World theater day will be celebrated March 27

Thirty-five years ago, the International Theater Institute envisioned World Theatre Day. They chose to celebrate it annually every March 27th with the international and national theater community presenting plays to commemorate the occasion. For a while, many people thought that theatre was on the verge of extinction. They thought that with the rise of cinema, television and digital media, theatre’s days were numbered. But theatre has endured as a distinct art form.

The strength of folk culture was the personal face-to-face communication. The live theatre provides that. The telegraph, the telephone, electricity, radio, motion pictures and television gave people a new sense of time and space. But people still look for face-to-face communication and the live theatre is the only drama form that provides that. There are other forms of drama, but there is no substitute for the live theatre. And that is why we have a World Theatre Day. Ludwig Lewisohn called the theatre "a spiritual compulsion." And he added, "once it celebrated the gods. Now it broods over the fate of man."

It is almost impossible for a person to give his full time to the theatre. You can’t earn a living in the theatre. That is why Tallulah Bankhead said, "It is one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work – the night watchman." Abroad some theatre performances ran for years. Here it is lucky if a theatre play can last three or four days. There is not just enough audience.

Still we have artists who have dedicated their whole lives to the theatre. When we say dedicated their whole lives, we mean they never lose their interest in the theatre, but they could only maintain their theatre activities by finding other means of earning a living. Many went into television and radio, but they did not abandon the theatre. And so the theatre lives. Ateneo is one university that gave strong emphasis to theatre. The University of the Philippines also had a strong theatre program.

The person we know who has given her whole life to the theatre is Cecile Guidote Alvarez. She represented the Philippines in the UNESCO World Congress on Arts Education and astounded the audience when they saw disadvantaged street children perform despite their physical liabilities. We knew her decades ago when she was just a student at Saint Paul. If Philippine theatre is where it is today, it is because of directors like Cecile Guidote Alvarez.

Mexican Playwright Victor Hugo Rascon-Banda has this message for World Theatre Day: "Everyday should be considered a World Theatre Day because throughout the last 20 centuries, the flame of theatre has always burned steadily in some corner of the world. The theatre has renounced mass communication and recognized its inherent limits; two beings facing each other, communicating feelings, emotions, dreams and hopes. Scenic art is relinquishing story-telling in favor of discussing ideas. The theatre moves, illuminates, disquiets, lifts the spirit, reveals, provokes and violates conventions. It is a conversation shared with society. Theatre is the first art to confront emptiness, shadows and silence to make words, movement, lights and life surge fourth."