Happy Blessed Empowered World Theatre Day!

May we always remember that Theatre is a place where we practice, experience as well as expand our humanity in order to understand that in a world of conflict and separation we are actually more similar and connected than what politics and systems of power are leading us to believe. First and foremost we, Humans, are imperfect and gracious at the same time. Theatre is an art of healing. It helps us heal the false perception of separation and distancing. We - artists and audiences of theater - are constantly focusing towards understanding each other and moving forward in inclusiveness, acceptance and comprehension of our differences and similarities, realising that our essential oneness is what makes us all humans. We are all visitors of a planet called earth, an ongoing school in which our book is called our story and our pen is called thoughts and actions. Our given talent is our freedom and our right is called "free will". It’s up to us what we do with all that. We may either excel together or keep on circling alone and separate and against each other in a never ending repetition of self-destruction and suffering. The sooner we understand and accept each other exactly as we are the more we harmonise with Life that accepts us all under the same terms. Theatre is our chance to come together to look ourselves in the mirror, to witness and learn and understand our nature with open hearts, the same Heart that makes us all human in the long history of humanity. Theatre gives us a chance to create a crack in our firmly solidified convictions for love to light through and set us free from the heavy chains of the ego of separation. If Love is our absolute power, the essence of what makes us Human, our driving force to a higher and true consciousness, then, Theatre is one of the major vehicles we created to help us get there!

Photo: Mike Rafail - That long black cloud

“I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn’t play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one.”

— Ingmar Bergman