World Theatre Day – March 27, 2014

International Message

„"Wherever there is a human society, the uncontrollable Spirit of the Spectacle also manifests itself.".

Under the trees of small villages and on high-tech stages in globalized cities; in school halls, fields and temples; in slums, urban squares, community centers and renovated basements, people are drawn together to experience a sense of communion in the ephemeral theatrical worlds we create to express our human complexity, our diversity, our vulnerability, in flesh and blood, in breath and voice.

We gather to weep and remember, to laugh and contemplate, to learn and affirm and imagine. To marvel at technological dexterity and to embody divinities. To hold our collective breath at our capacity to embrace beauty, compassion and monstrosity. We come to receive energy and strength. To celebrate the richness of our diverse cultures and to erase the borders that separate us.

Wherever there is a human society, the uncontrollable Spirit of the Spectacle also manifests itself. Born of community, it wears the masks and costumes of our various traditions. It masters our languages, rhythms and gestures and opens a free space in our midst.

And we, the artists who work with this ancient spirit, feel obligated to channel it through our hearts, our ideas, and our bodies to reveal our own realities, in all their mundanity and shining mystery.

But, in this age when so many millions of people struggle to survive, suffer under oppressive regimes and rapacious capitalism, flee conflict and hardship, in this age when our private lives are invaded by secret services and our words are censored by intrusive governments, in this age when forests are annihilated, species exterminated and oceans poisoned: what do we owe it to ourselves to reveal?

In this world of unequally distributed power, in which different hegemonic orders try to convince us that one nation, one race, one gender, one sexual orientation, one religion, one ideology, one cultural model is superior to all others, is it still excusable to defend the insistent idea that the arts should be detached from the social agenda?

Should we, the artists in the arenas and on the stages, conform to the aseptic demands of the market, or should we use the power we have: to open a free space in the hearts and minds of society, to gather people around us, to inspire, enchant and inform, and to create a world of hope and open-hearted collaboration?”

Brett Bailey is a South African playwright, director, installation artist and artistic director of THIRD WORLD BUNFIGHT. He has worked in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UK and Europe. His successful iconoclastic plays that interrogate the dynamics of the post-colonial world include BIG DADA, IPI ZOMBI?, iMUMBO JUMBO, medEia and ORFEUS. His installations include EXHIBITs A & B. His plays have been performed in Europe, Australia and Africa, and he has won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal for Set Design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007). He was the president of the Prague Quadrennial jury in 2011, and was a member of the jury for the International Theatre Institute's "Music Theatre Now" competition in March 2013. He directed the opening event of the World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg (2009), and, between 2006 and 2009, the opening events of the Harare International Arts Festival. Between 2008 and 2011, he was the curator of South Africa's only public arts festival, "Infecting the City", in Cape Town.

National message

World Theatre Day is not only a celebration and a moment of reference, it is an attempt by our world to distinguish, in a universal competition of values, what is the place of this artistic concern in public life.

Theatre does not create revolutions, it does not start wars, it does not condemn villains. Its characters are creatures of the imagination who participate in public life by contrast. If Hamlet is romantic you can kill his father and it has not been long, only a few centuries, since, on a battlefield, the tyrant roared after a horse and put a kingdom to the sword.

I desperately watch the hot news of the day and try to recapitulate how theater has intervened to save the world's major conflicts. From the multitude of sensations that test me while watching television, I select only the fear induced by the unmistakable creaking of the tracks as they move, and I try to understand what it is about when I see, face to face, tanks and children.

It's as if I'm witnessing a play written by fate in which Wagner, Shostakovich, Mozart and Rachmaninoff join hands to accompany the balalaika and bazooka in a ruckus that delights irresponsible conductors.

In this era of unprecedented scientific development, cyberspace is a new stage that seizes the energies of potential true heroes. People are listened to, controlled, manipulated, terrified of tomorrow, of poverty and war.

Calling them to the theater to forget seems absurd and inhumane, what can a pleasant evening or a comedy offer them as an alternative!?

And yet, why are the theaters full? Why does the world forget about pain when it comes to Romeo and Juliet? Why does the audience seem to show him the way when Hamlet struggles with lies, murder, and destiny?

Isn't it because in theater you are an actor and a spectator at the same time?

Is it because in his world you encounter big thoughts, illusions, fears, joys... Like in life?

And what is life anyway?

„"All the world's a stage and all the people are merely actors," says Shakespeare, opening the door to self-searching even though the war of the two roses had begun over the fence.

True theater is the place where people will always encounter what humanity has left them as a legacy to understand reality sooner.

Ion Caramitru