Ladies | Latvia
Playwright: Justīne Kļava
Translator: Ieva Lākute
Director: Anna C. Bahow
Synopsis: Filled with tragicomic moments, Ladies (Dāmas) is a story about love, independence and… meatballs. The play explores the affectionate and strained relationship between three generations of women who share a small flat in a decrepit district of the post-Soviet city of Riga. Despite their best intentions, the grandmother Marija (born during World War II), the daughter Stanislava (born during the USSR occupation), and the granddaughter Kitty (born the year the Iron Curtain fell) are in constant conflict with each other. It escalates when Kitty returns home late, and a gun falls out of her back-pocket.
Join us from 5:30 to 6:30 for a special pre-performance reception before each reading. Enjoy sweets, along with juice and coffee before we begin our reading. The reading will begin at 6:30 PM followed by a talkback.
Performances are FREE to the public and reservations are not required. DONATIONS help keep the festival free!
Justīne Kļava (Playwright)
Justīne Kļava is one of Latvia’s most celebrated contemporary playwrights and dramaturgs. Since 2014, she has been writing plays for Latvia’s leading state and experimental theatres, mostly focused on psychologically realistic representations of generational clashes and the impact of history on the everyday lives of contemporary eastern Europeans.
Loved by audiences and critics alike, her plays have received numerous awards, including the Latvian prize for the play of the year in 2016 and 2017. In 2020, she was appointed as the Head Dramaturg of the largest professional theatre in the Baltic States: Dailes Teātris in Riga, where she worked for two years. She has since resumed writing for the stage full-time, with an original gothic comedy for the New Riga Theatre and a modern adaptation of Бесы (The Devils) by Fyodor Dostoevsky for Valmiera Theatre being among her most recent productions.
Leva Lakute (Translator)
Ieva Lākute was born in Riga and has spent half of her life in Latvia and half in the UK, giving her a significant insight into and understanding of both cultures. Since graduating from Bath Spa University with an MA in Creative Writing, she has worked as a freelance writer and literary translator. She has published several short stories in both Latvian and English, some of which have done well in competitions. One of her prose translations was longlisted for the 2020 John Dryden Translation Competition.
Her love of theatre and cross-cultural collaboration led her to complete the 2020 Theatre Translator Mentorship with Foreign Affairs, a theatre company based in southeast London. The mentorship culminated in a digital showcase where an extract of Dāmas (Ladies) was performed. She has since completed the 2021 Emerging Literary Translator Mentorship with the National Centre for Writing and is translating her second novel commission.