Even today, the story of Rama, his beloved Sita and his faithful brother Lakshmana never fails to fascinate audiences all over the region. It has indeed become the source and inspiration of many performing and visual art forms in Southeast Asia.

It is no wonder, therefore, that when Dr. Nicanor G. Tiongson of the Philippines, a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies proposed the Ramayana epic to be the basis of a theatrical expression that will showcase the ASEAN spirit of cooperation and provide top ASEAN artists an opportunity to work together in a single production, the ASEAN-COCI Working Group on Visual and Performing Arts lost no time in approving it.

Earlier projects such as the ASEAN Dance Festival, the ASEAN Theatre Festival and the ASEAN Song Festival have presented existing works from each country. This time, ASEAN COCI will be sponsoring a major performing arts project involving top creative minds from all nine ASEAN countries working together as a team to produce a single work of art which will be simply entitled "Realizing Rama."

Although it will be given a contemporary touch and enriched with details from various Southeast Asian versions of the epic, the plot to be adopted for the production will closely hew to the basic plot of the traditional Ramayana: Rama wins Sita's hand in marriage after being tested with the task of breaking a golden bow. Rama's father the king wants to leave the crown to him but one of the King's wives holds him to a promise of granting her two wishes: that Rama go into exile and that her own son ascend the throne. Rama dutifully volunteers to go into exile in the forest so that his father should not break his word. His brother Lakshmana joins him in exile. Bharata, the half-brother who has been thrust unto the throne, seeks him out and asks him to come back and rule the kingdom, their father having died in the meantime. Rama refuses, bent on fulfilling his pledge. While in exile, Rama meets and overcomes many challenges. Then his wife Sita is abducted by the demon Ravanna. He and Lakshmana go in search of Sita, in the process making an alliance with the monkey kingdom. With the help of the great monkey warrior Hanuman, Rama eventually slays Ravanna and rescues Sita. With all obstacles swept away, Rama finally decides to ascend the throne and lead his people to peace and prosperity.

Although there will be no references to topical matters, the positive values and progressive attitudes embodied in the characters and reflected in the themes of the epic could be understood as precisely the values and attitudes that the ASEAN peoples need in confronting and overcoming contemporary problems.

These values include sincerity in leadership, regarding nature as an ally rather than as a victim or enemy, adherence to tradition while continually adapting it to the times, and love and faith in the family in spite of the rigours of the rat race.

The ASEAN-COCI Working Group on Visual and Performing Arts expects that this undertaking will be a landmark in the search for ASEAN identity and at the same time serve the developmental needs of the region's artists through a collaborative and innovative process of art creation.

For this purpose, an artistic/production team, composed of representatives from member countries, recently held its first production meeting in Brunei Darussalam to further conceptualize, plan and organize the undertaking. In the next several months, research, scriptwriting, composition, design works and other pre-production work will be undertaken. By middle of this year, the sets, costumes, and other production requirements should be ready and rehearsals will be held after that.

The premiere performances will be held in Vietnam in December 1998, coinciding with the Sixth ASEAN Summit. ASEAN Heads of State or Government will be in attendance on the gala night. After that, the production will go on tour of the other ASEAN capitals. A video documentation of the performance will be produced for possible airing on television. A programme brochure on the production will provide a background on the ASEAN artists and the performing arts traditions of the member countries.

If the production is successful, it could serve as an important way of promoting ASEAN outside the region because of its touring nature. It has been recommended that the production be brought to the Hannover Expo 2000 and to the capitals of Dialogue Partner Countries after its circuit tour of the ASEAN region.

In the artistic team working on the project now, the artistic director as well as the librettist/scriptwriter come from the Philippines, the composer/arranger is an Indonesian, the choreographer a Thai, the lighting designer a Bruneian, the set designer a Malaysian, the costume designer a Myanmarese, the sound designer a Laotian, the videographer a Singaporean and the technical director a Vietnamese. Mr. Nestor Jardin, Vice President and Artistic Director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, has been designated as overall project coordinator of the production.