slideshow of photos that have just
passed in front of your eyes on this
these are photos that have been taking
during the last three years in different
parts in Europe
and they are images that somehow
interrupted my everyday life rhythm
imagine that what you just heard the
silence is the photo of an old man
reading the story of the little prince
in the busy morning tram in Athens it is
another old man sitting alone on a bench
of a central square in Thessaloniki
wearing his best brown suit and holding
a red rose in his hand it is a road sign
found some weeks ago close to the north
borders of Greece pointing to Yugoslavia
on the right it is a woman knitting a
scarf next to me in Tallis train
traveling from Holland to Belgium as I
am busy working on my computer you don’t
see them but they are here passing in
there is something in the fact that we
cannot see each other we haven’t met yet
but I like to think of us sharing images
imaginings dreams for our lives and the
world none of us knows exactly what
these dreams are about yet but I like to
what you just heard as silence was the
sound of your dreams or maybe of the
dreams of the one next to you or maybe
of those a little bit further away in
this theater this neighborhood this city
this country this continent this planet
what you just heard that silence was the
sound of our own dreams they are here
already ready to break our everyday life
at any moment and create other realities
the realities we dream of it’s now good
welcome to space it’s the year 2000 118
we are in the area of science fiction
100 years ahead of our time it’s now
Monday 7 February 2118 here are two
possible scenarios for theater on that
day the first scenario there is no
theater since many years Theatre is
forbidden by law in all states on earth
as something that is useless and has no
effect on the public this means that we
have no actors no theatre spaces no
theatre texts no performance is created
by artists people rarely remember or
discuss the world theater anymore most
importantly if someone mentions the word
theatre or even worse if somebody tries
to practice theatre they are prosecuted
and spent the rest of their life in
prison in this context there are some
people who still react and resist and
they do that by learning by heart whole
theater texts or by learning to perform
on their own whole theater performances
these revolutionaries are named after
the theatre texts or the theater
performance that they memorize and they
protect in their own body this means for
example that you can find hidden in the
woods of course because they are illegal
: L Romeo and Juliet for example or
officer Medea what these people fight
for is for the return of theatre and
it’s stories most importantly though
what we fight for is the return of this
unique
and irreplaceable experience of people
coming together in theater in order to
think about the world and dream about it
in common second possible scenario for
theater in 2118 theater is everywhere
it’s imposed by law that people live in
a theater mode all day long every day
everywhere this means that people have
to perform different kind of roles but
have to invent performances wherever
they stand they have to take pictures
all the time post them everywhere and
create stories about them etc if
somebody refuses to do that if somebody
does not want to perform all the time
publicly in front of others risks
spending time in jail in this case of
course also we don’t need to have the
specific profession of the actors we
don’t need to have theater directors we
don’t need theaters we don’t need
performances we don’t need theater texts
because theater is anyway everywhere all
the time it’s in streets in parks in our
houses on TV shows like Earth’s Got
Talent
or so you think you can do whatever kind
of art you want are multiplied and
broadcasted all the time it’s really a
joy which ones of the two scenarios
sounds good to you for 2118 the one
where theater is illegal and disappears
completely or the one where theater is
everywhere but nowhere at the same time
and there is no further no leads or
okay let’s come back to 2018 and the way
we think about theater today and in the
future so here we are
it’s Wednesday 7th February 2018 and we
live in a time where many people often
question theater and arts in general in
terms of the results the effects they
can have on the public why do we need
theater today when was the last time you
went to theater and what did it change
in your life why should we still have
theater when we have internet and TV and
we live among millions of images and
stories every day let’s try to think a
bit further on these questions and take
things from the start so the word
theater comes from the Greek theater on
which derives from the word say view and
the verb sail masaomi which means to see
to view theater then since its beginning
it functions as a seeing place as a room
with a view that gives the opportunity
to spectators to interpret and speculate
about the world they live in through the
images and the stories they say on
States and if theatre cannot change the
world it can definitely change the way
we think about the world the theater
director Eugenio Barba has said that
theater may be is not a revolution but
it’s a rehearsal for a revolution and
it’s true that many times during history
we have witnessed actual real
revolutions taking place outside the
theater space exactly because of the
effect the theater performance had on
the people who saw it theater then and
that that sees may be its particularity
in relation to other arts has the power
to start revolutions and overturn
established realities and why is that
because in theater we come physically
together
bring our bodies closer in order to
think about the world and dream about it
in common together and why it’s
important to do that especially today
more than maybe any other previous time
in their book speculative everything the
two writers underneath unit Fiona Robbie
have written that today our dreams have
been downgraded to hopes as the world
becomes homogeneous Lars villains we
live in digital societies that
disconnect us emotionally and physically
from each other societies that teach us
to live more online than offline and
focus more on individual needs on each
one’s needs separately than on our
common ones in other words today we
witness a paradox we are virtually
connected all day long through Internet
while at the same time we feel more
alone and disconnected than ever before
therefore we are not able to produce
together visions for her present and
future and in this context we hope that
we will not allow ourself to become
extinct we hope that we can feed those
starving we hope that there will be
enough room for all of us on this tiny
planet but we don’t know how to fix our
problems we are hopeful that everything
will be all right
but we cannot create together new dreams
for the 21st century another reason why
it’s difficult for us today to make new
dreams for our life and the world has to
do with the fact that we live in
societies that learn details to move
away from imagination because the
imagination is not to be trusted on the
contrary we should count on an extreme
rationalization on logic and on reality
and on actual facts when a society
though suggests that people turn
imagination only as fantasy in order to
comfort themselves and feel better
because there are real problems that
they cannot solve it forgets that people
are able to solve real problems only
because they are capable of the
imaginary only because they have the
ability to come together and imagine
possible solutions for these problems
and then try them out and this is
exactly why Theatre today in a time that
deactivates us from common imagination
from the imagination we sir
is more urgent than ever before because
theater counts on imagination in order
to make its stories and moreover it
depends largely on the life coming
together of an audience in order to
share these stories so theater is a
public shared area where we come
together to create dreams that’s why it
can contribute to the emergence of
alternative dreams for our world today
instead then of producing Twitter art
where anyone can have a go and reproduce
banality of egos theatre artists train
themselves their bodies their voice
their minds in order to create
alternatives for our lives and they
devote their work to the careful
construction of alternative realities of
new realities for our world and this is
why we should support their work and
theater today in 10 in 50 or 100 years
because if we want to approach our lives
differently it’s not enough to simply
hope we have to dream and we have to
practice together ideas events actions
that constantly reimagine the way we
want to live together starting from the
very little ones and the everyday ones
for example adults reading children
stories in the tram or in the metro in
the morning women eating in high-speed
train
road signs pointing to countries that
don’t exist
old men occupying squares with red
flowers dressed in their best clothes do
you remember this images that overturns
my reality in the beginning of the talk
do you remember the dreams we served in
silence the dreams we created together
the dreams that can overturn what we
take for granted and approach our lives
from different directions and create
alternatives and new dreams for the
world what you just heard us silence was
the sound of the dreams we created right
now today in this very theater let us
dream of them together let us produce
new views in common let us serve
alternative realities now and forever
let us fight for the realities in
theater and for the fictions in everyday
life starting today in 2018 preparing
the ground for others to do so in a hundred years thank you