World Theatre Day
27th March 2010
International Message
World Theatre Day is an opportunity to celebrate Theatre in all its myriad forms.
Theatre is a source of entertainment and inspiration and has the ability to unify the many diverse cultures and peoples that exist throughout the world. But theatre is more than that and also provides opportunities to educate and inform.
Theatre is performed throughout the world and not always in a traditional theatre setting. Performances can occur in a small village in Africa, next to a mountain in Armenia, on a tiny island in the Pacific. All it needs is a space and an audience.
Theatre has the ability to make us smile, to make us cry, but should also make us think and reflect.
Theatre comes about through team work. Actors are the people who are seen, but there is an amazing set of people who are not seen. They are equally as important as the actors and their differing and specialist skills make it possible for a production to take place. They too must share in any triumphs and successes that may hopefully occur.
March 27 is always the official World Theatre Day. In many ways every day should be considered a theatre day, as we have a responsibility to continue the tradition to entertain, to educate and to enlighten our audiences, without whom we couldn’t exist.
World Theatre Day
27th March 2010
National Message
Theatre after Theatre
I have always been obsessed with the time we, human beings, have only for ourselves. If we divide the hours of the day, according to life’s discipline, we have 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to work, and 8 hours for ourselves. If we take away the time spent on the train, in a car or on the subway, we are left with fewer hours for ourselves. What is not taken into account when we count the hours is the intensity of certain events which may compensate for the loss of time. Love, creation, life’s little joys may be added differently. The clock does not keep track of such things. Only Einstein may offer an explanation, relative as it is, to the manner in which we humans can experience the feeling of eternity. The power of doubleness also contributes to this, as the effect of a philosophy that takes into account the closeness between man and God and the former’s capacity for sacrifice.
Dreams add time to the fear of being transitory in this world. Added all together, these pieces of broken mirror of reality lead us to the theatre, to a self-knowledge that guarantees the survival of the species despite life’s thousands of incidents. Theatre is on the lookout to close you between the walls, where you can find the tranquility you need in order to think freely and spontaneously; where, suddenly, you feel like a child ready to grab a flower or a mace; where you can be sure you are daydreaming and that your open eyes see the world as it is, not as it wants to seem; where, if you fall asleep, you lose track of the many surprises in store for you. When you come to the theatre, pack a snack for the following day in your bag. You will forget about yourself and you will get hungry in the middle of the night when, with your eyes wide open, you will feel that life has a seat reserved for you in the hall. Always.
UNITER/ ITI Romanian Centre President
Ion Caramitru