Draama festival showcases faith, love and high-energy theatre

University of Tartu theatre studies students writing for ERR praised the theatrical energy and broad appeal of two productions presented at the Draama theatre festival: Lauri Lagle’s I Did Not Even Notice When You Left and Tiit Ojasoo’s Self-Help Manual.

The fourth day of the festival began with an international discussion at Tartu New Theatre, a theatre venue, featuring curators from the Netherlands, Germany and the United States. They discussed the curation and funding of theatre festivals, future trends and the export of Eastern European theatre.

The participants highlighted the distinctive style of Estonian performing arts, which they said could appear exotic and attract interest abroad. One speaker said he had discovered Estonia’s theatre scene years ago through NO99. The discussion also stressed that showing up is more important than fully understanding everything happening in theatre.

In Lagle’s production, the students were most impressed by the acting, which moved between crying and laughter, singing and screaming, violence and embraces, crawling and flying. The set initially resembled a tower of furniture before becoming a functional structure. Performers climbed through cupboards and along shelves, and at one point even did laundry at the top of the tower.

Faith was a central theme, extending beyond religion. The Bible served as an important source text, but the production also explored faith in systems such as communism and democracy, as well as faith in one’s country and in other people. The students compared the performance to a ride on a carousel that could cause a headache but also provoke wholehearted laughter.

Ojasoo’s Self-Help Manual shifted from the chaos of the wider world to the enduring question of love. The students rejected the idea that their youth prevented them from understanding the production’s treatment of love and marriage. They said audiences of all ages could find songs, jokes and aphorisms in the performance with which they could relate.

The first act left room for improvisation and allowed humour connected to Tartu to be woven into the performance. The students also praised the musical abilities of the actors and the production’s poetic ambiguity.

After spending seven consecutive hours in the theatre, the students said they remained energised rather than tired. They described both productions as among the most physically intense of the festival and noted that the audience responded with laughter and applause at the right moments.

In visual terms, they saw Lagle’s production as rounded, with its circular stage and unified story, while Ojasoo’s was more angular in both its stage design and varied scenes.