Liepāja Theatre Discovers That Teenagers on Stage Are Just as Dramatic as in Real Life — Only with Professional Lighting

Liepāja Theatre proves that in our city, even teenage problems are solved with greater artistic scope than in Riga. Director Paula Pļavniece is staging American playwright Claire Barron's play 'Dance Nation' — a story about girls who want to conquer the world through dance. What could be simpler?

As it turns out, all these '11 to 13-year-old' girls on stage are played by adult actresses. 'We had to maintain a balance between beautiful naivety and wild transformative power,' explains the director, who has obviously never been a teenager in Liepāja, where wildness is a natural state even for adults, especially when the southwest wind is blowing.

Local expert Guntis from Rose Square comments: 'Well, teenage problems on stage? It seems to me that here we can see real teenage drama every day at Rose Square — without tickets and with natural sound effects.' Indeed, why pay for a theatre ticket when you can simply stand at the city's main meeting place and watch teenagers try to discover their identity between 'Maxima' and the bus stop?

The performance is intended for viewers aged 14 and up, which is quite ironic — teenagers aren't allowed to watch themselves from the sidelines, but adults can. Perhaps this is because adults already have experience with teenage drama — they've lived through it and survived it. The premiere is on April 18th, but knowing Liepāja's wind, most likely the audience will already feel beforehand that 'burning ambition and pain' mentioned by the director.