Spotlight May-June 2019

World Theatre Day 2019
World Theatre Day was created in 1961
by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). An
international non-governmental organization,
ITI was founded in 1948 by UNESCO and the
international theatre community. World Theatre
Day is celebrated annually on the 27th of
March. Various national and international theatre
events are organized to mark the occasion, but many events are
local with the purpose of drawing attention to theatre and international
harmony.
Carlos Celdrán
Each year, a World Theatre Day International Message is circulated,
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.
The 2019 message author is Carlos Celdrán, an award-winning
and highly esteemed theatre director, playwright, academic, and professor,
living and working in Havana, Cuba. In the message he says,
“My life is built up from those unique moments when I cease to
be myself, to suffer for myself, and I am reborn and understand
the meaning of the theatrical profession: to live instants of pure
ephemeral truth, where we know that what we say and do, there
under the stage lights, is true and reflects the most profound,
most personal, part of ourselves. My theatrical country, mine
and that of my actors, is a country woven from such moments,
where we leave behind the masks, the rhetoric, the fear of being
who we are, and we join hands in the dark.”
You can learn more about past authors and read the 2019 full
message at world-theatre-day.org/messageauthor.html
JAY O. GLERUM
RIGGING MASTERCLASS
ENTRY • INTERMEDIATE • ADVANCED LEVEL CLASSES
LEARN MORE
usitt.org/glerummasterclass
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May/June 2019
AACT Spotlight
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