World Theatre Day, observed today for the 49th time, is one of those "opt-in" holidays. It's tied to the International Theatre Institute, established by UNESCO in 1949. The WTD blog and annual messages have a strong flavor of consensus- making at an international organization, including the conscientious acknowledgement of the world's vast array of economically disadvantaged countries.
The U.S. correspondent to the international observance is the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), which arranged for a video message from "Tony-award winning actor and world citizen Jeffrey Wright," head of the TAIA Peace Foundation. Wright evokes the theatre message while telling of a village festival in Sierra Leone, where he and collaborators helped finance a road. His is a thoughtful, humane message, in which with unintended irony Wright stands slightly tilted to the left.
[Apple users: Can't see the 
video? Click to go to Vimeo]
Austin is not celebrating World Theatre Day this year. The world map posted at the WTD blog shows no "push-pin" anywhere in the vast expanse between Chicago and Los Angeles, and the TCG map, perhaps not updated, doesn't feature LA.
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