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The New Theatre Festival Homo Novus
August 28, 2013
With support from ABLV Charitable Foundation, the 10th International New Theatre Festival Homo Novus will take place in Rīga from 2-8 September.
The 10th International New Theatre Festival Homo Novus will take place in Rīga from 2-8 September. In the decade it has been in existence, and later joined by other alternative theatres (Dirty Deal Teatro, NoMadi, and the Ģertrūdes Street Theatre), the organisers of Homo Novus have radically changed theatre watching habits in Latvian theatre. Right from its origins in the Daugavpils Theatre, the offer to sit on folding cardboard benches seemed extra-original, just like the aspiration to watch a play in the Daugavpils Fortress (which for various reasons unfortunately did not come to pass). In contrast, in the theatre today, one can receive an e-talon at the ticket control and take a tram together with a group guide to the performance venue or else become a viewer in some unfamiliar apartment/institution, or not even sit on a chair at all during a play, but instead head on an exhibition to various places around the city. None of this is really surprising anymore.
The 10th anniversary Homo Novus will take place with the conviction that theatre is not a building, but an idea and mutual connection and interaction, subordinating the broadest possible territory of Rīga to the experience of theatre – plays will take place in the forest, in an apartment, in live and forgotten places in the centre and outskirts of the city.
Most of “The Last Human Venue”, a collection of 11 new works by local artists, will be performed in a detached house at Aristida Briāna Street 9. Here, for example, it will be possible to see Valters Sīlis’ new play “10 Years for Operation Iraqi Freedom – 10th Anniversary”. As in Legionnaires, the young director will pose awkward questions. Is Latvia jointly responsible for the fact that this war took place? Are the Latvian politicians who at that time made the decision to participate in the Iraq War not considered as war criminals just like then US President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney? The detached house on Aristida Briāna Street will also host plays by Pēteris Krilovs, Viesturs Meikšāns, Vladislavs Nastavševs, Andrejs Jarovojs, as well as installations by Izolde Cēsniece, Monika Pormale, Reinis Suhanovs, NoMadu and Mareunrol's. The collection of new works by Latvian artists was inspired by British theatre theoretician Alan Read’s description of “theatre as the last human venue”.
Information source: Diena