Carmen Electra closes Draama festival with youthful take on grief

In its final Draama festival diary, ERR reviews a video recording of Ene-Liis Semper, Tiit Ojasoo and Olari Elts’s Macbeth and Elektron.art’s Carmen Electra, which addresses death and grief with youthful energy and affirmation.

The festival’s final day began with a live recording of a Nuutrum podcast, where practitioners discussed the boundaries and possibilities of contemporary theatre. Jan Teevet described theatre as impossible to define, while Inga Vares called it a place where every meeting is unique. Anumai Raska viewed theatre as a form of philosophising and a way to package life.

The diary writers said the discussion could be summed up by Teevet’s belief that thinking has no speed limit and that there are no parking fines if you want to stop.

They were less positive about the video recording of Macbeth, which they had previously seen at the Estonia concert hall. In their view, the screen failed to capture the power of the production. They would have preferred wider shots, while the unstable sound and image weakened the sense of theatre as a live art form.

The recording did benefit from shots of the orchestra, meaning viewers did not have to look only at Elts’s back. These images also brought out the combination of Estonian music and a classic work of world drama. The diary suggested that, despite the editing problems, more recordings of theatre productions could be shown both at festivals and elsewhere.

The festival ended with Ants1 and Elektron.art’s Carmen Electra. Grief and death had been recurring themes in the week’s productions, and Carmen Electra addressed them in a youthful and life-affirming way, providing a strong closing note to the festival’s “march of mourning”.

The production brought a loud punk musical to Vanemuise’s small house, a theatre venue whose formal blue curtain and gold ornaments created a contrasting sense of ceremony. The diary praised the sincere joy of making and creating on stage, as well as the deliberately excessive, childlike stage and costume design.

Aimed at young adults, the production was also praised for its treatment of the quarter-life crisis, which the writers said older-generation directors often struggle to capture. They added that they would sometimes like advice from the singing hedgehog in striped tights.

Looking back on the week, the diary writers said they were tired but deeply grateful for the challenge of keeping such an intensive journal. During the festival’s main programme, they saw one video recording and 12 productions, missing only one because they could not fit into Robin Täpp’s car. They also attended almost all of the additional programme events.

Each writer spent an average of more than 18 hours a day in theatres over seven days. They recommended keeping a theatre diary, alone or with friends, and having more conversations about theatre while remaining open to finding something different from what one initially set out to see.