History and state support sustain Estonia’s theatre habit

Tickets for every production listed on the Estonian Drama Theatre’s website were sold out through January, despite prices reaching 45 euros, ERR reports. A theatre researcher says Estonia’s strong attendance reflects the country’s history, continued public funding and theatre’s role as a shared cultural space.

Except during gathering restrictions in 2020 and 2021, Estonia’s population and annual theatre visits have each remained at about 1.3 million, said Hedi-Liis Toome, a theatre researcher and associate professor of theatre studies at the University of Tartu. She said only Icelanders and Finns rival Estonians for theatre attendance, noting that Iceland has a population of about 400,000.

Toome traced the tradition to 1870, when Lydia Koidula staged the first production in Estonian for an Estonian audience, Saaremaa’s Cousin. Plays were soon being printed and amateur theatre groups formed across the country.

Theatre also took on a significant cultural role during the Soviet occupation, Toome said. It gave people a place to discuss subjects they could not address elsewhere under censorship and created shared experiences.

After the occupation ended in 1991, theatre attendance fell by about half during the turbulent 1990s. However, Estonia continued to fund theatres, and no state- or municipally funded theatre was closed, Toome said. Performing arts institutions received more than 56 million euros in state support last year. By comparison, film received 10 million euros from the state budget.

Toome said theatre is more expensive to produce than visual art and noted that public interest extends beyond performances to actors as public figures.

Although annual theatre visits are around 1.3 million, a Statistics Estonia survey found that 40 percent of residents went to the theatre in 2023. The figure was 45 percent among women and 33 percent among men. Toome said a similar gender gap appears across other cultural events, while Estonia’s theatre audience remains more diverse than audiences in Western countries, with older people continuing to attend state theatres.

The article also examines theatre as a safe environment for new experiences, drawing on the work of Merilin Jürjo, who defended a doctoral thesis in theatre psychology at the University of Tartu this autumn.