In the context of the centenary of the founding of the Daile Theater, a new theatrical archeology was created in the New Riga Theater in the pre-pandemic season. Finding a Gambler Directed by Gata Šmita, but a play dedicated to the centenary of Māra Zālīte Sandstone Viesturs Kairišs has just had his premiere in the stage version of the Patriarch’s Temple. Watching this performance, we have to state that the obligatory requisites of the editor of the Latvian theater directed by Eduards Smiļģis are crooked eyes with gray hair and eyes that are crazy in passion. That too. But certainly not only.
It is believed that at a time when the number of spectators who have seen Smiļģis’ performances with their own eyes is rapidly decreasing, and the irony of those who would express this personal name at all, albeit benign, is no longer the most fruitful way to judge his abilities. imprints in theater annals.
The spirit is not cut off
Director Viesturs Kairišs provides a retreat in time for the Daile Theater version of the play about the Smiļģis printed in the program, writing that the performance will tell about art that cannot be captured in form, an idea that cannot be captured, and freedom that grows into love. These words describe any outstanding artistic event, and at the same time they can cleverly shelter from the confusion of the public and criticism. Accompanied by these words, it is also possible to see something in the show that is not at all, as it happens to us from time to time … But the director is right that In the sand there is no pathetic and reverence for the old master and there is no lack of unexpected hooligan courage, abandoning any hope for a linear representation of Smilgis’ life in his own life forms. If Russian pop were played in the background, it would be safe to say that the author of the show is the incorrigible postmodernist J. J. Gillinger, who continues to be ironic, is neither asked nor invited to return home without warning.
The performance traces the whole course of Smiļģis’ life, connecting with the most significant and vivid events, when in the theatrical mise-en-scène he confronts people with whom his legend of a passionate visionary has developed. The action takes place in the huge black space of the Great Hall stage, reminiscent of flashes of memory, which are illuminated by the arrival of the Triple Head (this time – the Six Head). They are also given life by the technologies of the 21st century – on the wings attached to both sides of the stage, the events on the stage are projected in the background of interiors drawn by scenographer Ieva Jurjāne in cleverly deformed proportions. His spirit is still unfolded, it hovers and is always trying to find someone to find.
For those who know little or nothing about Smilgi, the show will hardly enlighten, because it rarely reveals any event unambiguously. I doubt whether the expectations of Smiļģis’ biographers to see hitherto unnoticed connections or original interpretations will be rewarded, as the performance of the show stops at more or less known events, albeit enthusiastic, but mostly played presentations and at times even becomes poster, without for example, in a scene where the most famous Smilgis actresses of Daile Theater are named impersonally, as if the combination of name and surname alone could tell more to those who have not seen their play than the descriptions in the memory books.
Attention in the jaws
Smiļģi simultaneously embodies six actors of different experiences, ages and different types – Kārlis Arnolds Avots, Artūrs Skrastiņš, Lauris Dzelzītis, Gints Grāvelis, Kaspars Dumburs and Toms Veličko. A divided personality is no longer the freshest concept of a person’s possible existence, but it is really useful for reflecting a personality that cannot be controlled in size. They discuss with each other, speak at the same time, shoot on the stage where, and at other times, choreographed by Jan Jacuka, the eurythmic moves as a well-adjusted mechanism, clearly giving scope to gesture and movement.
The actors selflessly reveal the director’s unquenchable spirit, pulsating inner world and seeker’s life message. His gaze – like this game room – has no boundaries, but he will draw them himself when and where he likes. Of the actors, Laura Dzelzītis’ unexpectedly slightly resigned Smiļģis pays more attention alter ego and Tomas Veličko’s surprisingly liberated and self-confident portrayal.
It would be quite predictable for the actors to play the main character in each other stage of his life or to reveal one of the emotional states or character traits of his multifaceted personality, but fortunately there are no such regularities. The six actors Smilgi rather expresses quantitatively, emphasizing his intense presence, because when he enters the room, it is full in the literal and figurative sense. And, just as he once pressed a red breast in the palm of his hand in his characteristic upliftment, he also sucks out all the oxygen in the room in one wood, inadvertently suffocating his partner in the jaws of his attention.
Recalling the sacrifice in the name of artistic ideals, the intonation of the show is not at all complimenting to him. Accordingly, Smiļģis is shown in the light of a more unflattering person, unfit for practical life, quite selfish, but still inexplicably captivating, who inexorably entangles the surrounding in their outbursts of feelings.
The echo of passion
Surprisingly, the show does not give an idea of Smiļģis as a director, of what his performances were like, if one subtracts the phrases about a new, bright, in keeping with the spirit of the time, modern ut jpr. theaters. It is the case that the direct discovery of the creative process in the theater tends to be quite awkward, because it is quite impossible to copy the primacy of inspiration and creation when the touch of a hand, a step or the sight of the eye violates everyday life. However, it is not enough to describe the main character of the play, whose role in the development of Latvian theater, is mainly psychophysical and biographical data, if his interest in transferring delartial comedy and staged plays to original space is mentioned.
Probably, Viesturs Kairišs intends to talk about Smiļģis’ creative heritage with his directing techniques. The characteristic features of Smiļģis’ handwriting can also be felt in its stage work – theatricality, enthusiasm, impulsivity prevail on the stage and stage time is undeniably filled intensively, among the objects of large-scale scenography there is also a place distinguish the work from all others and leave open the question of the message of the show.
Smilgis is also a universal example of a clash of creative, extraordinary personalities and eras, and this clash tests the limits of human endurance. However, the show does not mention that with the strengthening of Soviet power, he – a theater reformer – is sent to Moscow for degrading training, and the mise-en-scène of farewell to the theater slips openly when, unlike his contemporary Alfred Amtman-Brieditis, to close the bill in his theater – the only one that was able to control his howling spirit. In the finals of the show, the coffin is carried by all six Smilgis, not only the characters of his performances, but most likely himself. Of course, his scale cannot be included in the ark of human height. Therefore, he echoes and echoes for a long time to come, which is visually confirmed by the rigid frame of the angular structure pushed out into the foreground, which covers almost the entire stage space.
The sucker dies and rises in women. This, of course, characterizes his passion, which was so great that, fortunately, he also sublimed in stage works. But isn’t there enough news about his insatiable sex drive to devote so much stage time to an equally sexually thirsty seductive psychology student, Eleonora? to the For Spidola Darta Danevica in a rather vulgar performance?
The most true breaks
Unfortunately, for the most part, the other actresses involved in the show also perform the tasks entrusted to them only theatrically. Ilze Ķuzule-Skrastiņa In the image of Felicita Ertnere, the director of Smiļģis’ like-minded movement, it is not possible to decide whether to change (which would be quite difficult to do according to Elita Kļaviņa’s excellent example in the already mentioned New Riga Theater performance) or to ammize Smiļģis. Ieva Segliņa, on the other hand, balances the image of Smiļģis ‘sister, Lelde and Rainis with already well-established means of expression, not allowing to understand the actress’s and the director’s attitude about their role in Smiļģis’ life and art. In addition, the intonations of both actresses become unusually moralizing, trying unsuccessfully to convince Smiļģis about the actor’s fragile personality or the necessary reverence for the play’s author.
Only Kristīne Nevarauska and Lidija Pupure have found the real key to tragicomedy in the image of Smiļģis’ first wife and mother, respectively. They are not ashamed to play with Smile on one note, but in moments of silence they are able to sink into deeper thoughts about the different realities of life and art. There is no doubt that only Rēzija Kalniņa could play Smiļģis’ favorite Lily Stengele – an actress of her time with a legend “who makes any show expensive”. However, Viesturs Kairišs has not been able to inspire the actress to a new type of stage existence, and the truest ones are the longest breaks when her heroine does nothing but stick her head against the walls and waits for the irresistible blows of fate.
Legends therefore exist to admire them, questioning their truthfulness and at the same time whining that they have not been able to experience them for themselves. For a while I think that Smiļģis’ broken personality is just a disturbance of the perception of others, unable to reach the cup of renewal that Smiļģis is able to taste. And when no one else is on stage without him, maybe it’s the viewer’s hallucination…
However, the show does not leave time for such reflections, because it sinks into abstractions of scope and power and the symbols commenting on it, whether it is the ever-deceived moss Rainis, horizontally with the raised edge of the skirt and the open crotch, which is blessed with a hurry. Clarity, simplicity and passion are the key to the success of any work of art, but not Sanding characteristics.
Sandstone
Daile Theater 17.IX at. 19, 18.IX p.m. 18, 28., 29.X, 19.XI at 19, 20.XI at. 18
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