World Theatre Day Planning

Above: Simon Ogden, Rebecca Coleman, myself, Jessica Hutchinson & Nick Keenan on video conference to discuss World Theatre Day 2009

My mind is still racing after this afternoon's meeting to discuss World Theatre Day 2009.  Eight of us from around the world (Texas, Chicago, Vancouver, Australia & London) met online - some with audio & video, others typing - to discuss the endless possibilities for making World Theatre Day a huge success.  

The first chunk of the meeting was taken up with how great it was to all be talking to each other. Travis and I played tic-tac-toe while we waited for others to join the room. It was just neat to be talking "face-to-face" over the computer with theatre professionals from around the world. 

Of course, then we settled down to business to talk about what we wanted to see happen internationally on March 27th.  What each city could do individually & how we would tie the international theatre community together. There are certainly a lot of ideas out there. Kate suggested some sort of flash mob.  Andrew wants to try some sort of twitter-based playwrighting. 

I'm really excited about this, despite the fact that we don't yet know what it looks like. Why? Because it is linking theatre artists from all different disciplines (in our meeting alone we had a stage manager, actors, publicist, sound designer, AD, vocal coach, writers & other theatrical hats) around the world to talk about theatre together and to celebrate what we do.  It is giving us a good reason to build international communities & support each other's art.