If you have a message, call western union. — Theatre

"French and Taiwanese media reported that the local Chinese consulate reached out to the Strasbourg theater Le Maillon in early February to object to the planned performances of “Ceci n’est pas une ambassade” (“This Is Not an Embassy”). This documentary-style show was co-created by Rimini Protokoll and Taiwan’s National Theater and Concert Hall. It simulates the opening of a Taiwanese embassy and explores Taiwan’s unclear international status. The play was chosen as the opening event for the “Démocraties en jeu” festival, which focuses on threats to democratic governance. When the theater’s director did not respond to the initial contact, the deputy consul general escalated the issue by directly writing to the City of Strasbourg, the theater’s main funder. He demanded the cancellation of the show, claiming it would hurt Sino-French relations."

"Say what you like, there is something wonderful about live theater—about any kind of live theater. Professional or amateur, city or boondocks, it makes no difference. The theater turns us into better people, at least for a moment, each time the curtain rises and the houselights dim."

"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large number of people from coughing."

"It was with some such ideas in mind that I started on this play. Or else they developed as I wrote it. Or else I have developed them in defense of it now that it is written. It is not easy to know what a play is "about" until it is finished, and by then what it is "about" is incorporated in it irreversibly and is no more to be separated from it than the shape of a statue is from the marble. Writing a play is thinking, not thinking about thinking; more like a dream than a scheme—except that it lasts six months or more, and that one is responsible for it."

"we have to invent new images and ways of power. So far the world thinks of power as violence, that power comes from a gun. We must create a new kind of drama in which there is drama, but its nonviolent. And this has barely been thought of."

"A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth."