High in the mountains of Georgia, in a town by the Black Sea, Raisma has been living with her severely ill son for two months. Juris has been in a car accident that killed half the family – his father and grandmother. Juris is haunted by the close gaze of the blue cow he spotted on the side of the highway moments before the accident. It awakens something in the young man who has been living a careless life. He asks his mother to get him a volume of folk songs that everyone knows about but few have read. In existential isolation, the family deals with difficult questions about guilt, the things that are held back and how to live on.
“A play about how life forces you to turn the mirror on yourself and see something unexpected. Through leaving, Juris connects with his essence and, ultimately, with his own people, with everything intangible. We also have a spiritual heritage. I want to make this stage play about the fact that leaving is not the end, but the highest point. Juris goes into the light, he becomes enlightened and leaves,” says director Māra Ķimele.
Gunārs Priede wrote this play in 1972 during a course of few days. It was immediately put on the list of forbidden plays and premiered in Estonia in 1973.
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The production is supported by the Borisa and Ināras Teterevu Foundation for Valmiera Theatre’s 2024/2025 season. It is marked by the theatre’s return to the renovated and modernised building on Lāčplēša Street, so the theme of the productions is homecoming and the different manifestations of love.
Five of the new productions have been made possible by the theatre’s strong friendship with the Borisa and Ināras Teterevu Foundation. These are William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet (directed by Inese Mičule), Gunārs Priede’s Blue (directed by Māra Ķimele), Anna Brigadere’s play Sprīdītis (directed by Reinis Suhanovs), another play by Gunārs Priede, Thirteenth, staged under the title Four White Shirts (directed by Jānis Znotiņš) and The Magic Mountain (directed by Toms Treinis), based on Thomas Mann’s novel.
This support is a continuation of the collaboration started in the theatre’s centenary season (2023/2024). With the support of the Foundation, four classics of Latvian drama have been staged, which have been acclaimed by the public and critics: Joseph and His Brothers (directed by Inese Mičule), The Widow’s Son (directed by Viesturs Roziņš), The Boys of Valmiera (directed by Jānis Znotiņš) and The Prodigal Son (directed by Reinis Suhanovs).
Photo: Matīss Markovskis
