In celebration of World Theatre Day 2025, Rosalba Rolón (Artistic Director, Pregones/PRTT) and U.S. emergent artist and playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh will ship the official U.S. Messages. They be part of internationally acclaimed director Theodoros Terzopoulos, creator of this yr’s International Message.
(Video messages from Rolón and Elsayigh have additionally been launched [March 27], together with varied written translations. They can be found on Theatre Communication Group’s web site and YouTube channels.)
“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 must sing collectively. The lights will dim however just for a second. They will come again up as we take a bow.“ – Rosalba Rolón, U.S. Message Author
“Theater 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, NY – 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, invitations all theatres, particular person artists, establishments, and audiences to have fun the World Theatre Day on March 27, 2025.
Each yr, a famend theatre artist of world stature is invited by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) Worldwide to craft a global message to mark the worldwide event. This yr the International message has been written by Theodoros Terzopoulos, internationally acclaimed theatre director. The U.S. World Theatre Day message shall be given by Rosalba Rolón, co-founder of Pregones and present Artistic Director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
World Theatre Day additionally options an U.S. Emergent Artist message, which shall be given by playwright and dramaturg Adam Ashraf Elsayigh.
“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,” stated Emilya Cachapero, Co-Executive Director of National and Global Programming at TCG. “I invite all theatre-makers 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 worldwide message was written by Jean Cocteau. Succeeding honorees have included Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav 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 have fun World Theatre Day, GTI recommends sharing the worldwide and U.S. messages on or round March 27 by means of on-line media. Tweet about World Theatre Day utilizing the hashtag #WorldTheatreDay. Follow TCG, The Lab, The Global Theatre Initiative, and ITI on social media platforms for updates and sharing World Theatre Day-related posts. And submit your personal message to your community about World Theatre Day. All these actions champion the ability of theatre to strengthen cultural alternate and mutual understanding throughout borders.
Bios and More Information
Theodoros Terzopoulos is an internationally acclaimed theatre director, educator, creator, and founding father of Attis Theatre Company. Born in Greece in 1945, he studied in Athens and Berlin, working intently with Heiner Müller. He has directed classical tragedies, modern performs, and operas worldwide, pioneering a novel performing methodology rooted in physicality and Dionysian ritual. His work is taught in over 30 drama academies globally. And his e book, The Return of Dionysus, has been translated into 15 languages. Terzopoulos based the Theatre Olympics in 1994, serving as its Chairman since. With 2,300 performances in prestigious festivals, he continues to form modern theatre. His groundbreaking productions, together with Waiting for Godot (2023) and Oresteia (2024), are critically acclaimed. Among his many honors are the Stanislavski Award, Yuri Lyubimov Award, and Grand Theatre Award of Greece. For extra, go to www.attistheatre.com.
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 within the adaptation of literary and non-literary texts for the stage. The most up-to-date productions she has created or re-staged for the corporate embody The Red Rose and Torched! . She has labored on artistic collaborations with theaters throughout the United States and internationally. With PregonesPRTT, she has traveled to just about 600 cities within the U.S., and 18 nations. Her awards embody United States Artists, Creative Capital, Doris Duke Artist Award, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture and Casandra International Theater Festival. The manufacturing of The Red Rose obtained the Best Production Award within the worldwide class on the Academia de las Artes Escénicas in Spain.
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh was born in Cairo, Egypt. When quickly thereafter, his mother and father relocated the household to Dubai, Adam grew up in a non secular Muslim family with American cable TV, going to a British faculty in a Gulf state the place over 90% of the inhabitants had been migrant employees. This upbringing on the cross-section of cultures is on the core of the artist Adam is.
Today, Adam is a playwright and theatermaker of stage and screenplays about trendy people dwelling throughout and between cultures. Adam’s performs (together with Alaa: A Family Trilogy, Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at New York Theater Workshop, The Lark, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, The Alliance Theater, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is an alum of the Laboratory for Global Performance at Georgetown University. He holds a BA in Theater 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), primarily based in Washington, DC at Georgetown University. By combining the distinctive attain of TCG’s worldwide programming with the Lab’s distinctive expertise in humanizing international politics by means of the ability of efficiency, GTI strengthens, nurtures, and promotes international citizenship and worldwide collaboration within the U.S. skilled and academic theatre discipline. It additionally honors and intersects with the work so many theatre colleagues have invested in cross-cultural alternate and understanding.
Through the alignment of programming and assets, the GTI companions function a hub of worldwide alternate with three core areas of focus: connecting practitioners with assets, information, and partnerships to strengthen their work; selling cultural collaboration as important for worldwide peace and mutual understanding; and innovating new methods to maximise the worldwide theatre discipline’s alternatives and influence. GTI additionally serves because the collaborative management of the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute (ITI/U.S.).
In addition to TCG’s work with GTI, TCG’s Global Initiatives embody: publishing intensive protection of worldwide work in American Theatre; issuing peer session letters for worldwide visa petitions; and advocating for cultural alternate and artists’ rights worldwide. For a long time, TCG has additionally supported cultural alternate by means of grantmaking, and by main delegations of U.S. theatre practitioners to festivals worldwide. The Dr. Kerry English Global Connectivity Manager and International Cultural Exchange Grants assist advance TCG’s international initiatives.
International Theatre Institute (ITI) was fashioned in 1948, when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) joined with world-renowned theatre specialists to kind a global non-governmental group within the discipline 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 roughly 90 Centers worldwide. An ITI Center is made up of execs lively within the theatre lifetime of a rustic and consultant of all branches of the performing arts. For extra info, go to www.iti-worldwide.org.
The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics harnesses the ability of efficiency to humanize international politics. Since 2012, now we have created and introduced modern, high-quality work from world wide that’s on the intersection of politics and efficiency. The Lab’s signature method raises voices hardly ever heard in Washington, DC by means of compelling, genuine narratives, and engages policymakers, artists, and wider audiences in boards that solid important points in a brand new gentle. As a signature joint-initiative between the School of Foreign Service and the Georgetown College, The Lab is captivated with serving to to coach the following technology of innovators to make use of their artistry and voices to form new understandings and to humanize others in pursuit of a greater, extra simply world.
In Spring 2019, The Lab launched CrossCurrents, a DC-wide biennial pageant, that can function dynamic, socially-engaged performances from world wide and can catalyze conversations round important matters like the worldwide refugee disaster, local weather change, and the rise of hate and polarization. For extra info, please go to: GlobalLab.Georgetown.edu or @TheLabGU.
The Global Theater Initiative—a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics—invitations artists, audiences, and establishments throughout the nation to affix us in marking this international day of solidarity and reflection by means of theatre.