Like many in the film and TV business, I come from the Theatre. It was my first love and every time I enter a live theatrical venue I feel a kind of serenity and warmth, perhaps a reminder that I’m “Home” maybe even back where I belong.
It’s not that the work I now do is less rewarding or less important. It’s just that it less often feels as rewarding and important.
Yeah, the money’s better. The audience is bigger. More people will know your name or see your work long after you’re gone. But the theatre, which evolved from religion as another way to serve the collective soul, feeds your own in a very profound way.
Most of what I am and do was discovered in the Theatre. May it ever be so.
And those values are no better expressed than in the words of commemoration offered today in honor of World Theatre Day by this year’s designated spokesman, John Malkovitch:
“May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace.
May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do. May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life's work.
And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, "how do we live?" Godspeed.”
If you can’t get to a theatre this evening, please make the time to call one and buy a ticket for the near future. You and your work need the reminder and the restoration.
Happy World Theatre Day.
