Collection of Five Contemporary Latvian Playwrights Published as “5* dramaturģija”

The publisher Latvijas mediji has released a collection of plays titled “5* dramaturģija”, bringing together works by five contemporary Latvian playwrights. All the plays in the volume have already been staged in Latvian professional theatres, so the book presents texts that have been tested on stage.

The plays included

The collection contains “Mēs, roks, sekss un PSRS” (We, Rock, Sex and the USSR) by Ance Muižniece, “Ričards. Nekā personīga” by Artūrs Dīcis, “Frankenšteina komplekss” by Kārlis Krūmiņš, “Kur pazuda valsts” by Matīss Gricmanis and “Dziesmu svētki” by Rasa Bugavičute-Pēce. The authors belong to the same generation of playwrights and share an understanding of theatre as an active space for thought and social analysis. The publisher stresses that the texts are not only literary works but also evidence of the era and a form of societal self-reflection.

Foreword and afterword

The edition includes a foreword by director Valters Sīlis, who addresses the context of the productions and their place in today's Latvian theatre landscape. An afterword by theatre scholar and critic Līga Ulberte offers an analytical view of the development of contemporary Latvian playwriting, the authors' creative styles and the significance of these works for Latvian culture.

Ulberte says the collection has been awaited for a long time. Although all the authors are still fairly young and all five texts were written relatively recently, she describes it as the first printed edition in about the last twenty years of Latvian publishing to gather new plays that have already passed the key test of dramaturgical quality: staging in a professional theatre.

Director Viesturs Sīlis hopes that the most active theatregoers will, while reading, return to the experience created by the productions, while others may discover their own staging of the texts. In his view, publishing the book is an important step, and the plays can simply be enjoyed.