International Theater Institute World Theater Day Proclamation

27 March World Theater Day

Christopher Warlikowski

The real masters of the theater are often far from the stage. As a matter of fact, they have nothing to do with the theater, which is a system that continues the tradition and repeats the stereotypes. They take the pulse of life; they pursue contemporary trends that do not take into account the performances confined to the halls and the audiences prone to imitation experiences. Instead of creating a world that permeates our unrevealed emotions, which provokes the audience, we copy what is. As a matter of fact, nothing but the theater can reveal our hidden passions.

In such cases, my guide is literature. My day mixes with my night, and I find myself contemplating writers who cautiously foretold the decline of the European gods, a period that nearly a hundred years ago had doomed our civilization to a darkness that still needs to be illuminated. The ones I remember are Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust… If we look at it today, we can include John Maxwell Coetzee in this group of prophets.

The common-sense approach of these writers about the inevitable end of the world we live in, social class and upheavals as a model of human relations is a guide for all of us here today. Despite the incredible crimes committed and the conflicts spreading to new places day by day, where even the media waiting for the alesta cannot keep up, only anyone who can survive can hold on to that life. This fire may go out as soon as it burns and become history, never to be featured in news bulletins again. We still feel helpless, scared, and trapped. We can no longer build ivory towers; And the walls we persistently build are incapable of protecting us! On the contrary, they are in need of protection and can survive by stealing most of our life energy. We can't afford to try. What is behind the walls, outside the doors? We don't have the strength to lie down and look. Why do you think theater still exists and to what does it owe its strength? To swim in dangerous waters, of course!

'Told traces what cannot be said. Since it reveals the truth, it must end mysteriously.' says Kafka, describing the transformation of the Promethean legend. Something tells me we can define theater in the same way. Could there not be a theatrical work that shows the truth to all theater workers, actors and spectators and inexplicably ends? I wish this with all my heart.