Theater Businessman Juris Žagars Facing Court Case Over Talent Poaching, Claims New Riga Theater Director Alvis Hermanis

“The big theater businessman Juris Žagars and his friend Krišjānis Barons from the Stalin Prize laureate Smilģas Dailes Theater can already start preparing for another big court case.” The artistic director of the New Riga Theater, Alvis Hermanis, dedicated such harsh words to his colleagues on social networks on Tuesday.

“This time, the plaintiffs will be JRT, Valmiera and Liepāja theaters, whose young actors-students who have just received their education are being brutally bought. At the moment, as far as we know, at least 12 young actors have been approached. The actors are, of course, not natives and are free to choose where to work they are paid more. But in this case Daile Theater is a state-financed organization and this stupidity of theirs is paid for by taxpayers, who are mostly not Daile Theatre’s viewers,” says the director harshly.

“But the most important thing – JRT, Valmiera and Liepāja theaters have trained their young actors for many years, investing in them a huge amount of time, energy, heart and other resources, which if you have a good will, you can also try to recalculate them in numbers. In the last courses for these students, all the mentioned theaters also paid salaries/stipends,” he continues.

“The precedent is young hockey players brought up by sports schools, who, when lured to other clubs, always have to compensate for the work invested in them. In these lawsuits, the outcome is usually the same. Because here we look not at the letter of the law, but at the spirit. It turns out that there are theaters in Latvia that themselves creates something, and there are such theaters who only know how to steal other people’s ideas, overbuy artists and ruffle other people’s feathers. The next time the fighter for ethical imperatives Kairish mutters something about morality in public, I suggest you remember what he is currently telling the young actors of JRT : “I don’t care how much JRT pays you, I will pay you more”, Hermanis is emotional.