Liepāja Theater Actors Reveal That the Only Real Drama is Waiting for the Tram After the Show

While actors in Riga theaters go home by taxi after performances and complain about the hardships of an artist's life, Liepāja theater veterans reveal that the real adventures have always been backstage. And not because our actors are particularly adventure-seeking, but because life here has always been a bit more... creative.

"Those jokes are hell and India, but always — the hell and India of the moment," philosophically concludes theater legend Aina Karele, and it must be said she's right. Because what could be more hellish than discovering after a three-hour performance that your only way home is a tram that made its last run two hours ago? "The only real drama is the payslip of a Liepāja actor," says the younger generation, but the older colleagues know — the real drama is trying to get from Karosta to downtown at midnight when even the tram is asleep.

In the old days, when the theater went on tours in the countryside, the accommodation problem was solved creatively — actors slept on benches like cows in stalls, each with a folding bed and quilted blanket. Men at one end, wives at the other, stage workers on the stage. It was like a brilliant experiment in how close you can be to colleagues without crossing professional ethics boundaries. And, of course, there was always that one actor who went to a party while the others "improved" his bed. Coming home — creak!

The best story, though, is about how the actresses decided to sleep outside in the park because the evening was so warm and romantic. One of them, Terēze Dāvisa, knowing the bed would creak, went further away. On an August night, when the darkness was so thick you could eat it with a fork, a local dairy worker spotted a folding bed with a sleeping woman on the cemetery grounds. "The poor guy's tea was trembling!" That was the moment when both the actress and the dairy worker realized that life has far more theater than any performance on stage. And at least no tram was needed there — both their legs were already like cotton anyway.