World Theatre Day blog expands

Check out our new, easy to remember blog address at worldtheatreday.org. And share with your friends!

 

Travis Bedard defines the WTD Blog mandate

From Midnight Honesty at Noon:

World Theatre Day isn’t about creating a global theatre experience. It’s about celebrating the local theatre experience globally. World Theatre Day is an acknowledgement that we are all doing this thing that we love.

And the internet allows us to share those local celebrations and revel in the fact that we’re not alone in our pursuit, and that no matter how many times they try to prove it to us mathematically, theatre is not dead.

Thanks, Travis.

Read the entire post here.

 

What’s Happening for WTD :: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Vancouver has been a long time celebrator of World Theatre Day.  Our local theatre alliance organizes big events every year (and this year is no exception).  While those plans are still yet to be announced, local companies are beginning to blog about what they are doing.

Here are a few examples of what’s happening:

Pi Theatre

Join us for the World Theatre Day matinée of Bashir Lazhar on March 8. Tickets are only $18.

Pacific Theatre

Please join us in celebrating World Theatre Day, 2009! World Theatre Day is celebrated every year on March 27, and is sponsored by The International Theatre Institute.*

BUY A REGULAR TICKET TO A TIME TO DANCE AT PACIFIC THEATRE FOR FRIDAY MARCH 27, 8pm AND RECEIVE A 2nd TICKET ABSOLUTELY FREE!

As more local companies announce their plans, I’ll be updating this post.
If you and your company have plans that you’d like to see posted on the official World Theatre Day blog, please send an e-mail to findbex(at)gmail(dot)com or dawson(dot)lois(at)gmail(dot)com.

 

Prapancha Nataka Dinotsavam

Prapancha Nataka Dinotsavam.  It’s how you’d say World Theatre Day in India.  According to “The Hindu” which bills itself as the online edition of India’s national news paper,

The State government will organise drama competitions in all districts in the State on April 16 on the occasion of ‘Prapancha Nataka Dinotsavam’ (World Theatre Day).

They may have a different date for World Theatre Day, but we are glad to see that they are celebrating!

 

World Theatre Day E-Cards

 

The four available World Theatre Day e-cards

Looking for a quick & simple way to celebrate World Theatre Day or to let your friends know about it?  Check out these e-cards.

 

World Theatre Day is in The Guardian

Coleman has teamed up with the Next Stage blog to throw a World Theatre Day party. “Everyone’s invited,” she exclaims. To kick it off, they have created a new blog for people to exchange ideas about how to mark the day.

This is all great in theory, but there does seem to be something paradoxical about the idea of a World Theatre Day. After all, it is true that great art should be able to reach across cultural and geographical divides. But theatre, as a live and communal event, is something that cannot easily be separated from the location in which it takes place. As such, it is surely impossible to create any kind of meaningful theatrical experience which can be shared by people around the world. But maybe we should just wait until 27 March and see what happens.

To read the whole article, click here.

 

The 2009 World Theatre Day International Message

World Theatre Day – International Message

27th March 2009

Augusto Boal

All human societies are “spectacular” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre!

Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting – all is theatre.

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.

Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide, slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in some respectable bank or in some honest trader’s hands in the stock exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theatre, a dark plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have remained spectators in the last row of the balcony.

Twenty years ago, I staged Racine’s Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each presentation, I used to say to my actors: “The fiction we created day by day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right to lie. Theatre is the Hidden Truth”.

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the “spectacle” which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.

Augusto Boal

Click here to see the list of past WTD International Address writers.

Boal is the inventor of Forum Theatre and Theatre for the Oppressed, and was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Read his entire biography here.