WORLD THEATRE DAY MESSAGE 2015

The author of the Message of World Theatre Day 2015 is the Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski!

The true masters of the theater are most easily found far from the stage. And they generally have no interest in theater as a machine for replicating conventions and reproducing clichés. They search out the pulsing source, the living currents that tend to bypass performance halls and the throngs of people bent on copying some world or another. We copy instead of create worlds that are focused or even reliant on debate with an audience, on emotions that swell below the surface. And actually there is nothing that can reveal hidden passions better than the theater.  

Most often I turn to prose for guidance. Day in and day out I find myself thinking about writers who nearly one hundred years ago described prophetically but also restrainedly the decline of the European gods. the twilight that plunged our civilization into a darkness that has yet to be illumined. I am thinking of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust. Today I would also count John Maxwell Coetzee among that group of prophets.

Their common sense of the inevitable end of the world--not of the planet but of the model of human relations--and of social order and upheaval, is poignantly current for us here and now. For us who live after the end of the world. Who live in the face of crimes and conflicts that daily flare in new places faster even than the ubiquitous media can keep up. These fires quickly grow boring and vanish from the press reports, never to return. And we feel helpless, horrified and hemmed in. We are no longer able to build towers, and the walls we stubbornly construct do not protect us from anything--on the contrary, they themselves demand protection an care that consumes a great part of our life energy. We no longer have the strength to try and glimpse what lies beyond the gate, behind the wall. And that's exactly why theater should exist and where it should seek its strength. To peek inside where looking is forbidden. 

"The legend seeks to explain what cannot be explained. Because it is grounded in truth, it must end in the inexplicable"--this is how Kafka described the transformation of the Prometheus legend. I feel strongly that the same words should describe theater. And it is that kind of theater, one which is grounded in truth and which finds its end in the inexplicable that I wish for all its workers, those on the stage and those in the audience, and I wish that with all my heart. 

Krzysztof Warlikowski

Translation: Philip Boehm

Supported by Theatre Communications Group and the U.S. Center of ITI


Krzysztof Warlikowski is a famous European director. Born in 1962 he is known for his exceptional theatrical images he creates in collaboration with designer Malgorzata Szczesniak. He created new ways to stage Shakespeare, subversive interpretations of the Greek tragedies and is also known for his work with contemporary authors. Since 2008, he has been Artistic Director of Teatre Nowy (New Theatre) in Warsaw. Warlikowski has created a personal vision of the role and place of theater in society by involving the audience in the debate. His motto for the theater became: "Escaping the theater." Warlikowski theater productions have been presented at major festivals: Fesitval of Avignon, Prensa Festival Otono Madrid, Edinburgh International Festival, Vienna Festival, Festival BAM Next Wave of New York, Athens Festival, International Festival Theatre Santiago Mil in Chile, Ponti International Festival in Porto, XXI Festival of Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea, BITEF Festival in Belgrade. He's received numerous awards from around the world. 

"There is something about a collective experience..." Anuvab Pal (India)

What was your first experience of theater that converted you to wanting to pursue it as a career?

I saw Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing on Broadway and that sort of changed everything.  

If you could have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

There used to be many but as I've got older, I've realized it is much more fun to know the person through the work. The person invariably ends up being like everyone else. 

Why is theater important to you?

There is something about a collective experience that we don't share that much anymore. Theatre is perhaps the only place left. 

If you could have one of your plays produced in any country in the world, which play and which country would you choose, and why?

The National Theatre in London. I learnt a lot of stuff from those stages. 

Anuvab Pal (India) is a playwright, screenwriter, stand up comic and author. His plays include: Chaos Theory (over 250 production internationally, Finalist BBC World Playwrighting Competition 2007), The President is Coming, 1-888-Dial-India, Fatwa, Out of Fashion, Life, Love & EBITDA and The Bureaucrat. His films include Loins of Punjab (co-written with Manish Acharya) and The President is Coming. He performs his stand up regularly at The Comedy Store Mumbai. Articles and opinions as well as articles and interviews on his work have been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Time Magazine, Elle, Vogue, GQ India, The Guardian, Indian Express just to name a few. http://anuvabpal.wordpress.com/

About The 2014 World Theatre Day Messages

The NYC World Theatre Day Coalition was thrilled to learn that this year the International message will be written by South African playwright, designer, director, installation maker and artistic director of Third World Bunfight, Brett Bailey. Upon its release in March, the message will be translated into more than 20 languages to reach tens of thousands in the international theatre community.

Additionally, The Theater Communications Group (TCG, The US Center for the International Theatre Institute) is proud to announce that noted theatre artist and TCG board chair Diane Rodriguez, the associate producer/director of new play production at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, will give the U.S. World Theatre Day message. Past U.S. World Theatre Day messages were given by actor Jeffrey Wright and playwright Lynn Nottage.

Brett Bailey is a playwright, designer, director, installation artist, and the artistic director of Third World Bunfight. He has worked throughout South Africa, as well as Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, the U.K. and Europe. His acclaimed iconoclastic dramas, which interrogate the dynamics of the post-colonial world, include Big Dada, Ipi Zombi?, iMumbo Jumbo and Orfeus. His performance installations include Terminal (Blood Diamonds) and Exhibits A & B.  He directed the opening show at the World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg (2009), and from 2006-2009 the opening shows at the Harare International Festival of the Arts. From 2008-11 he was curator of South Africa’s only public arts festival, ‘Infecting the City’, in Cape Town. His works have played across Europe, Australia and Africa, and have won several awards, including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007). He headed the jury of the Prague Quadrennial (2011) and was a juror on the International Theatre Institute’s Music Theatre Now competition (2012/13).

Diane Rodriguez is an Obie Award-winning multi-disciplinary theatre artist. She is an accomplished actor, anthologized writer, regional theatre director and associate producer/director of new play production at Center Theatre Group (CTG) in Los Angeles. She began her career as a lead actress with the seminal ensemble, El Teatro Campesino. Recognized as one of the country’s leading advocates for non-text based and ensemble-driven work as well as a long-time advocate of Latino playwrights and actors, Diane maintains her artistic career while being a member of the artistic staff of Center Theatre Group, which includes the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Currently, under her tenure as director of New Play Production (NPP), CTG’s NPP program was awarded a one million dollar grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the commissioning and development of seven new collaborative works from ensembles or creative collaborators. She has developed and directed the works of numerous writers including Nilo Cruz’s Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams and Dreams of My Father, Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation at Sundance Theatre Lab, Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap at Ojai Playwrights Conference, Erik Patterson’s Sick for Playwrights Arena, and Les Thomas’ Cave Quest for East West Players, among many others. In 2008, for Mattel Toy Company, she wrote the book and was the supervising director for the first live Barbie musical Barbie Live/The Princess Adventures. The show premiered in Buenos Aires and toured Brazil in 2012. She won an OBIE for Performance (Best Ensemble) in 2007 for playing 23 characters in Heather Woodbury’s Tale of Two Cities. In 2012 her two plays, Living Large in a Mini Kind of Way and Pitch like a Girl were produced in Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. With Mark Murphy and Mark Russell she co-directed the RADAR LA Festival in 2011. She lives in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles with her long time husband, friend and advisor, Jose Delgado.

The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau in 1962. Succeeding honorees include Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010), Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011), John Malkovich (2012) and Dario Fo (2013).

World Theatre Day All Year Round

It is nice to set aside a day every year for theatre artists and audiences around the world to celebrate this art. It gives us a chance to reflect on how theatre changes, impacts or enriches our lives.

However many of us celebrate theatre everyday. TCG has created a list of ways you can participate in the international theatre community, year round.

Check out their list.

2013 World Theatre Events Map

Check out TCG's map of World Theatre Day events from around the globe.



View World Theatre Day 2013 Events in a larger map


For more info go to the TCG website.