Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

 Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

What a strange time for theatre. In days a decade ago, colleagues of mine and I were actively trying to sort out live performance, online performance, distributed audiences, disassociative theatre that was still distinctive from broadcast or recorded mediums like television and film.

We were often laughed at by our contemporaries. "It'll never work, the magic is lost, you should just practice film, people will never watch theatre online."

How different the last year has been. Faced with a kind of cruel and casual extinction, the embrace of the medium has had to change. And no one has come to me in the last year saying "It will never work." It simply has to work, or it dies.

And lo has there been ground gained. Stories by people have taken on new mediums, imperfect in their art, but art nonetheless. A kind of rabid desire to express and be expressed to.

I have been 'practicing' roleplay games for years now, and to see the transformative medium change in these pandemic times has been exhilarating and heartbreaking. By almost equal measure.

At the same time, theatre is having this distributed awakening in the wake of Black Lives Matter. In the wake of a year of protests, long and difficult conversations are finally starting to take place. Will there be realized change? I don't know. We've been at this precipice so many times before, and I think of all the shattered lives that have vanished by the wayside in the wake, but a practitioner of theatre somehow must still hold onto a kind of hope.

That this time, things will be different.

Message for World Theatre Day 2021 – 27 March

Author of the Message: Helen MIRREN, United Kingdom

Actress of stage, screen and television

English (original)

World Theatre Day Message 2021 by Helen MIRREN

“This has been such a very difficult time for live performance and many artists,

technicians and craftsmen and women have struggled in a profession that is already

fraught with insecurity.

Maybe that always present insecurity has made them more able to survive this pandemic

with wit and courage.

Their imagination has already translated itself, in these new circumstances, into

inventive, entertaining and moving ways to communicate, thanks of course in large part

to the internet.

Human beings have told each other stories for as long as they have been on the planet.

The beautiful culture of theatre will live for as long as we stay here.

The creative urge of writers, designers, dancers, singers, actors, musicians, directors, will

never be suffocated and in the very near future will flourish again with a new energy and

a new understanding of the world we all share.

I can’t wait!”