Everything Random

For more than 15 years now, I have tried as much as I can to witness a performance in places where I have had a chance to travel. A good friend of mine, Francois, could not understand why I dragged him some years ago while we were in Berlin to watch one of Anton Chekhov’s greatest plays, “Three Sisters,” performed in German by the amazing Berliner Ensemble. But to miss that performance, even when I can not understand all the words but still follow the narrative because I read the play script some years ago, is sacrilegious. It was a majestic night!

So when we visited Siem Reap, Cambodia this year, I wanted us to watch a performance by the renowned Phare Circus. Thanks to Klook, I got a relatively cheap ticket to a good seat right in the middle of the ramps.

Phare Circus prides itself on being a “circus with a purpose”. Its creative teams and performances are graduates of the Phare Phonleu Selpak (The Brightness of the Arts), an art school based in Battambang. Organised in “1994 by nine young men coming home from a refugee camp after the Khmer Rouge regime”, it started as an art school, then a public school, and eventually a music school, a theatre school and a circus. The Phare Circus is a place where graduates from the school have an opportunity to earn a decent wage while at the same time contributing to the school’s sustainability and outreach programs.

The night’s performance, “Same Same But Different,” examined how people of different cultures think differently about the same phenomenon—in this case, the coming of the rainy season. The story was funny and entertaining, and the performance was superb. You should not miss it when you are in Siem Reap. Click on the pictures below to know more: