Email author: egilssnore@inbox.lv
Play “Tariff”
Length: two acts.
Genre: farce.
Cast size: 10 male and 7 female roles.
The action takes place: in a particular public transport.
About the play: the main characters are the King and Queen
of Latvia (Latvia has never had a royal family), the Princess and Princes.
Tariff is the somewhat exaggerated ‘bad guy’. The play consists of several
scenes, from one stop to the next. Inspiration has been drawn from several of Moliere’s
plays.
Play was written in: 1996.
Play “So Many Phones!”
A laconic sit-com with black humour elements and tree couples who at the end
of play are reconciled to each other.
Genre: A comedy of “European developing
countries”.
Cast size: 11: 8 male and 3 female characters.
About the play: characters of the play include “small
people” who have suffered all the changes of life, racketeers, Mafiosi, a
corrupt civil servant and his energetic mistress as well as the hostess of the
house where the action is set and who has returned from across the ocean. The
play’s laconic language and dynamic plot may help to make it into a musical.
Play was written in: 1995.
Performance history: the play was staged as a musical in Riga New Theatre 29.01.1997.
Play “The faithfulness test or how faithful is your husband?”
Genre: A character and situation comedy.
Length: 13 scenes with one interval.
Cast size: 13 female and 10 male roles many of which could
be played the same actors. The minimal number of actors required is 5 (3 female
and 2 male).
Play was written in: 1996.
Synopsis: The 30 year old Elke is the country’s first lady
detective specialising in straying husbands. Working for middle aged female
clients she visits cafés, bars, restaurants etc to chat up their husbands and
to see if they propose a more intimate relationship. It would not be a comedy
were it not for the various misunderstandings and confusion that arise in her
daily routine. A revolving stage is desirable.
At the beginning of the play she feels beautiful, self-conscious and
self-confident although… Then she begins to be visited by strange clients. To
preserve their anonymity she gives them reference numbers of various
combinations of letters and numbers. There is Mrs XL who, imagining her husband
together with Elke, becomes hysterical in the detective’s office. Mrs X1, who
has already had her husband checked out and was found to be easily led astray,
wants her husband tested again and this time, all the way. There is the well
off lady (who’s reference number is taken from the Jaguar she owns) and her
even more influential husband who has no wish to seduce Elke, but to analyse
her. When not circulating in high society he has pretensions of being a
Freudian writer. The lady who has conditioned her husband not to stray by using
methods similar to Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. Her husband, it turns out,
has not been conditioned and exposes Elke’s provocation.
The car fanatic husband who irritates Elke with his speeches and brings out
an almost masochistic reaction in her. As a result of this painfully hilarious
episode, when Elke meets another easily, perhaps too easily, seduced husband,
she herself is reduced to hysteria. The wife of this over amorous husband does
not believe Elke’s report and becomes aggressive towards Elke.
Elke meets other different characters. Lonely and confused, she converses
with the young feminist office cleaner. When relaxing or in times of confusion
she tapes the text of her forthcoming book. We learn of Elke’s fragile and
somewhat mixed up inner world.
Is there not an everyday, simple test during the play? Yes, one, but even
the outcome of this shakes Elke’s confidence in her beliefs. The last test in
the play finds Elke having to put her fiancé to the test. This has a happy
ending.
Play “In the Same Boat”
Lenght: 3 scenes.
Genre: drama.
Cast size: two female and one male part.
Scene take place: 1st – during late 1970’s,
Scene 2nd and 3rd – during early 1990’s.
Play was written in: 1996.
Synopsis:Scene 1. Husband and
wife. A Latvian theatre star in her 50-ies welcomes her ten years younger
husband in his dressing room after his first true but belated success in
theatre. Seeing his wife in the dressing room is an unpleasant surprise for the
husband who despite his success has decided to leave the stage and become a
film director. And he has decided to divorce his wife who until then had
supported him and advanced his career in the theatre. He is a strikingly
handsome man, famous all over theSoviet Unionfor his legendary part as a Soviet
spy. However in the relationship game the wife turns out to be much stronger
than the on-screen spy. Using all the weaponry of psychological warfare, the
wife finds out that the husband has met another woman with whom he could have a
meaningful relationship; the wife declares that she would not give him a
divorce. Still the husband insists. The wife goes on to threaten her husband
and tells him how she organised refugee boats to cross the Baltic Sea from
Kurland over to Sweden in 1944 during WWII, while secretly being a KGB agent.
The boat trips ended up in the hands of the Red Army patrols close to the shore
and for most of the refugees it meant a soon death. The legendary on-screen spy
does not want to continue this conversation and leaves the dressing room.
However his marriage lasts for many years.
Scene 2. Husband and lover. In the wake of the 1991, the husband
has come to see his long-time lover whom he had been meeting for ten years in
great secrecy. It seems that this is a moment when their feelings and mutual
understanding have reached the peak. He does not tell it to her in so many
words but he feels that he has finally regained his true independence only now
together with the new Latvia state. However to have independence alone is not
enough for him; and a creative personality who had been forced to live in lies
or half-truths in his professional life for years needs spiritual cleansing or
blessing. Like many others he has decided to receive it from a prophet who has
found his way toLatvia. Fearing for him, his lover resists this idea. They
start to argue and he leaves, offended that his lover does not regard him to be
great enough to need this blessing.
Scene 3. Wife and lover. Later also husband as a vision. Soon after
receiving the blessing of the false prophet the man the both women share is
dead. The lover calla the wife in a fit of passion and arrives to her summer
cottage. The older woman gets the psychological upper hand again and she finds
out everything she has ever wanted to know, she even discovers that the lover
had been to the morgue and she had noticed strange spots where the false
prophet could have touched the man’s body. The younger woman is still in a fit
of passion, she drinks whiskey the wife offers her, and after easing her heart
the lover accepts the wife’s invitation to spend the night in the cottage where
she had met her lover secretly several times. As soon as her head hits the
pillow she falls asleep but the older woman cannot quench her anger and
approaches her bed with an obvious intention to kill her.
A vision: a boat appears through fog. The man is sitting in the boat,
dressed as a Red Army officer. He invites one of the women to join him in the
boat. It turns out that he has chosen the older woman.
The morning starts with the younger woman’s call to the police, telling that
she has found the older woman dead on the floor with a pillow in her hand.
Play “The Last Romantics”
Length: A play in five stages in time with one interval.
Synopsis: Three artistically inclined people (two men and
one woman) abandon the city (Riga) for life in the country as teachers. Both
men are friends and both are emotionally attracted to the woman. A unique love
triangle develops over the school year where friendship and idealism have
greater meaning than physical expression.
Play was written in: 1996.
Play “Latvian Party”
Cast size: There are six male and five female characters in that play. Music and movements would have been very important, of course.
The play has no dialogue, it’s action includes nine periods of time –
from the end of thirties up to now. The idea doubtless has come from famous E.
Scola’s movie “The Ball”. But in the case events take place not in dancing hall
but in a large flat and also the history of Latvia differs from the history of
France in great deal.
Play was written in: 1994.
Play “Don’t Go There, Heaven knows where…”
Length: 2 parts.
Audience: A play is for children and adults.
Theme: A child’s world and addiction. There are many ways
of becoming dependent even before the use of drugs.
Cast size: the play is performed by children grownups and images. There are four children’s roles (3 boys and one girl); the children, of course, may be played by suitable adults. There are six adult (the children’s parents) roles and thirteen images.
Synopsis: the main images are Dependence and Independant. Their struggle goes on throughout the play. Dependence is a wicked magician. She wants to subjugate both the children and the adults. But there are many forms of dependence! There is dependence on bourgeois standards, dependence on desires created by inner discomfort and finally, dependence on medicines, nicotine, alcohol, drugs, gambling.
Dependence has her assistants:- Barbie and Ken (superdolls), Slot Machine,
Tube of Glue, Spray – Flask, and other images that emerge from Dependence’s box
of wonders.
Independant is not a magician, but an image and therefore his age cannot be
determined. Like Dependence, he never sleeps. His dress is old fashioned, tails
and top hat, but otherwise he is just like other people. He is alone in his
fight against Dependence. He has no assistants, unless you discount the fact
that any child or adult can be his assistant.
The play also has musical interludes – songs. The set is sparse and requires
minimal resources.
Play was written in: 1997.
Play “To Smoke Grass”
Genre: drama.
Cast size: 2: 1 male, 1 female.
Synopsis: It is a story about love and
misunderstanding of two people coming from different generations, based on the
background of post soviet socially historical circumstances. He (age
of 39) – the representative of about hippie generation, She –
representative of “Snicker’s” generation, a student. “Let’s smoke
grass” – it is not appeal to try drugs, it is a generation of 20 years olds
desire for getting themselves into the other world full of spirituality.
In the original this play is meant for two actors He and She
with some masses. The play in Latvia National Theatre is staged as
only a two actors play. Small budget performance.
EXCLUSIVELY FOR GROTOWSKY’S THEATRE CENTRE IN
WROCLAW
The play is not about drug addicts but about two people of different
generations and their love.
He is a teacher (39) and she (23) is a student. The phrases “let’s smoke
grass”, “can you get me grass” are uttered by her several times during the text
of the play and it conveys a desire to enter a different spiritual world.
He represents the generation of former hippies and to a large extent he
has retained the ideals of his young days, has “pickled” them (socialism with
its stagnation to an extent has provided such a chance), and she wants to be
there with him, in his youth. She desperately implores him to give her a
photograph from his young days… Yet the picture cannot restore the times gone.
It is hard to live in two worlds at a time – in the spiritual world and the
material one. And today’s world is much more material.
It is easier for him. Having lived for many years in an inner opposition
to the reality he has learned to live by the minimum. He Would almost be ready
to live with only one thought that his lectures are wanted by somebody. Then
unexpectedly comes love. It demands at least some comfort, protection,
guarantees. He is unable to provide those in the given social reality…
She has an ebullient temperament. She loves him, seeking understanding
and protection, she loves him aggressively. On the walls of the shabby dump
where they meet she writes lines from Tina Turner’s song “You’re the best”. He
says that he’s never know by heart such long poems with the exception of
Nekrasov’s “The Railway” (The image of railway, the train crops up in the
play repeatedly). She asks him teasingly if she could call him “daddy”. She
tells him about her pals and lovers. About the princes of her dreams… She wants
to get there – in the world of his youth and at the same time she wants him here
where she’d be happy to imagine herself in a TV commercial or as a model.
“O.K.” she says after current row. Perhaps you are right. But you screen
off my light with your truth. (Explodes.) It’s hard for us! You don’t even
realise how hard it is! We want to make our mark! We are young! But you’re
young too. Yet it’s happened so that your generation has got stuck. And now we
must fight against each other.
“Are we fighting?”
“Yes, in reality we are.”
They don’t stay together. Yet they part with love. They part wishing to
start it all anew. They part wishing to enter another world and be with each
other at the same time.
Play was written in: 1995.
Performance History: Latvian National Theatre –
in 1996, Daugavpil’s Theatre in 2008.
