Remember that time we were walking across the Vanšu Bridge and it started hailing and you started crying and I asked you what was wrong and you said that this was probably the happiest moment of your life? And I felt so insanely happy too, and the hail flew in my face and in my eyes, and you started running, and I ran after you, and you ran in front of me, and I hardly saw you at all, so maddening was the hail, but at the same time I knew you were there somewhere because you were singing that self-invented song about Armageddon in full voice the whole time. And then we were by the presidential palace, and you slipped and fell on the ground, and you were holding something, and I jumped on top of you, and Dainis Īvāns came by and pretended not to see us, and you pinned me to the ground, and we were lying there in an embrace by that palace.
One evening, two young people decide to make amends for what they believe is the greatest tragedy in the history of independent Latvia - their crumbling relationship.
'LOVE IS A STRANGER is a bittersweet concert performance about universal ennui, touching memories, Latvian Schlager music and legendary hits, as well as another reality that cannot be imagined and a hundred thousand complicated things that guide our history. Like a tiresome demon in the night, it all keeps washing over us and doesn’t let us wake. Photo Agnese Zeltiņa
The play is based on the play "Bad Roads" by Ukrainian playwright Natalia (Natalka) Vorozhbyt. The play is taking place in 2014/2015 in Donbas, because the war started there, and not in the spring of this year, but eight years ago.
Whether we like it or not, we are all involved in this war. Even if the bombs do not explode over our heads yet, but thousands of kilometres away. For the first time in history, people have the opportunity to follow the war online, to watch its horrible scary face. For someone, these are not just pictures on the phone or computer screen, but the everyday life. In her work, the author has compiled documentary stories about the war in Donbas. The focus remains on an individual who is trying to adapt and survive. War is like a litmus test casting light in the darkest corners of everyone. No one can hide.
photos by Jānis Deināts
This mixed media performance addresses the challenge of manifesting the complex reality through the extended metaphor of bees and is structured through three main agential types: a Queen, a drone and a worker. The indivisibility of reality suggests to us ever-widening circuits of existence, located in the agential manifestation of life.
Foto: Jānis Deināts
Foto: Jānis Deināts
Foto: Felipe Sanguinetti
Foto: Ansis Starks