Why theatre of the world?
“Theatre of the world because:
Theatre needs to be created for the world and about the world.
The problems that confront us are global: an artistic response based on the dilemmas of a single individual, or a single individual within a single nation, is no longer adequate.
All traditional values are no longer adequate to handle the dilemmas that confront us.
Our political ideas and institutions are no longer adequate.
Our economic values and institutions are no longer adequate.
Our scientific values and institutions are no longer adequate.
Our ideas of gender, of what it means to be male or female, are no longer adequate.
Our artistic ideas are no longer adequate.
We have to create new values, new institutions, new economic and political structures. Or we will destroy ourselves.
Theatre can help this process when we empower our audiences to imagine a different and better way of living in the world.
This is the focus of my life and work.”
I think I wrote that in August 2002, when I set up my website.
https://www.teatrodomundo.com
I reproduce it now because what is happening in Ukraine at the moment is so horrible that I cannot begin to process it.
And I am too involved in rehearsals even to begin to try.
I felt that somehow I wanted to remind myself of what I want my work to be about.
Not that rehearsals are a bit like that at the moment: we’re at that stage of just putting down our scripts and knitting all the scenes together and finding we don’t know the words in the way we thought we did because there seems to be so much new information to take in somehow…
And we stumble and forget our lines and our moves and try to be very patient and forgive ourselves and each other for all our mistakes.
And this new world we are trying to create, through all our setbacks and discouragements, is a a bit like that too.
Yes there’s the brave words and the grand aspirations… but there’s a patient stumbling through the darkness, supporting each other as best we can…
Hoping and trusting that however small we feel, however helpless and insignificant, we are making a difference.