ABSTRACT
The arts do not just entertain and distract humans, as was the purpose of their origin, but they also empower each of us with renewed sources of strength and energy to carry on with life's daily joys and sorrows. In the words of Shanta Serbjeet Singh, Chairperson of the Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Network:
We needed to be prepared for devising new and long-term strategies towards our task of helping the emotional and stress-battered individuals in ways that would empower them and give them new directions in coping with their situation. This was just as well because now we have a blueprint for addressing this very deep-seated problem anywhere in the world … specially in terms of finding strategies through the performing arts, which minimise polarisation by using the creative approach and the performing arts to end divisiveness in communities created by religious and economic factors (cited in L. G. Singh 2006: 4).
