Today is World Theatre Day, celebrated internationally every March 27th since 1962, even when the lovely enveloping darkness in a theater feels no match for the ugly encroaching darkness outside of it. 

“The lights will dim but only for a moment. They will come back up as we take a bow,” says Rosalba Rolón, artistic director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, near the end of her World Theatre Day message, in the video below.

It is one of three messages for World Theatre Day: The international  message is by Theodoros Terzopolous from Greece, founding artistic director of Attis Theatre and chairman of the Theatre Olympics. A second U.S. message is from playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh. Each addresses, implicitly or explicitlly, the question of what theater can and should do in dark times

The photographs of Broadway’s Booth Theater above, and the Music Box and the Belasco below, were taken during the pandemic shutdown in 2020 by Mark S. Kornbluth, An exhibition of his photographs of Broadway theaters during “Broadway’s Great Intermission” will open April 17 at Cavalier Galleries (3 W 57th Street, 4th floor, New York, NY).

“Can theatre hear the SOS call that our times are sending out…Is theatre concerned with ecological destruction…Can theatre spotlights shed light on social trauma?…Questions that do not allow definitive answers, because theatre exists and endures thanks to unanswered questions… We need new narrative ways aimed at cultivating memory and shaping a new moral and political responsibility….” – Theodoros Terzopoulos Full text translated into English

 Rosalba Rolón recounts her introduction to theater in Puerto Rico, her experience with Latino theater in New York City, and her connection to the global theater community.

“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,