Wiener Festwochen 2011: Latviešu milestiba

Wiener Festwochen 2011

Latviešu milestiba - Latvian Love
Play with songs / Riga / Première in the german-speaking region

Date: May 20 to 23, 19:00;
Discussion with the audience following the performance on May 21
Venue: Halle G

We are in Riga, of course. A wide variety of lovers from different social strata and age groups meet, fall in love, say goodbye, quarrel and separate in many different settings. At the end of the play, we have seen glimpses of 50 biographies, learned much about Latvia and the amorous yearnings of a rich cross-section of the country\'s population - and are surprised that all these characters were performed by a cast of merely five actors.

Like Long Life, The Sound of Silence and Latvian Stories, Latvian Love is one of the semi-documentary portraits of Latvia that are a speciality of Alvis Hermanis: \"We read personal ads in the papers and tried to imagine the people behind them - how they look, how they talk, how their real lives might be like ... Basically, we treated the ads like coded autobiographies.\"

No other European ensemble shows individual lives with such warmth, precision and modesty as Hermanis\' Jaunais R?gas t?atris, whose first guest performance at Wiener Festwochen goes back to 2005 with Long Life. In the meantime, Hermanis has also directed in the German-speaking region (he was awarded the 2010 Nestroy Prize for Best Director), Moscow and Italy - although Riga remains his base.

Cast
Director: Alvis Hermanis / Production: Jaunais Rigas teatris, Riga

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