“People are equal and different at the same time,” writes Jon Fosse in the manifesto for World Theater Day, which is celebrated today. The Norwegian playwright is the author of this year's text, which is read around the world. In Barcelona, the person in charge of giving voice to the words of the 2023 Nobel Prize winner has been the actor Oriol Genís, in Plaza del Sol.
About art in general, not just theater, Fosse considers: “I can't think of a better way to unite opposites. It is exactly the opposite approach to the violent conflicts that we often see in the world, which feed the destructive temptation to annihilate everything strange, everything unique and different, commonly using the most inhuman inventions that technology has made available to us. .
Fosse continues: “There is terrorism in this world. There is war, since people have an animal side that leads them to see the strange as a threat to their own existence, instead of seeing the fascinating enigma that it represents. And he ends: “It is as simple as that war and art are opposites, as war and peace are opposites. “Art is peace.”
The world celebration of theater has also coincided with some messages on social networks from El Col·lectiu, made up of independent theater companies, which denounce the precariousness of the sector, despite the good figures from the previous year: “In 2023, year with the most viewers in history, many companies have had to row to avoid dying.” The specific problems that some of the small companies that populate the Catalan theater scene have had have been published on their X account.
