Article by the Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports, Ana Muñoz, on the occasion of World Theater Day, March 27
If we made a list of those experiences that have taught us the most in life, I am convinced that all of us would include almost the same: joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, loves and disappointments, anger and hope, dreams and realities … And it is that this is life, and one of the arts that most reflects life is the performing arts, especially theater. For this reason, whoever steps on a theater, returns. Because we like it? Because we look for ourselves, we look for those experiences that we would have written on the list and we look for the stories of Shakespeare or Calderón, Molière or Lorca, Becket or Lope, Chejov or Nieva …
Today is World Theater Day, a day to celebrate so many stories in History. It is not a day to claim its importance, because it would be like claiming the value of gold, it is not necessary. Its value has already been proven by time. This last year has been difficult for the performing arts and other shows, however, the theater has always known how to resurface, whether after total bans or censorship, wars, economic crises or, as is currently the case, this long health crisis.
The theater is not going to die, it did not – and some predicted it – when cinema expanded or when television was born, and it will not do so now. The theater was born with the human being and made us human, it helped us to be creative and thanks to that creativity we have overcome so many obstacles. The theater is our moral and social mirror, it is the reflection of who we are and what we become. Nobody who wanted to improve would get rid of the mirrors in which it is reflected, and society is not going to get rid of what makes us great.
The theater lives, luckily – and unfortunately, now – from the meeting, from the body to body, from the presence and the voice and the shout, and from the collective catharsis in which the spectator wishes to share the experience with those who make it up. they have lived. Paradoxically, what makes it special is the same as what makes it risky.
Other more fruitful days will come and, those of us who love the theater, we will return, we will encourage and celebrate them, we will return to the joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, love and disappointment, anger and hope, dreams and realities … We will even live plays about the pandemic, about the virus, about the crisis and about the resurgence of the theater, and he will be the one who taught us what we have learned from this whole situation. The theater, I am sure, will be inherited by the next generations, it is up to us to protect it and transmit it to them.
