Over 100 International Theater Institutes celebrate World Theater Day across the globe.

The Polish ITI is holding the annual prize-giving ceremony, where Jacek Łumiński, founder of the Silesian Dance Theater in Bytom, will be given the Stanisław Witkiewicz award for his accomplishments in promoting Polish theater culture abroad.

Also, tradition has it, an established artist or expert in the field of theater delivers an address. This year’s speech author is Ludwik Flaszen, critic, writer, co-founder of the Grotowski Laboratory Theater, and member of the Honorary Committee of the ongoing Grotowski Year.

Meanwhile, Warsaw’s five independent theaters collaborating as part of the Enter association, among them theaters Polonia Wytwórnia, and Montownia, are to stage special performances in the capital.

World Theater Day is also an important event for Polish Radio, which has been creating radio plays for over 80 years. It is one of the largest stages in Poland, says head of the Polish Radio Theater, Andrzej Brzoska:

"We constitute an extremely large theater, because even 800,000 listeners can listen to our premieres, which I believe is very impressive for just one premiere, while we have up to five such premieres every week. We have a great number of listeners - they write to us, view our websites to keep track of what we do; we have many dedicated enthusiasts among the listeners, but there are also people, who have no other access to theaters."

World Theater Day was first established in 1961 at a world congress of the International Theater Institute in Vienna. It commemorates the opening of the Theater of Nations in Paris, where theater groups from both sides of the Iron Curtain met four years earlier.