Message author: Helen MIRREN
Romanian version by Ozana Oancea

Biography

Helen Mirren is one of the most well-known and respected actresses with an international career, on stage, screen and television, winning numerous awards for her powerful and versatile performances, including the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Queen. 

Helen Mirren began her career as Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre. She played in the Manchester Repertory Theatre, then became part of the Royal Shakespeare Company. After four years of notable work at the RSC, Helen suddenly changed direction and joined the theatre company of the renowned director Peter Brook, the Centre de Recherche Théâtrale, with which she toured Africa and the Americas.  

Her subsequent theatrical career included numerous West End, Fringe, RSC, National Theatre productions, as well as on Broadway in the USA, including A Month in the Country, for which she was nominated for Tony Awards and The Dance of Death, with Ian McKellan as his partner. They followed Orpheus Descending, produced by Donmar Warehouse and Mourning Becomes Electra at the National Theatre, a performance that earned her an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. 

He returned to the National Theatre in 2009 for the title role in Phaedra by Racine, directed by Nicholas Hytner, a show that made history as the first theatre production filmed for NTLive and which was shown in cinemas worldwide. In 2013, in the most recent West End production of the play The Audience by Peter Morgan, reprised, under the direction of Stephen Daldry, the role of Queen Elizabeth II.

She won an Olivier Award and a Best Actress award from What's On Stage. In February 2015, The Audience transferred to the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, New York, Helen Mirren, the performer of the title role, received a Tony Award for Best Actress.

Film & Television

In addition to her career in theatre, Helen Mirren is widely known for her exceptional achievements in film and television. In 2003, Helen Mirren was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire. More information about her roles on stage, screen and television, as well as her charitable work and life, can be found on her personal website: www.helenmirren.com

MESSAGE:

These were such difficult times for performances with an audience, and many artists, technicians, and artisans faced them from within this profession, already marked by a sense of insecurity. Perhaps it was precisely this perennial state of insecurity that made them more capable of surviving this pandemic with intelligence and courage. In these new circumstances, thanks largely to the internet, their imagination has already translated into inventive, funny and emotional ways of communicating.

Since the dawn of time, human beings have told each other stories. The beautiful culture of theater will remain alive as long as we exist. The creative impulse of writers, designers, dancers, singers, actors, musicians, directors will never be stifled and will soon re-bloom, with new energy and a new way of understanding the world we all live in.  

I can't wait!

Helen MIRREN
Theater, film and television actress

Romanian ITI Center
National Message for World Theatre Day 2021 – March 27

The theater seen from the prompter's cage 

Throughout the universal history of the Theater, there have been events that have sent it to sleep: epidemics, pandemics, wars, governments of a peculiar bigotry, dictators. If I think about it, most of the time these syncopes did not bring it to its knees, but strengthened it, gave it extra reasons to survive so that, later, it could reappear more alive and stronger.

Prisoner of the situation, the Theater escapes from under escort and finds its freedom in respect for the word and love for the audience.

Where should one look for theater when it is banned? What happens to it when it is abandoned? Who preserves it in anticipation of better times? Not the beneficiaries of the acting school, the living clothes bearers of the standard characters? Not the actors? Not their hope of being watched? Hunted or adulated? Reserved or protestors? Enter the empty stage and open the prompter's cage. The text is there. The whisper is waiting. The incendiary speech. All that is missing is a little bit of patience and the will to put an end to the indifference.

Theater offers lessons in diction, attitude, respect for speech, and civilization, I would say. In fact, what I'm trying to say here is a call for calm, for study, for patience. Trust us, theater people who, together with a faithful audience, ensure the permanence of an island of freedom, of a secular altar of self-knowledge.

Happy New Year, with health!                                                                

Ion CARAMITRU
President of UNITER / Romanian ITI Center

The messages sent from the International Theatre Institute and the ITI Romanian Center were read by the actor Razvan Vicoveanu and the actress Anda Tamasanu and posted on the Regina Maria Theatre's Facebook page and on the YouTube platform. 

Happy birthday!