“We gather to weep and to remember; to laugh and to contemplate; to learn and to affirm and to imagine” Brett Bailey,
Since 1962 World Theatre Day has been celebrated by theatre professionals, theatre organizations, theatre universities and theatre lovers all over the world on the 27th of March. This day is a celebration for those who can see the value and importance of the art form “theatre”, and acts as a wake-up-call for governments, politicians and institutions which have not yet recognised its value to the people and to the individual and have not yet realised its potential for economic growth
There are many who say that theatre will not or cannot change any of this. But theatre will not go away. Theatre is a site where people congregate and instantly form communities. As we have always done. All theatres are the size of the first human communities from a nomadic caravan to a third of ancient Athens.
And because theatre only exists in the present, it also challenges this disastrous view of time. The present moment is always theatre’s subject. Its meanings are constructed in a communal act between performer and public. Without the act of the performer the audience could not believe. Without the belief of the audience the performance would not be complete. We laugh at the same moment. We are moved. We gasp or are shocked into silence. And at that moment through drama we discover this most profound truth: that what we thought was the most private, intimate division between us, the boundary of our own individual consciousness, is also without frontier. It is something we share.
