I
celebrated World Theatre Day (WTD) in a jail with the inmates. Unfortunately, I
am unable to remember the year. Perhaps, 2008.
Last
year, in 2014, I was totally sick and had just started AVITOKO Room Theatre on
March 3rd. Now, 27th March! It was too close to organize any
other program. I wonder, if I will open up my mouth, my family will throw me
out. But hats of them!
Two
young boys, Vinay Vinu and Shyam Dangi were studying theatre at my place. I
gave them a challenge to observe the Day on 27th. Though they were
new to Mumbai, Somehow they managed. In the meantime, Shri Hrishikesh Sulabh
(Bhaiya), noted story writer, playwright and theatre persona had arrived in Mumbai.
He is my brother-in-law also. He is very affectionate to me and wished to see
me. Sitting with him and listening to him is always a very pleasant moment, not
only for me but for my entire family.
He
came on 27th afternoon along with Subhash Mishra, General Secretary,
Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA), Raipur. He, every year organizes theatre
festival. In 2012, I had also participated in it. Actor Pankaj Tripathi had also
arrived at the same time. Avinash Das had invited him.
Sulabh Bhaiya told that he will not sit
for a long, because of his pre-occupation. Before that, I had requested him to
address the children. But he showed his time constraints. I thought that no
problem! It will be two programs in a Day. He has enormous numbers of interesting
stories realated to theatre. He is a great travelers and lots of untold
incidents are in his kitty. His art of narration can be learnt and can be
followed. He came as usual and we got glued with his talks and experiences.
Time was running and I was praying that he should forget the time. Some young
boys came with Vinay and Shyam. They were introduced to everyone. They
performed short story, poems and one boy performed a ten minutes act. Sulabh Bhaiya
gave them valid and useful tips. Subhash ji addressed them and valued the role
of theatre in our lives. Pankaj too participated in the discussion.
Unknowingly, the entire program went of very well. Credit goes to Sulabh
Bhaiya, Ajay, my husband and Toshi and Ali, my daughter and son-in-law.
This year also, we are celebrating WED on March 27, at YWCA, Andheri (West), Mumbai at 5pm with three plays. 1."Shahadat ke Baad". 2."Sharmila Erom- Ek Anugunj" (Dir. RS Vikal) and3."Naurangi Natni" (Dir. Rajendra Joshi) with Vibha Rani. Sarita Hussain, Sangita Vaajpei, Ram Girdhar, Rajesh Gupta, Kuldip Vashishtha, Akshay Yadav, Subodh Shrivastav aur Ram Milan. March 27 @4.30pm. Venue: YWCA. 53,JP Road. Andheri (West). Near Navrang Cinema.
There is a question that what is World
Theatre Day? We just hear about it and start saying about the day. Here is the
detail.
World Theatre Day was initiated in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). It is celebrated annually on the 27th March by ITI Centres and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to mark this occasion. One of the most important of these is the circulation of the World Theatre Day International Message through which at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares his or her reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day International Message was written by Jean Cocteau (France) in 1962. It was first in Helsinki, and then in Vienna at the 9th World Congress of the ITI in June 1961 that President Arvi Kivimaa proposed on behalf of the Finnish Centre of the International Theatre Institute that a World Theatre Day be instituted. The proposal, backed by the Scandinavian centres, was carried with acclamation.Ever since, each year on the 27th March (date of the opening of the 1962 "Theatre of Nations" season in Paris), World Theatre Day has been celebrated in many and varied ways by ITI National Centres of which there are now almost 100 throughout the world.
| The author of the Message of World Theatre Day 2015 is the Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski! World Theater Day Message 2015 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 and 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 the theater. And it is that kind of theater, one which 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 | © B |
No comments:
Post a Comment