The message for WORLD THEATRE DAY is delivered this year by the French actress Isabelle Huppert:

"It has been 55 years since, every spring, a World Theatre Day has taken place. One day, that is, 24 hours, which begin in the area of Noh and Bunraku theatre, pass through Beijing-style opera and Kathakali, stop between Greece and Scandinavia, between Aeschylus and Ibsen, between Sophocles and Strindberg, then between England and Italy, between Sarah Kane and Pirandello, but also in France, where we are and where Paris is, however, the city in the world that receives the most foreign troupes. Next, our 24 hours take us from France to Russia, from Racine and Molière to Chekhov, then cross the Atlantic to stop at a Californian student campus where some young people are perhaps reinventing theatre. Because theatre is always reborn from its own ashes. It is nothing but a convention that must be abolished without delay. That is how it stays alive. Theatre has a rich life that defies space and time, the most contemporary plays are nourished by past centuries, the most classical repertoires become modern every time they are staged again.

A World Theatre Day is, of course, not a day in the banal sense of our daily lives. It revives an immense space-time and, to evoke space-time, I would like to appeal to a French playwright as brilliant as he is discreet – Jean Tardieu. I quote him: „For space, one asks what is the longest path between one point and another. For time, one suggests measuring in tenths of a second the time it takes to pronounce the word «eternity». For space-time, one says: «Fix in your mind, before falling asleep, two arbitrary points in space and calculate the time it takes, in a dream, to get from one to the other.»” What I remember from this is the expression „in a dream”. It would be as if Jean Tardieu had met Bob Wilson. We can also sum up our World Theatre Day by remembering Samuel Beckett who, in his expeditious style, makes Winnie say: "Oh, what a beautiful day that must have been!" Reflecting on this message that I was honored to have asked for, I remembered all these dreams in all these scenes. So I do not come alone to this UNESCO hall; I am accompanied by all the characters that I have played on stage, roles that you think you have abandoned when the series of performances has ended, but which live an underground life inside you, ready to help or destroy the roles that will come after them: Phaedra, Araminta, Orlando, Hedda Gabler, Medea, the Marquise de Merteuil, Blanche Dubois... And I am also accompanied by all the characters that I have loved and applauded as a spectator. And so I belong to the whole world. I am Greek, African, Syrian, Venetian, Russian, Brazilian, Iranian, Roman, Japanese, Marseillaise, New Yorker, Filipino, Argentinian, Norwegian, Korean, German, Austrian, English, really the whole world. This is true globalization.

In 1964, on the occasion of this Theatre Day, Laurence Olivier announced that, after more than a century of struggle, a national theatre had finally been created in England, which he had immediately wanted to be an international theatre, at least in terms of repertoire. He knew well that Shakespeare belonged, in the world, to the whole world.

I was very pleased to learn that the writing of the first message of these World Theatre Days, in 1962, was entrusted to Jean Cocteau, designated as such because he is, after all, the author of "Around the World in 80 Days".

I've traveled the world in a different way – in 80 plays or 80 films. I say "films" because I don't make any distinction between acting in theatre and acting in film, which is always surprising when I say it, but it's true, it's true. No distinction.

Speaking here, I am not myself, I am not an actress, I am just one of so many people through whom the theater continues to exist. It is somehow our duty. And our necessity. How would you say: we do not make the theater exist, rather we exist because of it. The theater is very strong, it resists, it survives all obstacles, wars, censorships, lack of money. It is enough to say "the set is an empty stage from an indefinite era" and let an actor in. Or an actress. What will he do? What will she do? Will they say something? The audience is waiting, it wants to know, the audience without which there is no theater, let us never forget that. A person in a hall is an audience. Not too many empty seats, though! Only at Ionesco... At the end, the Old Woman says: "Yes, yes, let's die in full glory... let's die to become a legend... We'll have, at least, a street named after us..."„

World Theatre Day has been around for 55 years. In 55 years, I am the eighth woman to have been asked to deliver a message, well, I don't know if the word "message" is appropriate. My predecessors (the masculine is mandatory!) spoke about the theatre of imagination, of freedom, of origins, they evoked multiculturalism, beauty, unanswered questions... In 2013 - so it has only been four years since then -, Dario Fo said: "The only solution to the crisis lies in the hope that a great witch hunt will be launched against us, especially against young people who want to learn the art of theatre: thus a new diaspora of comedians will be born who will undoubtedly derive unimaginable benefits from this constraint, through a new type of representation". Unimaginable benefits – here is a beautiful formula, worthy of appearing in a political program, right?… Since I am in Paris, shortly before a presidential election, I suggest to those who seem to have the will to govern us to pay attention to the unimaginable benefits brought by theater. But no witch hunts!

For me, theater is the other, it is dialogue, it is the absence of hatred. Friendship between peoples – I don’t really know what that means, but I believe in community, in friendship between actors and spectators, in the union of all those who are brought together by theater, those who write it, those who translate it, those who light it, dress it, decorate it, those who interpret it, those who make it, those who go to it. Theater protects us, shelters us… I really think it loves us… as much as we love it… I remember an old, old-fashioned technical director who, before the curtain went up, backstage, would say every evening, in a firm voice: „Make way for theater!” This will be the closing words. Thank you.”

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Isabelle Huppert 

(Romanian translation: Alice Georgescu)

 Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (born March 16, 1953) is a French actress who has appeared in over 100 films and television productions since 1971. She made her debut on the London stage, with the leading role in Mary Stuart (1996), and in New York, in Psychosis 4:48 (2005). He returned to New York in 2009 for Quartet by Heiner Müller, and in 2014, he played at the Sidney Theatre Company in Maids by Jean Genet.

14 of her films were entered into the Cannes Film Festival and she won the "Best Actress" award twice, for Violette Noziere (1978) and At the pianist's (2001). She is the most nominated actress at the Cesar Awards, with 16 nominations. She has won the Cesar Award for "Best Actress" twice, for At the Ceremony (1996) and elle (2016). Isabel Huppert is also the most nominated actress for the Molière Award, with 7 nominations.