Era-Specific Interpretations of Shakespeare’s “Saddest Comedy” in Latvian Theatre
Vesma Levalde* and Sigita Ignatjeva**
Abstract
This study examines how the concept of time is manifested in various Latvian theatre productions of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream during the 20th and 21st centuries. It focuses on how each creative team interpreted Shakespeare’s original text and how the performance text resonates with the production’s other sign systems. It aims to compare changes in the comedy’s message and aesthetics by exploring the relationship between modifications to the text and other performance aspects, such as staging, acting and audience perception. Additionally, it evaluates the influence of the socio-political context during the production period on the production’s message. This study examines two recent productions in detail, focusing on the significant role played by modifications to the verbal text in the staging, including the translation of the original play and the integration of new text. The authors conclude that references to social and political events and conditions were present even in the earliest productions of the comedy. Building on Marjorie Garber’s interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a comedy intertwined with the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the research demonstrates that heightened geopolitical tensions tend to give rise to a tragic undertone in contemporary stage productions. Directors seamlessly integrated modifications to the verbal text with other sign systems, such as visual, symbolic and performative ones, creating layered meanings that challenge the boundaries between comedy and tragedy.
Keywords: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare, play interpretation, socio-political context, Latvian theatre
Introduction
The production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by stage director Viesturs Kairišs at the Dailes Theatre in Riga served as the inspiration for this essay. Dubbed “the saddest comedy,” and structured as a war story, Kairišs’ interpretation emphasises contemporary social and political realities. He explains:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, in my opinion, the funniest comedy about the end of the world. In this Dailes Theatre production, we wanted to speak both about the closest and most instinct-shattering monster of today — the chaos created by war — and at the same time tell the story of that invisible world which, from time to time, erupts from within us like a volcano.
Thus, Viesturs Kairišs employs Shakespeare’s play as a vehicle to communicate contemporary social and political realities. To adapt the original material to this message, playwright Matīss Gricmanis was involved in the production, making changes to the text.
A few years earlier, in 2021, the director Elmārs Seņkovs staged his interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Latvian National Theatre. This production featured a newly commissioned Latvian translation, with the creative team supplementing the original script with new writings. The verbal text thus became central for both directors, and perhaps the cornerstone of their conception of the production.
Although there are a relatively large number of studies on Shakespeare’s plays staged in Latvia (the main one being Guna Zeltiņa’s study “Shakespeare in Latvia”), they are mainly case studies that do not connect the stage interpretation of the play with the socio-political situation at the time of the production and do not view the interpretations of a specific play in a historical perspective. Furthermore, in broader studies on Shakespeare in Central and Eastern Europe, there are only separate case studies or the situation in Latvia is not analyzed at all (for example, in Makaryk, Price; Bžochová-Wild; Střibrný; Sheen, Karremann).
The 21st century in Latvian theatre, reflecting trends seen across much of Eastern Europe, is still increasingly characterized by postdramatic theatre, this essay focuses on the modifications made to the verbal text and its relationship with other performative elements. This analysis draws on Hans Thies Lehmann’s assertion in Postdramatic Theatre that “the text is considered only as one element, one layer, or as “material” of scenic creation, not as its master” (17).
By comparing these recent productions with earlier interpretations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Latvia, spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, this study aims to explore how the socio-political context of each era influenced stage interpretation and the play’s underlying message, including an analysis of the production’s text/translation, and highlights what Michael Dobson wrote:
At its heart is the question of how we are to understand the relation between the publication and the performance of Shakespeare’s works. Is a play’s printed text to be seen as prior and superior to its theatrical embodiments, which if so are only belated, partial, and imperfect glosses upon an essentially literary artifact? Or is that text itself to be seen as only a belated, partial, and imperfect souvenir of a theatrical event, the incomplete written trace of a dramatic work which can only fully be realized in performance? (235).
A historical digression is necessary to investigate, through the analysis of a single dramatic text’s interpretation, how theatre comments on the socio-political situation at the time of the production and with what artistic means of expression this comment is constructed.
From Pages to Stages: Historical Context of Shakespeare’s Comedy
Shakespeare wrote the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream around the same time as the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. In her book Shakespeare After All, Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber describes A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a “turned-upside-down” Romeo and Juliet, transforming tragedy into comedy.
In both plays there are strong central figures of authority who attempt to order the world – the Prince in Romeo and Juliet; Theseus, Duke of Athens, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the two plays, there are fathers who want to choose their daughters’ husbands – old Capulet wants Juliet to marry Paris, Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius – and in both cases, the women refuse, choosing instead other lovers (Romeo, Lysander) and planning to run away with them. [..] Both plays strongly emphasize the difference between night, which transforms and changes, and day, which is rigid, inflexible, and associated with law. And both plays use similar images and tropes: the lark that rises at dawn, the nightingale that sings at evening, the lover’s stereotypical cry “Ay, me!” … (213).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play frequently performed all over the world. In Europe, it has been adapted for theatre, cinema, opera, and ballet. In 1959, the Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion picture animator, and film director Jiří Trnka (1912–1969) even brought the story to life in a marionette film (Cerise 2013). The first production of Shakespeare’s play in Latvia dates back to 1892. Initially, Latvian actor, poet, and translator Jānis Esenberģis-Hess (1862–1890) translated the play. Professional Latvian theatre was still in its infancy at that time. Although German and Russian were the main languages used in the Latvian education system, the modern Latvian literary language developed particularly rapidly at the turn of the century. This was fueled by the national awakening movement in literature, known as the “New Current,” and by extensive translations of world classics, including those in the Latvian theatre repertoire.
The annals of Latvian theatre history have been more meticulous in their documentation of productions that emerged during the 1920s and 1930s. This was a period after Latvia had gained independence and the literary language had stabilised. Nevertheless, theatres continued to use the translation of the comedy mentioned earlier. By analysing reviews published in the press and descriptions of these performances by theatre historians, some features of the era can be identified in the language of theatre. The production was particularly notable in 1922 when the modernist director Eduards Smiļģis (1886–1966) staged a version at the newly established Dailes Theatre.
Dailes Theatre is the first theatre in Latvia to be founded with the aim of moving away from the tradition of realism that had dominated Latvian theatre until then and updating the aesthetic principles of modernism (Rodiņa 3).
In its 1920 manifesto published in the official newspaper Latvijas Vēstnesis, the Dailes Theatre states that its goal is to achieve complete creative freedom and independence from any political influences (3). This goal was directly related to the newly established independent state of Latvia, previously incorporated into the Russian Empire and subjected to political and cultural dictates. The formulation of the theatre’s artistic goals reflects the desire to break away from previous traditions of realistic theatre and declare new aesthetic and creative objectives. Among other things, the manifesto represents the director as an author who offers their own interpretation of a literary work on stage rather than simply staging it.
The principles put forward by Smiļģis demonstrate an aspiration to create a unified performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which all elements (set design, costumes, lighting, music, and acting) are integrated into a coherent aesthetic whole. The coexistence of the realistic and metaphysical or fantastic elements in modernism allows the manifestation of the artist’s individual creative vision. This is evident in the choice of dramaturgy and, judging by historical evidence, in the staging, where stylisation principles are obvious.
The syncretism of styles was created by mixing the “classical” style of the scenes of Theseus’s court, the fantastic atmosphere of the magical wood with dancing elves, and the romantic experiences of lovers, and the principles of commedia dell’arte in the scenes with craftsmen (Zeltiņa 28).
Even more clearly, the era breaks through in the 1931 production. Ironically, the location of Theseus’s court in the performance is the Latvian sports stadium, which was popular for amateur sports in the early 1930s. Athletes run and box in the woods, displaying their well-trained bodies. The press was shocked. Filma un Skatuve (Film and Stage) magazine wrote, “If Shakespeare were to wake up from the dead and attend the premiere of the play, he would surely sue the Dailes Theatre for the illegal use of his name” (568).
Smiļģis’s avant-garde approach is contextually similar to another production of this comedy staged by director Juris Rijnieks at the Liepāja Theatre in 1992. At that time, Latvia had regained its independence for the second time, and various forms of artistic expression were flourishing rapidly. Rijnieks created the production as an exaggerated relationship drama with music by the renowned rock composer Juris Kulakovs and postmodern set design by Artis Bute. He deliberately disregarded established conventions, instead experimenting with theatrical techniques, a mixed psychological approach in actors’ work and performative theatricality in mise-en-scène. A significant part of the play’s text Rijnieks deleted to shorten the verbal content.
This drive to experiment in art marked a departure from the canon of socialist realism imposed by the Soviet occupation regime in Latvia (1945–1990). For 50 years, directors could only express messages directed at the occupation regime by using the language of Aesop. A striking example of Aesop’s language or subtext is Kārlis Auškāps’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Dailes Theatre in 1977. Designed as a physical theatre performance with elements of acrobatics and emphasising the sexuality of the characters, it was a provocative approach in the Soviet cultural sphere. “This production brought a new wave of energy, dynamics and theatricality into overall landscape of the Latvian theatre” (Zeltiņa 31).
Auškāps based his production on Valija Brutāne’s (1911–1990) 1950s translation, which had been approved by Soviet censors. This translation possesses a distinctively lyrical quality and captures the pathos typical of Soviet-era texts. Brutāne also translated the names of most of the play’s characters into Latvian according to the meaning of the names as common names (usually, person names are transcribed). Rather than basing the production on the text, the director created an acrobatic physical performance, in which body movements and their interplay expressed something different from words. This approach to world classics was a novel concept in Soviet Latvian theatre. While a stage without realistic scenery and historical costumes has previously shocked Soviet critics, the style of acting has always been realistic and psychological. Auškāps broke with this tradition, reminding the audience of the artistic freedom that existed in pre-war Latvia.
Reverse the Genre
In 2021, director Elmārs Seņkovs staged Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Latvian National Theatre. The poet and translator Jānis Elsbergs had created a new translation of the play, specially commissioned by the theatre. The production emerged from the pandemic situation and told the story of theatre, which was under threat at the time. The pandemic posed many challenges for theatres. The theatres in Latvia were closed for a long time. Many productions that had already been prepared did not reach the stage. The creation of many virtual theatrical projects raised the question of whether audiences would ever return to live performances. Institutional theatres suffered huge losses, and there was serious speculation that the theatre would never be the same again. From 2021 to 2023, existential self-reflection was a recurring theme in theatre productions, and metatheatre gained relevance in theoretical research, with researchers concluding that this trend stemmed from the cultural crisis during the pandemic (Levalde 16–27).
In the programme, Seņkovs stated that the production was a tribute to the “black box of theatre”, falling into the category of metatheatre or theatrical self-reflexivity. This production featured Romeo and Juliet instead of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which amateur actors perform in Shakespeare’s play. Seņkovs justified his choice based on Romeo and Juliet’s much wider recognition, as well as the context of the postmodern world — Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream includes another of Shakespeare’s works. The director also mentioned the eternal dream of theatre: everyone wanted to play the lovers and be Romeo; everyone had an opinion on how this role should be played.[1]
This comment by the stage director also justified the changes made to the text by actor and assistant director Matīss Budovskis. In episodes where amateurs performed Romeo and Juliet, he incorporated texts from everyday life at the National Theatre, such as discussions from rehearsals of other productions in which actors discussed their roles. The amateurs addressed the production of the play, the art of theatre, and the realities of theatre at length. For example, Snout would not be at the last rehearsal because he received an offer of an “extra job.” The comparison of the text with the original reveals a shift in genre, introducing a sombre mood into the comedy. The modernisation of the language was significant for interpretation. Creators have heavily abridged the original text and the order of the fragments in many places. In some scenes, lower-level vocabulary was used, whereas in others, the text was more faithful to the original than in previous translations.
In the National Theatre’s production, Shakespeare’s five acts are condensed into a single act lasting less than two hours, with the Theseus and Hippolyta storyline completely abandoned. The opposition between civilisation and primal nature was replaced by the duality of theatrical nature: fascinating art and amusing, irreverent, yet endlessly exciting amateurism. The true ruler of both worlds in the production was Puck, played by Arturs Krūzkops as an unmistakable force of darkness. He was a chameleon snake with an albino face and green tongue who deliberately smeared magic potion into the wrong eyes and ruthlessly sexually exploited fairies and people who wandered into the forest. Costumes, lighting, a sound score featuring recordings by the Latvian Academic Choir, choreography, and mise-en-scène all came together to create a fascinating, yet cruel, theatrical world. This contrasted with the emphatically profane line of amateur actors. Modern-day policemen, undertakers, and builders have replaced Shakespeare’s time occupations. Meanwhile, the traditionally Latvian names of the characters were retained in the English version, i.e., transcribed. Presumably, the director was also pointing to the dissolution of the Latvian cultural environment, given that an increasing number of young people were communicating with each other in English, using a strange mixture of Latvian and English words in their everyday language. Although the programme described the play as a “comedy,” it was more of a tragicomedy with a touch of existential self-irony. A sense of doom distanced the play from comedy, accurately describing the mood in society during the pandemic.
War and Chaos
Director Viesturs Kairišs’ interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a grotesque dystopia aligns perfectly with Garber’s analysis of the play’s transformation from tragedy to comedy. Kairišs reflects the social mood of 2025, symbolically inverting the story by giving the comedy the characteristics of a tragedy. While it is possible to analyse this performance using both postmodern and digimodern paradigms, we believe that the relationship between verbal expression and the performative elements most clearly illuminates the era’s features. These features are not contextual for the director but rather serve as the architectural framework of the performance. The 2025 production uses the Soviet-era translation, a choice that playwright Matīss Gricmanis justifies by pointing out that it creates an opportunity to contrast the action with the verbal narrative. “It was important to us that the translation retained a certain innocence and pathos to peel back and play with, and to look for irony in.”[2] Although they are separated by almost half a century and differ in terms of their aesthetics, message and overall staging, the 1977 and 2025 productions have one thing in common: they both break the ‘surface’ of the text in order to satirise their respective eras through the paradoxical relationship between the visual and the verbal.
In the production programme, Viesturs Kairišs discusses the relevance of the era in which Shakespeare’s works are set — war. The director views war as the primary destructive force of the modern world, as the monster.
… a father wishes his daughter dead because she disobeys him. He invokes the law that protects such rights. The law is as cruel as a monster: do as I say or die! There is only one such monster in the world: war.
The themes and setting of the war undergo changes throughout the play’s text. These changes mainly consist of the addition of notes and minor alterations to Valija Brutāne’s translation. Although Shakespeare’s play is about a “war” between the sexes, the word “war” only appears in the text a few times, and then only in reference to a possible human life experience, or about the recent past for Theseus and Hippolyta. War is not present in the play’s space-time. In Kairišs’ production, however, the war is very real and, while Shakespeare’s text remains largely the same, the semantics change. The themes and atmosphere of war permeate the play from the very beginning. Even before the text, in the prologue, there are flesh-coloured characters in leotards, visually referencing the eroticised, romantic performance in the Dailes Theatre of 1977. However, what takes place here is not lovemaking, but combat training. The sound, marked by sharp, dissonant noise music, signifies brutality and violence.
Shakespeare’s play is set in Athens and the surrounding woods, and the city’s name is retained in Kairišs’ production. However, the law invoked by the director is not that of ancient, mythical Athens, but that of war and the army. The words “war” and “army” often replace the name “Athens” in the performance’s text. The positions of the characters have also changed: army ranks are introduced into the text, and the characters hold different ranks within it. The difference in ranking between the two lovers replaces the difference in status outlined by Shakespeare. Theseus has transitioned from being a duke and ruler to a general and commander-in-chief. Similarly, the artisans are no longer carpenters, weavers or joiners, but rather noble soldiers, enlisted men and liaison officers. The four lovers, who are all very similar, are also soldiers. In Kairišs’ staging, Shakespeare’s fairies represent groups of civilians caught up in the action on stage. In some scenes, they are depicted as “collateral damage.” Awakened as he Shakespeare’s fairy songs transform into visual metaphors on stage — glass terrariums containing worms, cockroaches, and snails. The object of Titania’s affection — a boy — is portrayed as a South Asian immigrant and bicycle courier with a python in his terrarium instead of a food carrier bag.
Although Shakespeare’s play is not set during a war, the source text is not lacking in brutality. Given Theseus’s understanding of relationship building, it is questionable whether the forthcoming wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is truly a joyous occasion. The events on stage exacerbate the violence, even the violence associated with love in Shakespeare’s works. Theseus ties up Hippolyta and wraps her in a sack like a prisoner on stage, and instead of a wedding limousine, a black catafalque appears. Nevertheless, Theseus and the other soldiers view the wedding as a joyous occasion, and even such a forced marriage leads to the desired goal of peace.
In Shakespeare’s text, the quarrel between the spouses Oberon and Titania causes natural disasters and human suffering, but their reconciliation and the resolution of the other lovers’ disputes lead to a successful final and a return to everyday life. In the Dailes Theatre’s interpretation, Theseus sees the wedding as an opportunity to make peace and thus end the wartime laws he recently defended. However, peace, as he imagines it, proves to be an illusion as seemingly innocuous forces influence the fate of the world more than the army commander-in-chief does. The verbal changes in the performance are organically harmonised with the other sign systems present in the production.
The production deliberately reinterprets Puck (Robin Goodfellow), in Latvian — Paks, in the performance referred to as Pasks, with only minor textual modification, an addition of an -s. These changes serve as symbols that emphasise Pasks’s ability to intervene, contrasting with his actual actions. They highlight how power and resources are present and accessible but deliberately left unused to help others. This reinterpretation also underscores the play’s modern relevance, with Pasks’s speed likened to that of ballistic missiles (not Shakespeare’s forty minutes). The director emphasises this message through modifications to the character’s name and the use of performative elements. Pasks’s visual portrayal draws inspiration from Elon Musk (in Latvian — Masks, which explains the changes in Robin’s name), featuring a wig, distinctive attire, and a souvenir cap from the social media platform X. Although Oberon perceives himself as the ultimate ruler, in reality, the mischievous Pasks dictates the course of events.
In the production, the character does not take on the appearance of Robin Goodfellow, but of singer Taylor Swift. This approach highlights the duality of the character, as in Shakespeare’s original work. Here, Swift’s activism against Donald Trump before the presidential elections contrasts with Musk’s alliance with him. Most of the textual alterations are evident in scenes where the soldiers stage the wedding of Theseus. These modifications not only embody Kairišs’ vision of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a cosmic satire of the world’s end but also amplify its comedic aspects, which may be less immediately accessible to contemporary audiences due to their ironic tone. A particular focus falls on Bottom, in Latvian called Dibēns.[3] In Shakespeare’s original, Bottom — an artisan — transforms into an ass-headed figure through Oberon and Puck’s manipulation. In Kairišs’ staging, Dibēns appears as a bloody, faceless monster. When Oberon orders Puck/Pasks to revert Dibēns to his original form, the wordplay used in the source text permits imagining both the physical return to human form and the killing:
And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp
From off the head of this Athenian swain,
That he, awaking when the other do,
May all to Athens back again repair (Shakespeare 4.1).
In the Latvian Soviet translation, Oberon’s order is phrased as “removing the mask.” In Kairišs’ version, Pasks decides, “the idiot must be awakened as he was before.” Through this, the director highlights that war is not about humanity, but stupidity. Kairišs has added a further task to Dibēns: his actions (not present in Shakespeare’s text) lead to a different finale, where not only Pyramus and Thisbe but also almost all characters die. The wedding gift that Pasks gives to Theseus – a suitcase with a “red button” – symbolises both the power of the billionaire and the dependence of the entire civilisation on a few individuals worldwide. In the performance, Pyramus fakes suicide with a grenade. Frightened by his own performance, he throws the grenade away, causing a nuclear explosion — a metaphor for the “a monkey with a grenade,” or a stupid person with dangerous power. At the final episode, the stage is full of corpses, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s tragedies. After the explosion, Pasks emerges from the burnt-out catafalque, laughing, and walks over the corpses with a suitcase in his hand. Gold-clad Oberon and Titania survive, and the performance ends on this apocalyptic note. A courier on a bicycle is also alive and present, which raises the question: does the director only envision the end of Western civilisation?
Conclusion
The evolution of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Latvian theatre vividly reflects the broader historical and socio-political shifts that Latvia experienced throughout the 20th century. Early productions, such as Smiļģis’s modernist staging in the 1920s, embodied Latvia’s aspirations for artistic independence and embraced new aesthetic principles, breaking away from traditional realism. Later adaptations, including Rijnieks’s avant-garde reinterpretation in the 1990s, exemplify a more experimental approach driven by Latvia’s renewed independence and artistic flourishing. During the Soviet era, productions like Auškāps’s provocative 1977 performance employed physical theatre and symbolic language — akin to “Aesop’s language” — to subtly critique and navigate the restrictions of socialist realism. Overall, these interpretations demonstrate how Latvia’s changing political realities and cultural identity have continuously shaped the staging, language, and symbolism of Shakespeare’s comedy, transforming it into a mirror that reflects the nation’s struggles, aspirations, and artistic resilience.
Historically, on the one hand, changes to the verbal expression in Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream have primarily resulted from translation choices and their interpretations. On the other hand, directors include performative elements to reflect theatrical conventions or experimental approaches, in line with current performative art processes. Events in global and local life always influence the director’s conception, but the signs of the times manifest differently in each interpretation. Radical changes to the text of the play are evident in 21st-century productions, where Shakespeare’s text has been revised and modern texts have been written specifically for the productions and integrated into them. This suggests that, in practice, directors do not always adhere to the post-dramatic theatre thesis that the verbal text is becoming less important in contemporary theatre. Perhaps the directors’ increased attention to interpreting the classic text is related to their desire to convey the current sense of the era to the audience as accurately as possible.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Seņkovs deconstructs and transforms Shakespeare’s comedy within the framework of contemporary metatheatre. This staging is part of a growing trend in Latvian theatre that has emerged in the context of the pandemic. It is a reaction to the threat to culture, and especially to the “live” art of the stage. Through the integration of modern language, symbolic staging and reinterpreted characters, the production challenges traditional genre boundaries and reflects on contemporary societal issues such as cultural identity and the impact of globalisation. This approach highlights the evolving relationship between classical texts and modern theatrical expression, demonstrating how contemporary directors can transform timeless works into influential commentaries on the human condition and societal change.
In the 2025 production, Valija Brutāne’s lyrical and somewhat old-fashioned Soviet-time translation contrasts sharply with performative elements, creating a grotesque effect and revealing the “peeling” of the text’s surface. Viesturs Kairišs’ performance offers a visionary perspective on the geopolitical situation, warning society and offering glimpses of a probable future.
Both recent Latvian productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream adapt the original more radically, often adding modern, colloquial styles. Instead of expressing causal relationships through a linear narrative, directors use metaphors and symbols rooted in the performative aspects of the production and their interaction with the verbal text. Directors seamlessly integrated modifications to the verbal text with other sign systems, such as visual, symbolic and performative ones, creating layered meanings that challenge the boundaries between comedy and tragedy.
During relatively stable periods, there are more experiments with artistic form, whereas in heightened geopolitical conditions, directing primarily focuses on delivering a message, with form subordinated to it. Moreover, the last two productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream indicate that verbal expression is the core of the performance. However, this does not imply logocentrism, as words derive their meaning only in relation to other elements of the production, including visual sign systems.
The study’s authors believe that the analysis of one play’s interpretations in a historical perspective reflects the interrelation between art and the socio-political situation: the stagings of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the Latvian stage show that, under the conditions of an independent Latvia, the production’s message is constructed within the coordinates of current European and global processes, whereas under conditions of occupation, the only means of expression for theatre outside of frozen canons is the weaving of subtext into the production’s form.
Endnotes
[1] Elmārs Seņkovs, email to the authors, 27 Feb. 2025.
[2] Matīss Gricmanis, email to the authors, 26 Feb. 2025.
[3] “Dibēns” (a name that puns on the Latvian word for “bottom” or “ass,” adding an ironic layer to the character’s role).
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*Vesma Levalde (Dr. art.) is a Latvian theatre researcher and critic, associate professor at RTU Liepāja Academy Humanities and Arts Centre, and editor and author of the Latvian electronic theatre magazine KRODERS.LV. Her main interests include regional cultural history and its representation in contemporary drama, the digital age and media society, and the interpretation of classical texts in contemporary theatre. She is a member of the Latvian chapter of AITC/IATC; as an academic, she has developed the following courses of study: Stage Culture and Performative Multimedia Art; Analysis of Current Processes in Theatre. Contact details: vlevalde@gmail.com; vesma.levalde@rtu.lv. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0584-761X.
**Sigita Ignatjeva (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor and researcher at RTU Liepāja Academy Humanities and Arts Centre and copy editor of scientific journals and books. She teaches translation, English literature and culture, stylistics, and editing. Her research interests include migration of cultures, the history of translation into Latvian and translational stylistics. She is a member of the Modern Language Association. Contact details: sigita.ignatjeva@rtu.lv, sigita.i@inbox.lv.
Copyright © 2025 Vesma Levalde and Sigita Ignatjeva
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #32, December 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411
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