World Theatre Day 2023: Global Message For Humanity To Honor The Art Form

World Theatre Day is aimed at celebrating the beauty, essence, and significance of theatre arts globally.

The International Theatre Institute (ITI) crowned March 27 as World Theatre Day to remind people across the world of the value and the potential of theatre.

The goals behind World Theatre Day are to promote all forms of theatre in countries around the globe, to enjoy different forms, and to share the joys of the art form with others.

ITI Centres and the international theatre community mark the occasion with different events. Nevertheless, the invitation to celebrate the day is open to everyone.

"A celebration on the day itself or around it can be organized and promoted by anyone and everyone. Theatres, theatre and dance institutions, theatre and performing arts universities, government institutions, ministries of cultures, theatre and dance makers and theatre and dance lovers all over the world are invited to celebrate World Theatre Day," reads ITI's website for World Theatre Day.

Every year, a World Theatre Day Message is crafted by a different "figure of world stature" and circulated globally. The first World Theatre Day Message was written by Jean Cocteau, a leading artistic figure, in Paris in 1962.

The World Theatre Day Message for 2023 was written by Egyptian actress Samiha Ayoub.

"I write this message to you on World Theatre Day, and as much as I feel overwhelmed with
happiness that I am speaking to you, every fiber of my being trembles under the weight of
what we all suffer - theatre and non-theatre artists - from the grinding pressures and mixed
feelings amidst the state of the world today," read a translation of Ayoub's message, originally written in Arabic.

Ayoub said the wars, conflicts, and natural disasters plaguing the world today not only have devastating effects "on our material world" but also on "our spiritual world and our psychological peace."

"Our world has never been more closely connected to each other than it is today, but at the
same time it was never been more dissonant and farther from each other than it is
today. Herein lies the dramatic paradox that our contemporary world imposes on us," she added.

Ayoub's message reflects how theatre is a purely human act, and humanity breathes life into the art form.

"What we do in the world of theatre as playwrights, directors, actors, scenographers, poets,
musicians, choreographers and technicians, all of us without exception, is an act of creating life that did not exist before we got on stage," the actress wrote.

In conclusion, Ayoub wrote: "It is our mission, us playwrights, the bearers of the torch of enlightenment, since the first appearance of the first actor on the first stage, to be at the forefront of confronting everything that is ugly, bloody, and inhuman. We confront it with everything that is beautiful, pure, and human. We, and no one else, have the ability to spread life. Let us spread together for the sake of one world and one human."