Aigars Apinis

Born: December 31, 1979

Born in Riga. Graduated from the Latvian Culture College (1998) as an amateur theatre director, and from the Screen Arts and Theatre Department of the Latvian Academy of Culture (2004). Worked at the New Riga Theatre (2004–2005), the National Theatre, and with the theatre group United Intimacy. Participated in the physical theatre laboratory Moving Stage Lab in Copenhagen, as well as in movement and stage combat workshops in Riga and Pärnu. Since 2008, an actor at the Valmiera Drama Theatre.

Aigars is a boundary-crosser and boundary-shifter. His first theatre profession—that of a director—is still strongly felt within him. At the same time, he is always a co-creator of the performance, though he sometimes finds it challenging to fit into productions where there is no room for the free and conscious development of his role.

For Aigars, raising the bar of his own possibilities is not only a matter of professional self-respect—otherwise, it seems, the work does not interest him at all. If no other challenge is present, he will at least become an inventive movement artist or learn to play the accordion for the sake of a role. Yet even when he does not internally agree with the director’s concept, he will carry out his work as well as possible. This is his understanding of what it means to be a patriot of theatre.

A very important part of Aigars’s work is his participation in independent theatre projects. This provides another opportunity to expand boundaries.