Baiba Valante

Born: 12 March 1954

Baiba Valante graduated from Jēkabpils Secondary School in 1972 and has been an actress at Valmiera Drama Theatre since 1972.

Baiba Valante entered Valmiera Theatre almost directly from school. Since graduates of Jēkabpils Secondary School were not accepted into the Theatre Faculty at the time, she began working at Valmiera Theatre as a prompter. A year later, when she tried to apply to the Dailes Theatre Studio, its director Arnolds Liniņš advised her to remain in Valmiera, because Baiba represented the same type of bright, Latvian young woman that Dailes Theatre already had in Lilita Ozoliņa. “My school is Pēteris Lūcis,” Baiba continues to emphasise. It was under Lūcis’s guidance that she performed her first roles as charming young women—the character Emīlija in Six Little Drummers and Marule in The Bride’s Daughter—which led many to believe that her acting nature was suited only for such traditional Latvian roles.

“Baiba is a very good and interesting actress,” says director Felikss Deičs. “The fact that she does not have formal professional acting education is balanced by her curiosity and attentiveness. She is capable of portraying a great deal; there are no limits to what she can achieve, because she is able to imagine and create anything. She is an intelligent actress who always fully understands what she is playing, which is why she can be so varied on stage.”

Under Felikss Deičs’s direction, Baiba has created many memorable roles. In Blaumanis’s From the Sweet Bottle, the director removed the rigid title of “Mother Mazbērzi” from her character, leaving only her given name, which expressed her essence so well—Ieva. Baiba Valante portrayed, with subtlety and deep empathy, the awakening of long-forbidden emotions, and then, with equal certainty, crushed the newly emerging shoots of hope. All of this was performed with great dignity.

Because dignity is part of the actress’s very nature. When there was less work at the theatre, she did not carry bitterness with her, but instead learned Swedish and spent an entire year working abroad—not picking strawberries, but performing in theatre productions. For many years, Baiba Valante was also the head of the Latvian branch of ASSITEJ—the International Association of Theatres for Children and Young People.