Widow’s Son: A Symbolic Concept in Latvian Literature and Society

Viļas Plūdoņš’s poem “Widow’s son” is one of the most outstanding examples of Latvian literature, which the author dedicated 15 years of his life to its creation. Director Viesturs Roziņš called the story of a poor young man’s struggle to fulfill his dreams and get a good education a rhythmic beating against the wall of happiness in one part. Thanks to a constellation of outstanding Latvian cultural personalities at the beginning of the last century, “Widow’s son” has become a symbolic concept in modern society.

“That theme of dreaming, that superhuman desire goes to the goal, and I also felt myself this son of a widow a long time ago, when I went from Ogre to Riga to study and my godmother told me – you are the son of a widow, and that it may not end well. It’s kind of stuck,” says the director.

Actress Inese Ramute says: “Both of my children have studied abroad, and I know how it is when there is no news and then your imagination rushes to tell you not what you want to hear. And then there is such happiness when a news arrives , because you don’t know how to go there.”

On the other hand, the actor Kārlis Dzintars Zahovskis highlights the problem: “We still have a lot of cases where young people struggle with depression very early, struggle with negative thoughts, with failures, and we still don’t manage to come to them in time and tell them that it’s okaythat you didn’t get it the first time.”

The creators of the show call the production’s unusual form of expression physical theater. Body movements and voice vibrations are the defining language of characters’ emotions.

The director explains: “I thought about how to bring poetry into the language of the theater, which is not always the case when poetry is spoken on stage. I wanted to try how it is – to make different organs of the body and senses perceive what is happening on stage. Not only through the mind, not only through the senses, but through associative experience.”

In the one and a half hour show, the expressive body movements and voice vibrations are illustrated by the music of Jēkabs Nīmanis. The combination of drums and percussion with electronic accompaniment was performed by Dace Priedīte, Andas Eglīte and Mikus Bāliņš.

The composer reveals: “When the director told me his idea, it wasn’t like – ok, everything is clear, let’s do it. I thought for a long time during the break – how it will really be and how you can tell a story without text, which is neither ballet nor contemporary dance, not pantomime, but still theater.”

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2023-10-27 16:42:27
#story #fulfillment #dreams #widows #son #Valmiera #theater