association or PETA. The participants who are now young artists were mostly students from Negros Oriental State University, Silliman University, Foundation University and other high schools. From that theater workshop, the group has decided formally to set up the first youth theater organization in Dumaguete that aims to raise people’s awareness on various issues, especially children and young people’s rights, through theater performances and training. YATTA is about PAGASA, the kind of hope that emerges from young people moving from being the “object” of history, to being the “subject” of history, who acts and engages in shaping what is to be. PA for Pananaw/Paninindigan (viewpoint/conviction), a theater that encourages the youth to ask, to probe, to explore viewpoints, and when necessary, to form conviction. GA is for Galing/Gawa (skill/action), a theater that believes in developing the creative potential of the youth, wherever their origins may be from, the only prerequisite being their willingness and commitment to learn and use their skills for positive action. SA is for Sarili/Samahan (self/relationship), a theater that recognizes the value of individual initiative and character while seeking ways to develop a nurturing community with a deep sense of respect for one another. YATTA members have been recipient to a number of trainings, including Basic Integrated Theater Arts Workshop, Playwriting Workshop, Violence Against Women and Children orientation, Men for Violence-Free Communities and Sustainable Masculinity, Songwriting Workshop with Joji Benitez, Theater Workshop on Conflict Transformation, Trainors’ Training Workshop, Acting Workshop, Storytelling Workshop, Dance Theater Workshop, Music Theater Workshop, Directing Workshop, Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Training, Life- Skills Training, Arts for Healing, and others. YATTA continues to build its links with various organizations—school-based, church, and civil society groups, offering its services in performance and training. It believes that the performing arts serve as an empowering language for awareness-raising, values-formation and building strategies for action.