Life is beautiful if you go to work and don’t go to work all your life, “because you don’t work, but you go,” – actress Ilze Vazdika Daile Theater is home, she has spent almost 60 years there.
Sandija Dovgāne, the nominee of the “Young Performer of the Year” category, “Young Performer of the Year”, talks to Ilze Vazdika.
Sandija Dovgāne: I am a young actress. I completed a puppet course last year.
Ilze Vazdika: Doll course? Yes, now a lot of people have completed a puppet course, and I’m very happy that they work in both cinema and television.
Everyone is now working anywhere, of course. Because this time is what it is.
Quite crazy.
Yes, we laugh here, this puppet course is such a special course and more Covid at a time…
Dolls are very difficult to drive. I feel like I couldn’t.
How did you decide to become an actress in general? I know you come from an actor family.
Well, that’s why it was self-evident. As in the families of painters: a child crawls on the floor all the time and something in the paint, he grows bigger and then the paint gets better and better, and there are no more questions. Of course, there are times when a child does not follow in his parents’ footsteps. But my brother and I did … yes. I almost grew up in old Daile. We were taken with us, often not already, but we saw all the performances.
And then I was convinced that I could do it too. I took a copy of papa and trained.
I trained to play the play in which he was a father and Mudite Schneider was a daughter. And I thought, “Oh, how would I like this.” And then alone at home with a copy in front of the club chair, which I imagine as a father.
Then it turns out that the choice of the profession of an actor came to you completely naturally.
I can’t think of anything else. If you were to ask, “What would you be in life if you weren’t an actress?”
Then you’re not one of those actors who says, “If I had a second chance, I wouldn’t go.”
No.
That is wonderful!
A beautiful life if you go to work all your life and don’t go to work because you don’t work, but go to kaifu. Everyone has their own way in art. You may also not meet your director. You can already hit something, and you don’t like it and everything. And that doesn’t mean you’re untalented. Every young person who begins this journey, he each has his own star of happiness. However, I would also call it an asterisk. Without success, nothing will come of it. It is success that determines where you end up, who you meet, what troupe you are in, what directors you work with.
I can’t imagine visiting another theater, another troupe, it’s definitely not understandable or acceptable to me.
I am an old man. I can with my own. This is important.
Sandija Dovgāne
Photo: Madara Melne-Tomsone
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Have you really been in theater for 60 years?
57, 58…
I read a little about you, and it was written on the theater’s website that you have been at the Daile Theater since 1960.
Yes. I graduated from school in 1961. I graduated from high school with my studies. When I was 19, I started working in theater and have worked without a “blue leaf” to this day. In Russian times, the blue page was a page of incapacity for work when you fell ill. But I haven’t had a single “blue leaf” … 59 years.
Is this theater like home for you?
Yes, absolutely.
Who have been your directors?
I belong to [Pētera] Peterson’s students. I was in his group. We were divided into groups. Venta Vecumniece has her own group, Peterson has her own and [Felicitai] Ertnerite was probably the third. I was in Peterson’s group and it was extremely exciting the way he worked. He is already such a dreamer, an extraordinary person and a great talent. I have never had such a director. But I can say that the roles I had all the time, beautiful roles. And when foreign Latvians started driving, they – already old men – fell in love with me at the very beginning of the 90s. So I can’t complain.
All three of us are still wondering today how we have endured, because there have been some seven directorships.
Well you realize coming key and wiping everything clean, right? But we come and say to each other, “Girls, you can’t go back!”
It is a great fortune to be on stage at this age.
Yes, I have wanted it all my life and said in interviews that it is an art to go through time. I will leave now, but I have always wanted it – to go on time.
But you can still.
You feel like you can, but physically you can’t anymore.
Just jump maybe not, you can still have the rest.
I can’t jump anymore, I’m stopped. (laughs)
What is your favorite place in the theater?
A place in the theater? You have to think. Once, when we moved from the old theater to this one, we were only asked after a good time – “well, where do you like it better?” And then we all said how we want to go back to the old theater – just the old theater! The place, look, everything is huge. Where is a place here? Everything here is big and long. There you meet everyone in the corridor every day. But here one is at one end, the other at the other and it immediately dissolves the ensemble. There is no sense of community. Well, it’s not that great feeling of home, but I’ve been here for so many years and I’m used to it.
From left: Sandija Dovgāne, Ilze Vazdika
Photo: Madara Melne-Tomsone
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How many years have you been in the new Daile Theater premises?
I can’t even say that, I haven’t thought about it. But now these are homes at home – Daile, only Daile is my home all my life.
How do I know you don’t have your own family?
Nav, nav.
But on the part of relatives, you have a large family.
Yes, I have a lot of nice people around. Every person is already an individual, and in my youth I also think so: this child will hit – will hit, I will not do anything special. But you can do everything, so I need a baby, I never have. So it is not. I did nothing, tried, or married for all I could. Well, there were guys all the way – there was hardly anything, but there were guys (laughs).
I even think which is better: to be born or not? It seems to me that there is nothing at all after death. You die and everything. Hana!
Dark picture?
Yes, a dark picture. Everything. And then to live this, to hope, to cry, to go through all this and then to die – it is difficult to come to terms with it. So I have this big question. So I’m not worried that I haven’t released anyone in the world who should die.
Do you think it is possible to connect family and theater?
Yes, calmly. Don’t be afraid.
Then is it possible? (laughs)
If you like an actor – grab it. In the evening you will shake your whole heart, you will talk about the roles, there is no harm in it, there is no fault. And they understand each other. You are not at home on Saturdays, Sundays. But you understand him.
If you have one person from elsewhere, how long will he endure that you don’t?
You won’t be there all the time.
In principle, it is also the case that you are not all the time.
And on holidays! We all work double straight on holidays! Well, that’s our crust.
What is the most charming thing about this profession? What is its greatest happiness?
The greatest happiness? First of all, I think it was necessary to start with psychology in acting. Because our job is just psychology. I’ve been trying to encrypt different people for sixty years – why they did it. But when you manage to create that other image, it’s happiness, and it’s not often. Here is happiness. And others say, “But how did you do that?” But I can’t even explain. Like a poet when he writes a colossal poem. Well how will he tell? That’s not fabulous. Moments of happiness are also moments when you feel connected to the audience. You feel it.
When they are happy to see you, so is happiness. But it comes with years.
When you are completely unleashed, when you have got that image, and then you take it to the audience. In your youth you take with beauty. Everyone likes you, you are beautiful, but later you have to be able to make and create their image and everything else. Well then it’s happiness, and it’s a great satisfaction, but at least I don’t have many images.
From left: Sandija Dovgāne, Ilze Vazdika
Photo: Madara Melne-Tomsone
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The success factor is also important …
Also, how to match. How do your qualities coincide with the qualities of an image that you don’t have to break or, conversely, you have to break completely. Because in every human being we have everything inside – both hatred and disgust. Understand, we have it all in, and then we just have to open it. Because the best role for me was in “Leenena Beauty Queen”, where we were with Martinson Mirdza – now I was a terrible old woman there. One terrible grandmother! I had a prototype in my life. At first I didn’t understand what to do here. And then at one time, in one attempt, there was a click, and I opened up and stayed so easy. I had found some approach, an approach to that woman.
It turns out that a bad image is better, more interesting to play than a good one. (laughs)
Yeah Al that sounds pretty crap to me, Looks like it aint for me either. I have played in many children’s plays – “Punktiņa and Antons”, “Divas Lotiņas”, and I have beautiful roles everywhere. And then I have had a lot of television in my life. At the same time, I have worked in television all my life – in children’s programs, also in TV series, not to mention “Fire of Fire”. Dear 11 years! By the end, I was tired because I was still years old and we were filming in parallel with working in the theater.
The load was very heavy.
And ride to the suburbs of Moscow! I don’t have a car, I drive back and forth by tram and trolleybus. There was hell at the end. I couldn’t physically anymore. And when it was over, I was frankly very happy because physically I had enough.
But the series is very recognizable. People definitely come …
Oh, I didn’t react anymore. I just smile. I don’t react anymore, how I get touched there, like a fairy tale. I often hear, “You’re straight as my mother-in-law …” and ask for recipes. I say, “Dear baby, I don’t have any recipes. Give me peace of mind with those recipes! ”
But people believe.
Believe me, I’m just a cook and all. Oh, it’s gone all the way. (laughs) Well, you see how nicely we talked.
Yes, very nice.
Well, have a successful path: try, break and do not give up. But don’t give up right away!
No way!
No, don’t give up!
I stubbornly hold on! (laughs)
Stubbornly, and as I always said at such times: “Ilze, don’t cry, Ilze don’t cry!”. I will never show tears to him who humiliates me. Well, it’s already different, isn’t it? And that’s how I’ve been trying all my life: “No, I’m not crying!” I looked into my eyes and started the next day even harder. So that’s been the case. But you will have your own way and remember this conversation.
Thanks! I will definitely remember this conversation.
The conversation took place within the framework of the project “Theater Atlantis through the Ages”, in cooperation with the association “Latvian Theater Employees’ Union”, the LCA Eduards Smiļģis Theater Museum and the Daile Theater. The project has been implemented with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia and the State Cultural Capital Fund.
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