Our theater that shines in the dark

World Days are like this. Sometimes you remember them yourself. Sometimes not. It depends on the situation. It depends on how it happens. If you hear World Day mentioned on the radio. If Google doodles us. If an agency passes, one in ten million. It depends, indeed. Theater day, for those who really love it, can have the special way of being handwritten on the calendar every year. Even when the new calendar arrives in January, the annotation immediately makes the date unforgettable. March 27: World Theater Day. Almost a propitiatory rite. To start well. To synchronize right. To feel familiar with the fundamental elements of the Theater, those rough artisan objects of wood, rope, papier-mâché, and that special dust, that of the armchairs, that of the old curtains. Always asking the same question. What is so strong, so unique about those rooms full of chairs on one side and empty walls on the other? The physical co-presence, it is said with certainty. Live show. Human being talking to human being. Every time a different fact even if it’s the replica number vattelapesca. However, perhaps even saying this is not enough. Perhaps, by dint of repeating it, this sacrosanct truth has worn out as velvet armrests wear out. Feel that there is more. There is more. There is a mystery.

The cathartic dimension of the Theater. Alright then. We know. We’ve known for a long time. We know because it’s a subject we know, however we have studied and learned about it. Hand. Not even this is enough. Maybe you can’t give a precise name to everything. There are lands that must remain unmarked on the card. Those that anyone can glimpse again, suddenly in the middle of the fog and baptize all over again, deluding themselves that they have discovered them. The Theater is one of those lands. He crouches in the dark. You see it suddenly. And it feels like you built it from scratch, moment to moment. Maybe half asleep. In childhood dreams. You almost remember it. You’re making it up yet you remember it. The mind is full of deceptions. Of subterfuge. Of hatches that open. In the Theater where looking and being looked at ends there, it is the backdrop that hides. The withdrawing. The reluctance. The other face. The one that for a second sparkles in the eyes of the greatest Actor of all, called and called to the limelight by the rivers of applause that are renewed. You stay there. You peel your hands. And suddenly you realize that the Actor actually wants to escape. To disappear. In his gaze, for a second, the unspeakable plea shines: let me go, let me forget. I want to go back to my name on the ID. To my house keys. To my supermarket coupon. I am a small thing.

You are dumbfounded: but how? Why? Didn’t you see what you were able to do? A moment ago you set fire to the words. You alone made them alive. Burning, blinding matter. Now the hands, still against each other, declare enthusiasm: Bravo! That silent prayer, that panicked fear of an instant have already vanished. The bow is back. Their arms open again. The actor looks at the audience. He watches the stages. He looks up in the gallery. The rite. Last moment. And you still there. Standing. Clapping like an automaton. That rhythmic noise defends you from the anguish that has closed your throat. You would like to approach, collect that strange, metamorphic weariness: «What happened, tell me. What was that?’ But the curtain divides you. You can only take your jacket on. And face the night. Cold. Out.