Pinocchio : “But how does one spend the day in the Land of Toys?”
Lamp-Wick : “Days are spent in play and enjoyment from morn till night. At night one goes to bed, and next morning, the good times begin all over again. What do you think of it?”
“H’m–!” said Pinocchio, nodding his wooden head, as if to say, “It’s the kind of life which would agree with me perfectly.”
Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio
From “Mein Kampf” to the recent slaughters in Paris, through the continuous flow of horrors that seems to rage on earth, all the contemporary history reveals the load of hate and violence borne by the denial of this simple reality : as the world is saturated of exchanges and communication, there is no society which is not multicultural.
For an educator, for a parent, to transmit the tools which will allow the children to think and to experiment multiculturalism is, therefore, of the highest importance. As it can, but on the bases on the foundations designed by the International convention on children’s rights and the Convention on diversity of cultural expressions, ASSITEJ is one of the organisations that, empirically, step by step, encounter by encounter, produce these tools. Not as a concept, but as a thought in motion, a Praxis of living together.
It has, for these purposes, the benefit of a amazing material : Theatre. Arts, performing arts in the first place, are multicultural by nature. Actors tour. From city to city, from country to country, they pass on ideas, aesthetics, shared emotions.
Yet, is sharing enough? Can the young human, over-informed witness of the fierceness of social relations, of the bewildering inequity of individual destinies, be satisfied with a “being together” without questions, timeless, in which any existential issue can be dissolved, either by buying new goods, or by the blind following of a dogma? What does “sharing” mean, without critical thinking?
Theatre, art of the sprayed speech, one of the first mass medias, is, there, in front line. It is upon us, adults, artists, advocates of culture, to promote an exigent, creative, theatre. A theatre which hustles, more than he seduces, and pushes the walls of alienation.
