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| A conversation with theatre critic Normunds Naumanis Laima Slava In June, presenting Ilmārs Blumbergs' set designs for "Aida" and "The Magic Flute", together with an exhibition by young stage designers, Latvia will be participating in the Prague Quadrennial Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture. The present issue of "Studija" is playing to this event, choosing as its theme scenography - the visual events on the stage. Theatre critic Normunds Naumanis would seem to be the ideal person to address in this connection in our major interview, since he is glad to analyse the theatre at all its levels of expression and has seen world stages, it seems, more than anyone else in Latvian theatre, has prepared the catalogue for Ilmārs Blumbergs' solo exhibition in Paris in autumn 2002 and has previously written on scenography for "Studija". | |
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Studija: No matter how beloved the theatre is traditionally in Latvia, it seems the world obtains some knowledge of Latvian theatre solely thanks to the big names in stage design - Freibergs and Blumbergs. Is such a view well founded?
Normunds Naumanis: It's not Freibergs and Blumbergs alone. The myth of outstanding Latvian stage design is only partly true today, since it is rooted in the Soviet period. There was one main axis - Soviet culture plus the Prague Quadrennial, which is Europe's most important event in theatre scenography. In America, for example, the Prague Quadrennial is unheard of (while the Venice Biennial is very well known). Within this "Soviet culture-Prague Quadrennial" axis the so-called "Baltic school of stage design" had developed in the 1970s, represented by four artists: Gunārs Zemgals as the first, Juris Dimiters as second, and then Ilmārs Blumbergs and Andris Freibergs. Most prominent were Andris Freibergs and Juris Dimiters, since Dimiters had his posters, which he could use to set off his productions, while Andris Freibergs, thanks to his character and to Ādolfs Šapiro, in whose theatre company he worked, had international contacts. In reality, all the practical work of promoting Latvian stage design, of taking it abroad, was done by Freibergs: he travelled to Moscow and Prague, developed contacts etc. His role in popularising Latvian stage design is unique. With his calm, cool presence, as a cultured, quiet person, he has always known how to involve the interest of the Muscovites (where, after all, major arts policy at that time was being developed). But is important to understand the scheme, the chain behind the events: Soviet art with its ideological centre in Moscow, and the Prague Quadrennial, which began at the time when Czech theatre was flourishing in the sixties with the legendary Laterna Magica company and the circle of avant-garde art figures that surrounded it. Here, the Soviet school usually showed off the best that it had, and the best that it had was, of course, the highly developed visual culture of the Baltic republics. The Estonians with their design and the Latvians with their stage sets triumphed regularly here already from the seventies. The other component was Ādolfs Šapiro, who was highly rated in Moscow and was at the head of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People, becoming the president of this organisation in the mid-eighties. The third individual in all this movement, who put down this ideology in articles and texts, was Victor Beryozkin. He was responsible for the biennial almanac "Scenography and Theatre Arts". This was a thick volume, and very interesting, with wonderful research, for example on the ideas of Gordon Craig in his production of "Hamlet" at the Moscow Art Theatre at the beginning of the century, and a study of Peter Brook and stage design. (In such marginal publications, which did not deal with major ideological affairs, there were quality articles on what was happening in Western culture - it should not be forgotten that in the Soviet Union these were the blackest years before the agony began.) Beryozkin regularly travelled to the Baltic and Latvia and regularly provided information about developments here. He was the one - today he would be known as a curator - who put together his Latvian foursome: Gunārs Zemgals as the main figure in set design, since he was the eldest (and Freibergs' teacher). Then Andris Freibergs, the hard worker. And the "great artists" - Ilmārs Blumbergs and Juris Dimiters. And then Beryozkin took the next step: he published a book on Ilmārs Blumbergs. His concept was the most philosophical and the most thoroughly developed. It was a unique event in Soviet culture. It was the first monograph in the Soviet Union devoted to one particular set designer. We know it as the "white Blumbergs album", in the series "Our artists" by the publishers "Liesma" (1983). That's how the myth came about of the outstanding Latvian school of stage design, which is both a myth and a reality. The accomplished school of these masters, plus a couple of other names such as Kovalchuk, now working in Moscow with Anatoly Vasilyev. The brand that was created corresponded to reality in those days. It was all on view and clearly demonstrated at the Baltic Stage Design Triennials that began in the eighties. But it was the Muscovites who placed stage design (about which Ilmārs himself now says that it is applied art subordinated to the production) on an equal footing with all other visual arts. Proving, with a theoretical substantiation, that this "spatial thinking" is an extremely important thing. No better formula has been invented in the 20th century than that of Peter Brook, who said that "scenography is spatial thinking", a formula that everyone quotes. An the spatial artists of Latvian theatre were up there alongside the "top league" masters in the USSR: Kochergin, Borovsky and Barkhin. Studija: Did other theatres, for example those in Moscow, where you were studying at that time, also have this powerful concept - since you say that the Muscovites formulated it? I don't remember such spatial experiences even at renowned productions by Moscow theatres - rather I remember the acting... N.N.: There's a different formula working here - everything is better visible from a distance. The Moscow theoreticians could more easily conceptualise that which they saw in the Baltic. It was more difficult for them to do the same when regarding the real, familiar milieu of the Moscow theatres, but over there too they had outstanding masters. The trio - Barkhin, Borovsky and Kochergin, Andris Freibergs' other teacher, now an elderly gentleman, an amazing personality. Seryozha Barkhin was essentially the first Soviet Postmodernist in stage design. In actual fact, even his productions on stage are not as impressive as his sketches and paintings, where one can see this Postmodern thinking, this sticking together from fragments. But the distance, the fact that everything is better visible from afar, permitted the critic to draw conceptual conclusions in the field of stage design. There was no theoretician or critic in Latvia interested in stage design as a very powerful form of visual art. In Latvia, everyone was writing about painting, and then later about installations. In the West, this school of visual studies is very strong. And they have personalities! There's a string of theoreticians studying, for example, the work of Bob Wilson. Hundreds of dissertations might be written about him! There's nothing to compare in Latvia. Studija: Why not? On Blumbergs alone one could write a whole range of different dissertations! N.N.: One could write not only about Ilmārs. What we let slip, and what I'm terribly sorry about - Edīte Tišheizere was at one point inclined to write on stage design. She was writing course papers, she had studies on Gordon Craig and a diploma work on Jānis Muncis. But it takes two to tango. Stage designers should have caught her and held her at some point. Then they'd have their own critic. This marriage hasn't taken place, and so in Latvia stage design is not a subject of study, although it really would be worth studying. Take, for example, a fact from which one can use in building the country's image - in his time, Muncis won a gold medal at the World Exposition in Paris. And in fact everything that took place in the field of stage design in Latvian theatre in the first half of the 20th century - Otis Skulme, Ludolfs Liberts, Muncis and the artists of the proletarian cult - all this belongs to the general movement of European art, which was occurring here in parallel and just as powerfully, at a very respectable level. There are no studies on this. There are some research publications that some particular researcher needed in order to put together a compulsory page for the press. But this is not the kind of theoretical thinking that considers stage design in terms of spatial thinking, in accordance with the principles of modern theatre. Plus the minimal presence of the world context. It's also important to understand that between a theoretician who studies the work of a stage designer as art (for example, Anita Vanaga on Freibergs) and a theoretician who studies stage design as "applied art in the theatre" there are, as they would say in Odessa, two big differences. Studija: Does the contemporary material in stage design have a similar possibility of being discussed as part of the "general movement" of stage design? N.N.: Here, theoretical thinking on the theatre, or theatre criticism, in some amazing way, is undertaken by a very monolithic and consolidated group of colleagues, which manifests itself as a force. You can't quite say the same thing about literary critics or even about art critics. In musicology or ballet they are absent altogether. Quite untended in topical criticism in the visual arts is the theoretical aspect. I'm not talking of the general absence in the mass media of any serious, regular analytical component, which is catastrophic in itself. In terms of European and world standards in the sphere of public information with regard to art theory, this is tragic. What is the art critic nowadays? Either a writer of brief chunks of information or an interviewer and populariser. But there is no treatment of all those different contexts - theoretical issues, parallel cultural development in the world, development of movements or styles - that theoreticians deal with. The same can virtually be said of theatre criticism as well. And here we touch on the most dramatic aspect, since these are simply the consequences of absolute neglect in national cultural policy. If cultural policy does not envisage the development of theoretical, scientific thinking at all as one of the most important fields, since there is no funding for it (not to speak of the state of science in Latvia in general!), then what are we talking about? Clearly, the whole burden is borne on the shoulders of enthusiasm among the fanatics. Studija: But let's get back to stage design. The overall situation as it is in the theatre today - how do you see it? N.N.: That which is happening in stage design in Moscow or St Petersburg is very interesting! It's something like what would happen if Bruno Birmanis were to become a stage designer: designing the stage, designing fashion etc. The youngest, tiptop stage designers in Moscow are now guys around the age of thirty, who also know how to be people belonging to the top circles - they shift in all that trend, brand and party scene, and they know what the public expects, since it's clear that the theatre nowadays can survive only if the project can be sold. You have to be mad to descend into some cellar and dream of great art. The theatre is big business. And it's all going that way. Everything's hooked up together: the actor as a star who needs to be appropriately dressed etc. Everything needs to be packaged - including a popular band etc., in order to sell it, to be able to take it round the world and bring in the money. Because the Russians are everywhere. They can travel around Germany and America, and fill halls of a thousand seats. It's not like the Valmiera Theatre or the National Theatre visiting our compatriots in America, where sixty elderly folk come to watch. Of course, Latvia is a small market, and our art is small too. But there are positive changes. And it needs clever investment. Since in art, personality determines everything. It's clear that there needs to be a centre (call it a managerial centre or a brain centre or whatever) - a state or non-governmental organisation, somebody, be it the girls from the New Theatre Institute or whoever, who, every time that some influential person connected with the theatre who has the press etc. in their hands arrives in Latvia, take that person and show them the interesting director who is making great productions. Žagars, for example, is working to create the Latvian National Opera as a brand. The idea isn't even to sell it more advantageously, but at least to aim to show that there is one European-level small theatre in the province producing good art. (By "province" I mean in the geographical sense.) The first achievements have come already. Our opera productions, as a product, are not a jot worse than those of Covent Garden or the Bastille. Over there as well, 90% is rubbish. The myth that should be exposed, but which we don't want to rid ourselves of, is that there's a lot of good art. That's a lie. There isn't a lot of good art. As my old Jewish teacher used to say, "Good theatre is an out-of-the-ordinary product". That's a golden phrase. Examples of good art can be counted on the fingers! About 40 000 films are made each year in the world. Just imagine such a quantity! How many of these reach those same banal "Oscars"? Fifteen titles. And of those fifteen, maybe three actually meet the highest criteria. With the right music and ideal art. What can we expect from the theatre? If we can say that there are five good productions in a season in Latvia, people in such a small country in Europe should simply be delighted at this! In our everyday bustle, it seems a minor detail - ah, the National Opera is visiting Moscow! It's not a minor detail, because this is an especially important cultural stage, where the Latvian opera is participating with its productions. It's the world stage. The world stage is absent in Riga. Moscow, New York, Milan, London, Berlin, Paris and Tokyo are the world stage. Stockholm isn't the world stage. When Robert Wilson went there with his two productions and publicly stated that he very much likes working with Swedish actors, since in their Swedish blockheadedness, they are ideal perfectionists, Sweden for four years became a world stage. If you have this strategic thinking, then in the space of five years it's possible to create the same sort of myth about Latvian theatre as there is about Lithuanian theatre. The Lithuanians are now successfully exploiting two names: Nekrosius and Koršunovas, who tour the whole world, attend Europe's most prestigious festivals and gather up the awards. But to make such a PR campaign, a considerable investment has been made. Of course, you have to have the foundation for it, the main component - a talented artist. In Latvia, the situation is simply ideal: in the theatre at present there are two talented individuals whose work is relevant today: Alvis Hermanis and Viesturs Kairišs. People aren't dumb. What we judge as art is considered to be art in the West as well, and in that sense this is no province. This is a very advantageous time in Latvia, when people are visiting from the leading European festivals specially to see the productions of Kairišs and Hermanis. This has been going on for three years now. They come specially for the opening night, because they sense that there's something going on here. Eimuntas Nekrosius began exactly the same way in the late eighties. Now the winner of the New Theatrical Realities award - the "Oscar" of the theatre. It began with an invitation from the head of the Lithuanian Soros Foundation to the important figures to come and see - we have something interesting here, with space and actors and music and direction, and altogether it's something new and unseen. For organisers or brain centres in Latvian art this is a fortunate time - and it may soon be over - to do a publicity campaign, so that Latvian theatre can emerge in Europe. There is material for such an emergence. There are at least four productions we can offer. Studija: Why Kairišs un Hermanis in particular? Where are the roots of their particular role, their ability to create a "product" that could interest a wider audience, not just the local one? N.N.: Both Kairišs and Hermanis understand that you have to follow what's happening in the visual arts in the world, that you can't just live in your own little world. You can't just sit in your own theatre. When you talk to any of the outstanding Russian directors, he will immediately name the parallel fields in which he is au fait - what's happening in design, what's happening in fashion, what's happening in cinema. They may not be specialists in painting, but they do know who Demien Hurst and Francis Bacon are. They know what's in the air. In Latvia, people who know what's in the air really number only two-and-a-half. The rest sit in the ivory tower of their own theatre. Even Džilindžers, who is a fan of literature and reads an awful lot. But Alvis and Viesturs know who Tadao Ando is and who Bob Wilson is; they know what the Venice Biennial is and how it differs from documenta. You have to have this wider perspective. Sometimes I'm absolutely shocked and appalled when I see that people in the theatre are living as if there were nothing outside the theatre! Without this additional information you can't engage in art any more nowadays! Do you know what fashion brands are the "coolest" at the moment? Because it's all relevant to theatre. Theatre, like any of the synthetic forms of art, focuses everything - sound, costumes, visuality. What is stage design? It's painting come to life plus spatial thinking. You have to be familiar with the installation movement, you have to know about video art. When Māra Ķimele uses video in "Nora", she doesn't realise how antiquated and anachronistic is the way in which she is using video in her production, since video art is a million light years away from the primitivism with which she conceptually applies video. If you want to be a success in your cultural field, you have to keep your nose to the wind. Studija: Do you mean that the legend of the sovereignty of the stage designer, which created a name for artists in the past, has been replaced by a situation where visuality in the theatre is now entirely in the hands of the director? N.N.: No, that's absolutely not what I want to say. The time when the creator of the visual image and the creator of the production could be two autonomous figures belongs to the eighties. In the nineties, the concept and tendency generally involves either an ideal tandem - outstanding duos such as the scenographic duo of Georgio Strehler and the Milan Piccolo Theatre, such as the films of Visconti, where the artist cannot be separated from the director. Or else the production has a single author, who is the director, the stage designer, the composer, the sound designer etc. In our country, this is represented by the director Hermanis, who creates the space for his productions and often does the sound design too. For course, he brings in consultants as needed. For example Večella Varslavāne or Monika Pormale, who is now the theatre's chief designer. I would risk saying that the achievements of Ilmārs Blumbergs with "Aida", the situation where the stage designer can conceptually occupy so much of the production, is in essence an anachronism. A symptom of the eighties. Though there are still outstanding examples of this kind, such as Wilson's own theatre or that which Europe's number one director Christoph Marthaler has been doing together with his permanent stage designer Anna Viehbrock for fifteen years now. The triumph of Ilmārs' return, in one sense, in terms of its meaning, is a sad event in art. We have regained a good stage designer, but that which has happened is an anachronism. As in the days when the curtain rose, the audience gasped, and that was the performance. I'm ashamed to bring up such banalities, but responsibility for everything in the theatre lies not with the actor or the composer, or with the stage designer. It's the director who puts it all together. And so the situation where a director allows the stage designer alone to dominate seems paradoxical to me. It means there's something missing. Either the flesh of the acting or monumentality of thinking in the direction. Returning to stage design and Andris Freibergs, we should mention one aspect that should not be underestimated: here, unlike many places in the post-Soviet region, which do not even have any higher education institutions offering a degree in theatre arts, it is Freibergs' achievement that, regardless of the reforms of recent years, this department at our academy has stayed and is attended by people who, after all, do cherish ideas of going into theatre. Maybe Andris hasn't created any genius, let's say at his own level, but that's not in his power. On the other hand, Latvia has a very high average standard of stage design. Like Mārtiņš Vilkārsis from the younger generation. Anna Heinrihsone, Zigrīda Atāle and Ivars Noviks. And there's another approach too, represented by Monika Pormale and Gints Gabrāns, expressly multimedial artists interested in lots of other things in addition to the theatre. And it's a good thing that there are such multimedia ideas, but they're not pronounced set designers in the professional sense, since I'm speaking of stage designers taking the classical approach. There are good artists who are good all round - like Aigars Bikše and Monika Pormale, whose aim is not the box, and there are good artists who are professional decorators, who know how to work in the box. Because traditionally, stage design has this one limitation - the box. Ilmārs calls it "the art of the box". And you have to have a specific sort of thinking, since you have to limit your thinking to the box. The painter has to have the ability to feel the surface, to work in a plane, and many installators, to my mind, are failed painters, since they can't frame themselves. The artist's formula is discipline. The ability to discipline oneself within a definite, self-imposed frame. For one artist this is a plane, for another it is the theatre box. In addition to being able to discipline himself within the limits of the box, the stage designer also has to have a feel for the scale of the space, for the human relationship with space, for matters of scale - an ideal feeling, which is spatial thinking, and which cannot be taught. You can distinguish a good stage designer by looking at the items he or she uses on the stage. And how proportional they are in relation to the box in which the performance is to take place. Miķelis Fišers may be a wonderful artist, but you can tell he doesn't know a thing about stage design from the moment the curtain rises. Because you see that items great in themselves - the Man Ray chair, the lips, the window - are pointlessly arranged in space. Ieva Jurjāne has great, equally perfect thinking in a flat plane and in space, though unfortunately, she belongs to one particular artist, her husband Kairišs. Mārtiņš Vilkārsis may be a middling painter, but he has a very good sense of decoration. He knows how to accumulate good ideas. Like Vilkārsis, Noviks too can make things with his own hands like the skilled practitioners, the professionals who work as practical set builders. They are both capable of filling a space decoratively in such a manner that it is convenient for staging theatre. The stage designer-decorator and the stage designer-philosopher, the creator of new imagery - these are two autonomous directions. With regard to Ieva Jurjāne, Monika Pormale and Aigars Bikše, they represent the second direction, the creation of philosophically new imagery. In terms of implementation there may be certain faults, but they are aware of working in tandem with the rest of the creators of the production, and in the first instance with the director. Any director can use a set by Vilkārsis or Noviks and put on his or her own performance. To my mind, for Ieva, Monika and Aigars it is very important with whom they are working, and it is only through this combination that the visual image of the production comes about. The results can be impossible to foresee, but they will always be very interesting. There won't be a decorative look to it (and this is not meant as derogatory term here, just an alternative approach). Studija: How do you see the material that is stage design in Latvia, compared with what is happening in this field worldwide? N.N.: Fresh ideas are what we can distinguish ourselves with, and here there are no limits. This new imagery, in my view, can be made of anything at all - from toilet paper or papier mâché, for that matter. Yes, it's very interesting: one of the least appreciated but most interesting set designs of the last decade was Freibergs' design for "Arcadia" by Hermanis-Stoppard. It was made of paper. Studija: What do you mean that it's not appreciated - look at the 7th issue of "Studija"! N.N.: Well, yes, you have appreciated it, but it's very sad that in my theatre critics' milieu this work, which was very innovative for Latvian theatre, was not particularly discussed. Such a consistent use of paper art in the theatre - paper on a black satin background, black satin and fire, is a very fresh idea, and I doubt whether any analogy can be found in European art. Or, for example, what Monika has done for Galina Polishchuk's "Glass Menagerie". The new age of realism has begun in Latvia. It's going to be very fruitful and interesting. And I can see where the roots of this lie - it's competition with the reality shows on TV as an absolutely false imitation of truthfulness. The theatre has to apply a double dose of such truthfulness, since it's clear that theatre is also a very false art, which imitates life. Here, the realism here has to be doubled. There have already been three productions, and good ones at that - "Dzelzszāle" directed by Pēteris Krilovs (set design by Aigars Bikše), Galina Polishchuk's "The Glass Menagerie" (set design by Monika Pormale) and Indra Roga's "Two Hearts" with Gints Sippo as set designer, who has constructed different ages together in Postmodern fashion. Merged into one production, as if the real time were taking place at various times and in various decades. This is also very important for the new realism, the use of Postmodern principles, but only technical principles-they quote, but they don't quote visual details, but rather very concrete, conceptual, realistic signs from various ages. This is a very fresh breath of air, and this is an aspect where Latvian theatre, in these three examples, entirely corresponds to avant-garde theatre in Europe. The work of Frank Castorf, Christoph Marthaler and Ostermaier - the three most important German language top-level directors in Europe. This has been happening only during the past five or six years. Much of stage design ("The Devils", "The Master and Margarita") represents a masterpiece of construction, erected one-to-one on the stage - with real water, with flowers and all the rest of it, cottages and apartments with plasterboard walls. Your jaw drops. And then you see a similar approach in Latvia and you know that Monika hasn't seen the productions of Castorf or Marthaler, so that this idea has fallen from the sky and we have picked it up. I think it comes from reality shows offered by TV, and the young artists see that it can be put to good use in the theatre. Like Bikše does with Alfrēds' house in Pārdaugava, in "Dzelzszāle". Only at the outset does it seem that you can make it all happen simply by going into someone else's house. No, it's a very clever imitation of real life, which has no connection with the particular house as it really is. The central object here is a washing machine. Already around 1998, Bikše had several projects with washing machines as installations. What, in semiotic terms, is a washing machine? It serves as a simple, but conceptually powerful sign. This applies both to the play by Inga Ābele and to the production as a whole. Just as the crackers let off behind the window, so that the audience sees only the glow. These are all innovative moves, theatrical ploys to unleash the imagination, the image. Also, there's the play with time. Ieva Jurjāne in "Margaret" had a timeless prison cell, with all the essential elements, a grey, inhospitable interior. There's Maija Apine, and a red line as the only stage design element, the line of life, crossing the whole space along the wall, and books from the series "Man and Society", published by the Soros Foundation. For a contextually educated and thinking person, it's a whole world of signs, which opens up the production and makes one view it in a completely different light. This is philosophical thinking and a very precise game with ages, in a play where the characters of Goethe's "Faust" have been transferred to the present day. There's not one superfluous item. Ieva is exceptionally capricious and choosy in general, one of the rare stage designers who holds the conceptual view that there cannot be any superfluous items on the stage. Many stage designers do not hold to this view. This is a kind of quality of thinking. Or the exact opposite: Monika, who constructs a copy of an eighties Soviet flat in the "Glass Menagerie". But all the objects there have a specific, recognisable significance. This is what I call an inconspicuously unravelling reality. Essentially, this new realism was anticipated by Alvis Hermanis in his "Vision Express -Pojezd Prizrak", where he designed the space. This was coquetry, though not particularly well implemented in technical terms, with real objects collected on the second-hand principle, showing that "everything is one" (Blumbergs' sacred words) - the way they come together in the thinking. Alvis began it already at that time. The continuation was "The Government Inspector". And now the principle is fixed. Why is this approach to theatre with the new realism more fruitful for us than what we see in Nekrosius' "Othello", which I regard as a phenomenon of the eighties and nineties - poetic-metaphorical stage design? With Nekrosius' metaphors, the world of objects is often inessential. The kneading troughs that turn into ships, symbols of Venice, poetic metaphors etc., all come together. On the other hand, the door that is being lugged around and the piano could have been left out. They could have been replaced by some other abstract symbol or metaphor. Latvian stage design does have one misfortune, which relates to money. I'm talking about the availability of materials. The ideas are there, the artists are there, and so are the people implementing them. But there isn't the opportunity to materialise the ideas as perfectly as they can afford to do in the West. I remember what Kristīne Pasternaka said when, working at the National Opera, she visited the Prague Opera and was shown the catalogue of fabrics produced by the Barrandov film studio. There are big, heavy volumes where you can find everything, and in all different colour tones. Or the famous whims of Bob Wilson, where the set for the "Three Sisters" in Stockholm was built in Milan, in the specialist furniture salons where Armani furniture is also produced, and it cost a great deal of money. But when you see this furniture on stage-and these are the famous tables and chairs of Bob Wilson, his design objects - you come to understand how a stage object can become a product sold in the shop. Of course, we can only dream of this. This poverty in terms of material also has a kind of childish charm - poverty unleashes the imagination. But wealth also unleashes the imagination. However, in terms of their capacity for creating imagery and at the level of ideas, it's not as if there were something our stage designers can't do or that isn't happening in Europe. Another thing that hasn't been developed here (well, I don't know if the students at the academy are engaged in it) is virtual modelling. At least, those working practically in the theatre are not involved in it. In the west, this is a field that has been developing for about eight years now. For those who operate with space, their work is no longer imaginable without this technique. This is particularly beneficial for choreography. In virtual scenography you can play out both the stage design and the relations between people. You can already build a production, in order to check the proportions and all other questions. The stage set model is no longer used in the west and regarded as something of a relict, but Freibergs makes his students create such models. And this involves the ability to do a lot with your hands, a skill that stage designers elsewhere no longer practice, but regard as very valuable: the ability to work practically with one's hands. So that you know how to achieve precisely the result you have envisaged. The master is responsible for everything, from A to Z. And this is a universal law that operates everywhere, whether in well-to-do England or in little Latvia. | |
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