Alvis Hermanis & New Riga Theatre
Sinopsis
Sonia is an unattractive and somewhat naive woman, who leads a solitary life. But she has a soul that is big enough to house the whole world: the small day-to-day things, the neighbours’ children, dreams and love. Caught up in a cruel game and manipulated by a world that she enjoys in her simplistic way, she fights to the very end to live her dream of unconditional love. The two characters in the play, the narrator and Sonia, are portrayed by two male actors, who create this touching melodrama with their extraordinary virtuoso performances. Its strength lies in its radical simplicity: two men representing the world, in the style of Beckett. They switch register with remarkable ease – moving from the burlesque to the tragic, from the amusing to the pathetic, and from dream to harsh reality.
Alvis Hermanis is a playwright, actor and stage director, who has been working as the artistic director of the Latvian National Theatre – the New Riga Theatre – since 1997. The career that he has developed with this theatre is radically innovative and he has brought to it a quality and freshness that are rarely achieved by institutions of this nature. His plays have been performed all over the world and his work has received several awards, such as the Young Directors’ Award from the Salzburger Festspiele, the Stanislavsky Prize (Moscow) and the Europe Theatre Prize for the New Theatre Reality.