NEW YORK CITY: The Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the Laboratory for Performance and Politics (the Lab) at Georgetown University, invites all theatres, individual artists, institutions, and audiences to celebrate the 58th annual World Theatre Day.
Cuban playwright Carlos Celdrán has penned the global World Theatre Day Message, and this year’s U.S. World Theatre Day Message is authored by Larissa FastHorse, Ty Defoe, and Jenny Marlowe of Indigenous Direction. Their messages can be found here.
“On this World Theatre Day, we’re grateful to Indigenous Direction’s decolonizing call to reconsider our relationship to the ground beneath our feet,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG, in a statement. “Alongside Carlos Celdrán’s vision of a ‘country of theatre,’ these messages reinvigorate our commitment to global citizenship, and we hope they serve as inspiration to all culture-makers working across borders.”
Celdrán is an award-winning and highly esteemed theatre director, playwright, academic, and professor, living and working in Havana, Cuba, and presenting his work all over the world. In 1996 he founded the now world-renowned and highly esteemed Argos Teatro, which has won great fame with its renditions of European classics, contemporary Latin American plays, and original productions under Celdrán’s expert direction. He has won the Cuban Theatre Critics Award in the category of Best Staging on multiple occasions, receiving the award a remarkable 16 times from 1988 to 2018. Beyond this critical acclaim, he has also won the recognition of his country and the world, receiving the National Distinction of Cuban Culture in 2000 and the Cuba National Theatre Award in 2016, among many others.
Indigenous Direction is a U.S.-based consulting company for organizations and artists who want to create accurate work about, for, and with Indigenous peoples. They are artists who use Indigenous cultural protocols and ways of looking at the world to guide theatre- and filmmaking/writing. They facilitate equitable connections between clients and Indigenous communities and advise in program development to build bridges between organizations and Indigenous artists. As a team of Indigenous people who have been doing this work for years, they bring a sensitivity to theatrical forms that have existed on this continent for centuries. They assist with research, tribal connections, and cultural training and
offer artistic workshops open to Indigenous theatre artists and their allies.
“World Theatre Day is a timely reminder of the singular and ancient power of our art form to bring people together in empathy across their differences,” said Derek Goldman, co-founding director of the Lab, in a statement. “This year’s deeply resonant messages from Carlos Celdrán and Indigenous Direction remind us that, even in the most dire times, theatre connects us, not by erasing our differences, but by allowing a space for all of our stories to survive and to thrive.”
