The arts community put on a show of support for the local and global stage today by marking World Theatre Day.
Members of Theatre Collingwood, Theatre Georgian Bay, and Gaslight Community Theatre celebrated the day with a brief gathering downtown at the CWOOD sign and a group photo.
Mayor Yvonne Hamlin, along with other members of council also came out in support, with the mayor reading a proclamation about the economic and cultural value of theatre in the community.
World Theatre Day was first celebrated on March 27, 1962 and created by the International Theatre Institute.
Since then, March 27 continues to be known as World Theatre Day, coinciding with the 1962 opening day of the "Theatre of Nations" season in Paris.
Every year, the International Theatre Institute puts out a message by a different author on World Theatre Day. This year, the author is Norwegian writer and playwright Jon Fosse, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2023.
His message is titled "Art is peace," and it explores the paradox of human beings being both unique and similar to each other.
"Art, good art, manages in its wonderful way to combine the utterly unique with the universal," wrote Fosse (originally in Norwegian). "It lets us understand what is different -- what is foreign, you might say -- as being universal. By doing so, art breaks through the boundaries between languages, geographical regions, countries. It brings together not just everyone's individual qualities but also, in another sense, the individual characteristics of every group of people, for example of every nation."
You can read the full message and learn more about World Theatre Day on the website here.
