The repertoire of the Latvian Puppet Theater includes more than ten shows for children in Russian, including “The Adventures of the Brave Mongoose Rikitikitavi”, Tales of Snow White, The Princess on the Pea, Little Red Riding Hood. And now is the last chance to see them. There will be no shows in Russian in the new season.
“This is an order of the Ministry of Culture, which will come into force at the beginning of the next season. We are currently in a transition period. We play almost all the shows we have in Russian. We do not stage new ones. We will play until the end of the season, after this season we will not play them anymore,” said theater board member Mārtiņš Eihe.
The Ministry of Culture explains its order in terms of education policy. “This is happening in line with the changes in the education policy, according to which from September 1 this year, the educational process will gradually switch to the Latvian language only, starting directly with preschool education. Therefore, the Latvian Puppet Theater, which until now had performances in both Latvian and Russian, will also gradually switch only to the Latvian language,” explained Uldis Zariņš, Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture for cultural policy issues.
The feelings in the theater administration are very different. “The first reaction is why it has to be done? On the other hand, as a cultural institution, one of our tasks is education. And the ministry’s order is related to the transition of education to the Latvian language, but one of these stages is art.
To provide Russian-language repertoire for children is delegated to the Mikhail Chekhov Theater. That will be their task. That’s what I understood from the conversation with the ministry,” Eihe said.
In the repertoire of Mikhail Chekhov’s Riga Russian Theater there are only three children’s plays in Russian. Whether there will be more is unknown.
In the past, performances in Russian for children were also held in the Daugavpils theater. However, they were canceled during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not yet been restored.
Educator and head of the educational development center “Insait” Katerina Kazanovska assessed that giving up children’s shows in Russian is a bad idea: “In general, the moral and ethical formation of a child’s personality is possible in the language that the child understands best! Therefore, ban Russian-language literature for small children now, performances, the opportunity to go to the cinema and discuss and deeply understand the content of the film,
in my opinion, this contributes to the fact that the future will be a certain marginalization, the Russian-speaking population of Latvia will have a lower cultural level.
Simply because if a child at the age of four or five has not been able to get acquainted with art, get acquainted with cinema and start going to it with pleasure, then until the moment when he starts to understand films in Latvian, when he starts to understand shows in Latvian, he everything will most likely be simply uninteresting.”
Mārtiņš Eihe admits that it would first be worth discussing what the consequences will be: “If we are talking about young children and language, I am not the type of specialist to judge it. In this case, it is probably a question more for those who make the decision. How do we do we live further? Maybe very different. Someone believes that if a child grows up in a family where several languages are spoken, it will be more difficult for him at first, but later much easier than for many other children. Because he has learned to think differently. This should be asked by child psychologists. Perhaps about it needs to be discussed.”
Uldis Zariņš explains that minorities also have other opportunities to consume cultural information in Russian: “State theaters are not the only ones that offer cultural content, including theater performances, also for children’s audiences. So the commercial sector is also actively working and I would not like to claim that children whose native the language is Russian, with this decision they will be left completely without any opportunities to enjoy culture in Russian.”
By giving up performances in Russian, the Latvian Puppet Theater will lose about a third of its profits. According to the member of the board, the actors who were involved in the performances in Russian will not have to look for another job, they will continue to act, but will perform in Latvian.
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