We keep asking the question: Is the theatre still relevant to the times? For two thousand years the theatre has held a mirror up to the world and explained our place in it. Tragedy has portrayed life as being subject to Fate - Comedy has done this often enough as well.

Human beings are flawed, we make fatal mistakes, rail against our circumstances, clutch at power, are weak. Deceitful and naive, we are happy in our ignorance and sickened by God. I hear people say that life today is beyond the grasp of the traditional instruments of the theatre and that it is consequently no longer possible to tell stories.

Tankred Dorst
Word Theatre Day Message 2003