World Theater Day

Dear friends, yesterday was World Theater Day.

The survival of the world "hangs in the balance" and depends, minute by minute, hour by hour, on the "infusion" drop by drop, news and reports. Peter Sellars, American theater director can invite us all, as creators, to return to our activities and spheres and perspectives of these epic times, epic changes, epic consciousness, epic reflections and epic views?

In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha lists ten types of patience in human life. One of the strongest is "Patience to know everything as an illusion". Theater has always represented life in this world as an illusion, enabling us to see human illusions, delusions, blindness and denial with liberating clarity and power.

Two years of the Kovid-19 pandemic have clouded human senses, narrowed people's lives, destroyed ties between them and brought us back to an unusual beginning of human existence.

Which seeds should be planted and replanted at this time, and in which aggressive weed have we grown that should be cut and finally exterminated? A lot of people are on the edge. So much violence erupts, irrational and unexpected.

So many established systems have been revealed as a structure of constant cruelty.

Where are our rituals of remembrance? What do we need to remember? What are the rituals that finally allow us to rethink and begin to practice steps we have never done before?

The theater of epic visions, purpose, recovery, repair and care needs new rituals. We need fun. We need a reunion. We need to share space and nurture the space we share. We need protected spaces for deep listening and equality.

Theater is the earthly embodiment of the space of equality among people, gods, plants, animals, raindrops, tears and rebirth.

World Theater Day was also marked in my school. Students of lower grades performed the theater play "Modern Fairy Tale". Wonderful costumes, scenography and great acting by children. This is a time for deep refreshment of our minds, our senses, our imagination, our histories and our futures. This cannot be done by people who work alone, isolated from others. That is something we have to do together. The theater invites us to do it together. We do it in our school! Happy theater day.