“Can theatre hear the SOS call that our times are sending out, in a world of impoverished citizens, locked in cells of virtual reality, entrenched in their suffocating privacy?” – Theodoros Terzopoulos, international message author

“We need to sing together. The lights will dim but only for a moment. They will come back up as we take a bow.” – Rosalba Rolón, U.S. message author

“Theatre remains one of our most powerful tools for collective imagination and resistance—not just in grand political gestures, but in the intimate moments where we see ourselves reflected in each other’s stories.” – Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, U.S. emergent artist author

NEW YORK CITY: The Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (the Lab) at Georgetown University, invites all theatres, individual artists, institutions, and audiences to celebrate the World Theatre Day today, March 27, 2025. 

Each year, a renowned theatre artist of world stature is invited by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) Worldwide to craft an international message to mark the global occasion. This year the International message has been written by Theodoros Terzopoulos, internationally acclaimed theatre director. The U.S. World Theatre Day message will be given by Rosalba Rolón, co-founder of Pregones and current artistic director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

World Theatre Day will also feature an U.S. emergent artist message, to be given by playwright and dramaturg Adam Ashraf Elsayigh.

Video recordings of the two U.S. messages as well as translations will be available on World Theatre Day and shared through TCG’s social channels as well as on our website. 

“Theatre continues to remind us to gather, to bear witness, and to speak truth. The powerful messages from Theodoros Terzopoulos, Rosalba Rolón, and Adam Ashraf Elsayigh remind us of the urgency of global solidarity,” said Emilya Cachapero, co-executive director of national and global programming at TCG. “I invite all theatremakers and audiences to join us in celebrating World Theatre Day and affirming the transformative power of performance across borders.”

Since 1962, World Theatre Day has been celebrated by the circulation of the World Theatre Day Message. The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau. Succeeding honorees have included Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Václav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010), Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011), and Anatoli Vassiliev (2016). In 2024, the International World Theatre Message was given by Jon Fosse, the U.S. message by Luis Alfaro, and the U.S. emergent artist message by Caitlin Nasema Cassidy.

To celebrate World Theatre Day, GTI recommends sharing the international and U.S. messages on or around March 27 through online media; posting about World Theatre Day using the hashtag #WorldTheatreDay; following TCG, the Lab, the Global Theatre Initiative, and ITI on social media platforms for updates and sharing World Theatre Day-related posts; and posting your own message to your network about World Theatre Day, championing the power of theatre to strengthen cultural exchange and mutual understanding across borders. 

Theodoros Terzopoulos is an internationally acclaimed theatre director, educator, author, and founder of Attis Theatre Company. Born in Greece in 1945, he studied in Athens and Berlin, working closely with Heiner Müller. He has directed classical tragedies, contemporary plays, and operas worldwide, pioneering a unique acting method rooted in physicality and Dionysian ritual. His work is taught in over 30 drama academies globally, and his book The Return of Dionysus has been translated into 15 languages. Terzopoulos founded the Theatre Olympics in 1994, serving as its chairman since. With 2,300 performances in prestigious festivals, he continues to shape contemporary theatre. His groundbreaking productions, including Waiting for Godot (2023) and Oresteia (2024), have been critically acclaimed. Among his many honors are the Stanislavski Award, the Yuri Lyubimov Award, and the Grand Theatre Award of Greece.

Rosalba Rolón is the artistic director of Pregones + Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PregonesPRTT), with venues in the Bronx and in Manhattan. She is a director and dramaturg specializing in the adaptation of literary and non-literary texts for the stage. The most recent productions she has created or re-staged for the company include The Red Rose and Torched! . She has worked on creative collaborations with theatres across the United States and internationally. With PregonesPRTT, she has traveled to nearly 600 cities in the U.S., and 18 countries. Her awards include United States Artists, Creative Capital, Doris Duke Artist Award, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, and Casandra International Theater Festival. The production of The Red Rose received the Best Production Award in the international category at the Academia de las Artes Escénicas in Spain.

Adam Ashraf Elsayigh was born in Cairo. Soon thereafter, his parents relocated the family to Dubai, so that Adam grew up in a religious Muslim household with American cable TV, going to a British school in a Gulf state where over 90 percent of the population were migrant workers. This upbringing at a cross-section of cultures is at the core of the artist Adam is: a playwright and theatremaker of stage and screenplays about modern humans living across and between cultures. Adam’s plays (including Alaa: A Family Trilogy, Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Alliance Theater, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is an alumnus of the Laboratory for Global Performance at Georgetown University. He holds a BA in theatre history and dramaturgy from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.

The Global Theater Initiative (GTI) was launched in February 2016 by Theatre Communications Group and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (the Lab), based in Washington, D.C., at Georgetown University. By combining the unique reach of TCG’s international programming with the Lab’s distinctive experience in humanizing global politics through the power of performance, GTI aims to strengthen, nurture, and promote global citizenship and international collaboration in the U.S. professional and educational theatre field. It also honors and intersects with the work so many theatre colleagues have invested in cross-cultural exchange and understanding. 

In addition to TCG’s work with GTI, TCG’s Global Initiatives include publishing coverage of international work in American Theatre; issuing peer consultation letters for international visa petitions; and advocating for cultural exchange and artists’ rights worldwide. For decades, TCG has also supported cultural exchange through grantmaking, and by leading delegations of U.S. theatre practitioners to festivals worldwide. The Dr. Kerry English Global Connectivity Manager and International Cultural Exchange Grants help advance TCG’s global initiatives. 

International Theatre Institute (ITI) was formed in 1948, when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) joined with world-renowned theatre experts to form an international non-governmental organization in the field of the performing arts. The mission of ITI is to “promote international exchange of knowledge and practice in theatre arts in order to consolidate peace and friendship between peoples, to deepen mutual understanding and to increase creative cooperation between all people in the theatre arts.” Today, ITI consists of approximately 90 centers worldwide. An ITI Center is made up of professionals active in the theatre life of a country and representative of all branches of the performing arts.