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to become an EU Member State: sacrifice the old people, they were communists anyway, ah of them! Today, elderly citizens in fact are fobbed off with minimal monthly pensions of just one hundred Euro and have all but disappeared from public interest. Alvis Hermanis has taken this fact and transformed it into a piece of mute but moving theatre. The spectators enter a community flat with a primitive bathroom, an archaic kitchen and three rooms, where five old and very poor persons live. The audience thus become witnesses to the old folk’s slow daily routine, which is minutely reconstructed, and to their heroic yet funny struggle for bare existence, for the next meal, but also for the preservation of their human dignity. Hermanis has exclusively cast very young actors as these old people. For months, they studied the postures, movements and ways of acting of elderly persons and now interpret them with impressive perfection. A moving, neither treacly nor condescending stage installation by the leading young Latvian director, whose work has already won international acclaim with his production of Gogol’s The Government Inspector. ALVIS HERMANIS Alvis Hermanis, producer and director, studied drama at the State Conservatory in Lithunia In the eighties, he played in a number of films and movies and took stage roles for theatres, such as the Jean m Strindberg’s Miss Julie or Jago in Shakespeare’s Othello. One of his very first productions, Like a Calm and Peaceful River is the Home-Coming inspired by Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Video (1992) was honoured by critics as the best production of the theatre season. Then, Marquise de Sade, inspired by Yukio Mishima (1993), which was invited for a performance at the Baltic House Festival St. Petersburg, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1994), and the musical theatre piece Das Feuer und die Nacht by Janis Medins, which won the Great Music Award of Latvia, followed. Until today, Alvis Hermanis has realised plays by Tom Stoppard ( Arcadia , 1998), Jan Tätte ( Bungee Jumping, 2000) and Jewgenij Grischkowez {Die Stadt, 2001) for the stage; his last production was Nikolai Gogol’s Revizor, which again was honoured as Latvian production of the year. Alvis Hermanis himself designs the settings for most of his productions. Today, Hermanis is counted among the most important directors and producers of the young generation; with his understanding of the theatre aesthetics he aims at transforming borders, which finds an expression in the usage of new media and elements of the fine arts. Since 1997, he runs the New Theatre in Riga, which is focused on contemporary, modem repertoire theatre. The theatre was introduced at the Salzburger Festspiele in 2003 with Hermanis' production of Revizor on an international scale and won the renowned Young
Directors’ Award. After Revizor, Hermanis developed a specially researched story about Kaspar Hauser, and, in December 2003/January 2004, he realised the double-project Gard dzéve (Long Life) and Tdldk (based on Maxim Gorky’s Night Asylum). Ac the RuhrTriennale 2005, Alvis Hermanis is producing Das Eis. THE NEW RIGA THEATRE The New Riga Theatre is a professional repertory theatre chat provides innovative art corresponding to the requirements of the independently-thinking contemporary spectator both in its content and form. The artistic principles of the NRT are simple: high professional, ethic and aesthetic quality. The theatre has an intelligent and attractive repertory of high quality focussed on a modem, educated and socially active audience. In the era of mass - production and stress the NRT wants to affirm humanism, vitality and emotions and search for the way back to harmony and simplicity! The New Riga Theatre is located in the centre of the city and also at the centre of the theatre life of Latvia In 1997 the leadership of the theatre was taken over by the artistic director Alvis Hermanis. A new artistic ensemble was formed of 17 actors, who are the most professional actors of their generation in the country. In 2004 nine new actors joined the troupe. Although the New Riga Theatre is a stateowned repertory theatre it has also retained the spirit and manner of work of a theatre studio consistently keeping to the values of non-commercial art. The New Riga Theatre repertory is focused upon the study of theatre technology and not on the box-office incomes. The rehearsal period often lasts more than a year; productions are not made only for the large hail (470 seats) but also on ocher stages, also outside die theatre. The New Riga Theatre has been to Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Finland, Germany, Austria, the USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy. The New Riga Theatre production of “The Inspector General” received Young Directors’ Project prize at 2003 Salzburger Festspiele (Max Reinhardt’s pen).