Caramitru on World Theatre Day: Come to the theatre when it's all over

Come to the theatre when it's all over, when we all will be healed, Ion Caramitru, actor and chairman of the National Union of Theatres in Romania (UNITER) said on the World Theatre Day.

"Come to the theatre when it's all over, when we're all healed, come like children who really know nothing and perhaps are born now, and, are certain that the mirror observes its meaning, watch our show as it is yours, of your childhood and brought home in your school bag, to keep it holy in the notebook with teenage memories," Caramitru says.

"We are in 2020. World crisis. Pandemic. Shut down countries. Thousands of deaths. Hundreds of thousands of hospitalised. Zero hopes, frightened expectations, futile calculations. Locked down in our homes we watch the TV how circulation is militarised and the streets' emptiness. (...) And the theatre has closed and the public has dispersed. No one knows until when. And we couldn't even pretend that we know what else to do more constructive than being on the stage, draped in standard characters. I try to clear my thoughts and be able to write something paramount about the theatre, now, on its very world day, to convey clearly and precisely the hidden secret of this so perishable art. I'm not the first adventurer to trying this. (...) So, to make things clear, I'd bring on to the stage two characters that could contribute to a better understanding: Socrates to tell us that "he knows he knows nothing" and Shakespeare to remind us that the purpose of playing is to "hold the mirror up to nature". With these two arguments, we could say that the stage is looking to steal you from reality, at least for one second. A long second, long as a lifetime, that will send you with your mind in the street, in the cosmos, inside yourselves, in life and even in death and nothingness. To take you out of the ordinary," the UNITER chairman says