WORLD THEATRE DAY
ITI & WORLD THEATRE DAY
ITI (International Theatre Institute) was founded in 1948 as an autonomous professional international organisation within the frame of UNESCO, with the goal of promoting an international exchange of knowledge and practice in performing arts. Today, ITI comprises of nearly a hundred national branches and is considered one of the most important non-governmental organisations in the domain of performing arts.
Since 1962, ITI has organised the celebration of March 27 th as World Theatre Day. This date was chosen at the 9 th World Congress of ITI held in 1961 and is connected with the opening of the first season of the Theatre of Nations in Paris.
World Theatre Day is an occasion for theatre people to celebrate the power of performing arts and artistic creation as well as to remind them of theatre's contribution to the growth of understanding and peace among people. Along with the various ways in which World Theatre Day is marked in numerous countries world-wide (such as the organisation of balls, symposia and round table discussions, TV broadcasts of theatre performances, charity performances or free-of-charge performances, street parades of actors, theatre awards presentations, etc.), thousands of world theatres lend their stages to the reading of a message, written each year by a different renowned theatre personality.
Among the authors of the international message for World Theatre Day numerous great names such as Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, Peter Brook, Eugène Ionesco, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Ellen Stewart, Martin Esslin, Edward Albee or Vaclav Havel can be found, and in the last fifteen years, the authors of these messages often come from the Far East – whose rich theatre environments are still somewhat obscure to Europe.
The theme of the message is always connected to theatre and the issue of “multicultural harmony” and is translated each year into over 20 languages and broadcast on numerous TV and radio stations worldwide. Along with the international message, some countries – and, among them, Croatia – present their own national message.
WORLD THEATRE DAY IN CROATIA
For years, the Croatian Association of Dramatic Artists (HDDU) has organised the reading of the international message in Croatia. During the Homeland War in Croatia, this reading ceased for a time. The Association filled that gap by reading the Croatian message in its stead. The reading of the international message, along with the Croatian message, was re-established through the cooperation between the Croatian Centre of ITI-UNESCO and HDDU. Both messages are dispatched to all theatres in Croatia as well as to the media, members of the HDDU and members of the Croatian Centre of ITI.
2003 INTERNATIONAL MESSAGE
We keep asking the question: Is the theatre still relevant to the times? For two thousand years the theatre has held a mirror up to the world and explained our place in it. Tragedy has portrayed life as being subject to Fate – Comedy has done this often enough as well. Human beings are flawed, we make fatal mistakes, rail against our circumstances, clutch at power, are weak. Deceitful and nadve, we are happy in our ignorance and sickened by God. I hear people say that life today is beyond the grasp of the traditional instruments of the theatre and that it is consequently no longer possible to tell stories. Instead, different sorts of texts, no dialogues, but rather statements. No drama. A new kind of human being is beginning to appear on our horizon: Beings that can be cloned and genetically manipulated according whim and plan. These new, flawless beings, insofar as they are possible, would have no need for the theatre as we understand it. They would be unable to comprehend the conflicts that drive it. But we don't know the future. I think it is up to us to devote all of the energies and the talents that have been given to us – by whom we do not know – to protect from this uncertain future our wicked, beautiful and imperfect present, our irrational dreams and fruitless exertions. The means at our disposal are rich. Theatre is an impure art and therein lies its vital power. Unscrupulously, it uses everything that stands in its way. It is forever betraying its own principles. It is, of course, not immune to the fashions of the times, it avails itself of images from other media, sometimes speaking slowly, sometimes quickly. It stammers and falls silent. It is extravagant and banal, evasive, destroys stories while creating new ones all the same. I am confident that the theatre will always be able to fill itself with life – as long as we feel the need to show each other what we are and what we are not and what we should be. Long live the theatre! The theatre is one of humanity's great inventions, equal to the discovery of the wheel and the taming of fire.
Tankred Dorst
2003 CROATIAN MESSAGE
All children of the world play.
Play is joy.
The rich, the poor, and the hungry play.
Not even wars can thwart play.
Children become youth, but they still remain playful.
Plays become more serious, but they are still plays.
If you have become a captive of that PLAY, it means that your life has become A PLAY.
You are in love with that PLAY – you feel it with all your heart.
This is the theatre play.
It means to devote oneself to the goddess Thalia – to enter this divine temple.
To serve it.
More than sixty years have passed from when our great teacher and director, dr. Branko Gavella, told us one afternoon at the Acting School: “There will be no class today. We are going to the theatre so that you may see it behind the curtain.”
Great excitement.
We entered through the actors' entrance and, passing through the heavy iron gate, stepped onto the stage.
The stage was empty – black walls – plenty of reflectors and a dark grey wooden floor.
We stood in the middle of the stage when the curtain began opening in front of us.
A marvellously lit auditorium. Deadly silence.
We were all struck by a single thought – Will I ever play on this stage?
One of us had not taken off his hat; our professor, turning towards us, his pupils, said: “Young man – this is our temple – this is our church. Please, remove your hat.”
Today, celebrating World Theatre Day, let us wish for our temples to remain rich with play; that with this play we continue to enrich the souls of our loyal audience; let us honour humans and cherish THE WORD.
World horizons are opened through play!
TEMPLE OF THALIA – I take my hat off to you!
PLAY IS ETERNAL!
Josip Bobi Marotti, dramatic artist
2004 INTERNATIONAL MESSAGE
Theatre is the father of all arts. This is a truth none can contend, and for this reason it is my one and only passion.
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I have always believed that playwrights distinguish themselves by their noble human feelings. Their message can thus help people to rise above themselves, to free themselves from their frustrations, from exploitation, and thus be able to gain a sense of dignity. For playwrights to succeed in accomplishing their mission and in influencing people, they should master their profession thoroughly, and have full control over the style of artistic expression. Otherwise their message will be blown away by whiffs of wind and leave no trace behind, thus missing the required aim. For in every work of art, the message of the artist has always been geared towards human justice, maturity of expression, and authenticity. It would therefore be wrong to think that one of these factors can hold sway over any of the others.
They say that theatre is an art based on solid structures devoid of all superfluous trimmings, and that its dialogues should be firm, concise and far from any babbling. They also say that for this reason it is incompatible with the nature of woman, who is unable to dissociate herself from her ego, and consequently cannot express herself with objectivity. They say! To this I reply: woman who can carry in her womb a new life during nine months is just as capable of creating a play that is solid and coherent. On one condition: that she be a real playwright.
Fortunately, modern theatre has liberated itself from traditional forms as a result of several waves of renewal which began with Pirandello, Bernard Shaw, Brecht and many others, with the theatre of the absurd, of refusal and of experimental avant-gardism. Today it is very rare for an author to write in a traditional style.
In my first play (“Women without Masks”) I chose “theatre within the theatre”, a formula which has become familiar in modern plays. “Woment without Masks” began with a cry and a question, for I felt myself pregnant with words dating back tens, maybe even hundreds of years.
Could it be that the time had come for the pains of labour strangling my innermost self to be releasing and projecting my word towards existence ? My word ! ... my passion ... my childhood ... my child ! I listen to its voice so remote from complaints, from sighs. A voice that was crushed and humiliated. A voice whose echos reverberated generation after generation. Conscience, in human history, bears the heavy weight of persecution and bondage.
I have refused to set down on paper a single phrase that did not emerge from my deepest soul. Not one line that did not express the truth about woman, and about her power of giving. This is why I have asked my pen to take the oath of refusing to write a single line if it were to express weakness or frustration, as well as to refuse to obey me if it felt me cowardly before truth. I then asked it to help me bring to the fore the greatest number of women whose lives I share, by drawing nearer to them and becoming their mouthpiece.
We would thus bare ourselves completely before each other, by ridding ourselves of the rust accumulated with the passage of time. We would cry out against all the circumstances and events that have deprived us of the bursting forth of our human powers.
Lastly, I believe that theatre is the light that illuminates the path of mankind. A light that ensures an organic link with the spectator by creating warmth between us – be that communication through the written text or through the performance on stage.
Fathia El Assal (Egypt), playwrightand TV screenwriter; women's rights activist;President of the Association of Women Writersof Egypt and of the Progressive Women's Unionof the Board of Egyptian Women Film Workers.