Estonian Youth Theatre unveils eight premieres for 75th season

Estonian Youth Theatre has launched its 75th season, which will feature eight premieres, the Tallinn Treff international visual theatre festival and the completion of a visual theatre master’s course held in cooperation with EMTA, ERR reported. The theatre’s creative team is also expanding with three actors and a director-dramaturg.

The new members are actors Eliis-Maria Koit and Erik Hermaküla, both graduates of the 32nd class of the drama school, and Johanna Vaiksoo, a graduate of the 14th class of the theatre arts programme at the University of Tartu’s Viljandi Culture Academy. Elss Raidmets, an alumna of the drama school’s 32nd class, will join as a director-dramaturg.

The season opens with Ülemeelik, a puppet production by students of EMTA’s visual theatre master’s course, directed by Vootele Ruusmaa, Johanna Vaiksoo and Karl Sakritsa. The production takes audiences on a journey through the world of the senses, exploring how perception shapes us.

Taago Tubin’s Elajas will premiere in the small hall on September 13. It tells the story of an inexperienced teaching assistant and a disturbingly behaved 14-year-old boy whose tense duel begins to affect lives beyond the classroom.

On October 11, the theatre will stage Tähistaeva all, a production for young children directed and designed by Joel Väli. A tent erected in the oval hall will host a story based on Indigenous traditions about human differences and the sky shared by all.

Karl Sakritsa’s Eesti muinasjutud will premiere in the Ferdinand Hall on November 29. The production combines stories based on Fr. R. Kreutzwald’s Old Tales of the Estonian People, traditional music and a fantasy-filled stage design. It is also Sakritsa’s master’s thesis.

At the end of January, audiences will see a graduation production by theatre and performance artist Clara Jantson-Köstner in the oval hall. It explores the interaction between the human body and material, movement and the plaster that restricts it.

Elss Raidmets’s Jane Eyre, a contemporary interpretation of the literary classic, will premiere in the small hall at the end of February.

Two further master’s projects will reach audiences in spring. Joosep Uus and Alice Siil will present a new production examining the stories within which we live every day, while Erik Richard Salumäe will stage the caravan theatre production Tähetark.

The season will conclude with the Tallinn Treff international visual theatre festival, taking place from May 19 to 22.