Mārtiņš Liepa

Born: 17 September 1978

Born in Saldus, Mārtiņš Liepa graduated from the Brocēni Basketball School in 1995. Since graduating from the Valmiera Theatre acting course at the Screen and Theatre Arts Department of the Latvian Academy of Culture in 2003, he has been an actor at Valmiera Theatre.

Perhaps owing to his background as an athlete, Mārtiņš’s greatest strength as an actor is his complete sense of specificity—the ability to exist fully in the present moment, within a particular situation, character, and human relationship. As a result, even in the smallest role he is able to reveal an entire life, sensing its imprint in every moment of existence.

At times, however, this same specificity prevents him from portraying experiences that lie beyond the boundaries of his own emotional experience. His Robert Lokamp, for example, was both masculinely attractive and unhappy—but unhappy because of unemployment and poverty, rather than because the war had amputated the meaning of life itself. Yet he is unafraid to look within himself and discover harsh truths there. Theatre critic Ieva Struka wrote of his Rogozhin that the actor had “brought into this character the entire world and way of thinking of Dostoevsky’s heroes, those whose veins run with dark wine instead of blood, compelling them to love and hate at the same time, to embrace as brothers and raise a dagger, to marry and immediately kill.” That same dark wine also flows through Miljon, the gallows bird (Clown Fiasco), the Chekist Kazimirs (Atvari), the terrifyingly righteous Pamfil Palykh (Doctor Zhivago), even Blaumanis’s Krišs in The Sweet Bottle and Chekhov’s Solyony. They are frightening characters, yet profoundly alive—and worthy of compassion.

Although Mārtiņš himself would most enjoy playing decent, good-hearted men like himself, roles in which he can make use of his charm, sense of truth, and self-irony. The saying “A hedgehog is a lazy bird: unless you kick it, it won’t fly” describes him well.

Then comes the day when the “hedgehog” wants to fly on his own, without anyone having to “kick” him. Director Inese Mičule’s empathetic approach to working with actors was evidently decisive in combining with Liepa’s years of experience at Valmiera Theatre and his newly found artistic freedom to create a complex and multifaceted performance. For this role, in the 2021/2022 season, Mārtiņš Liepa received a Spēlmaņu nakts nomination in the category of Actor of the Year.

Theatre scholar Gundega Saulīte wrote about his George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:

“With this performance, Mārtiņš Liepa, as Martha’s husband George, has stepped out of the supporting-role category and now stands alongside Vāne as an equal partner—attentive, precise, and deeply sensitive. His character, an unmistakable intellectual, is at once witty and observant. Gradually, however, he too becomes drawn into the games instigated by Martha, games that wound George’s pride and undermine his understanding of the order of the world. Then, as we see, the beast within him awakens as well, biting with precision and mercilessness in his struggle against the other.” (Gundega Saulīte, Games That Inspire Fear, Teātra Vēstnesis, 2022/I)
This was no one-time success. Equally compelling is his portrayal of the “blood-hungry, perpetually dissatisfied Simon, like a jackal craving blood” (Henrieta Verhoustinska, Rainis’s Selfie in the Swimming Pool, KDi, 12 October 2023) in Joseph and His Brothers. In this production, the director approached every role as if it were a leading one, and Mārtiņš Liepa fully lives up to that vision.