River Tours. Daugava

Stan's cafe, Lucy Bird, Diāna Kondraša, Rvīns Varde, Ūna Laukmane (UK/Latvia)

Spend an absorbing forty-five minutes exploring the beautiful River Daugava in the company of a witty grass snake (performed by Eduards Beļnikovs). You will be guided from the Baltic Sea up the river through centuries of history, stories of flooded towns, folklore, hydroelectric dams, migrating wildlife and human incidents.

Written by Diāna Kondraša and Rvīns Varde, your journey is illustrated by a stunning textile map created by Ūna Laukmane and features original music by Aleksandrs Maijers.

This beautifully simple piece of documentary storytelling is made in collaboration with UK theatre company Stan’s Cafe. It is the eighth river in their River Tours series.

Stan’s Cafe have been creating and touring original theatre for more than three decades. They were last in Latvia with their acclaimed rice installation Of All The People In All The World in 2016.

ABOUT ARTISTS

We are Stan’s Cafe, a theatre company based in Birmingham, UK. We are playful with form and serious about ideas. Each project starts with an idea we want to explore – then we find the form that does it justice. This means that although our work can appear wildly varied it all comes from the same place. We love collaborating, touring the world, working with schools and helping other artists. We started in 1991 and are as excited as we have ever been. Check out our social media feeds, we share a mini new artwork almost every day.

VEIDOTĀJI

Created by: Stan’s Cafe collaborating with Diāna Kondraša and Rvīns Varde

Directed by: Lucy Bird

Map and costume design: Ūna Laukmane (or Ūna with created by?)

Performed by: Eduards Beļnikovs

Music: Aleksandrs Maijers

Local Producer: Ieva Briede (New Theatre Institute of Latvia)

Touring Producer: Marina Ivanova (New East)

The performance was created as part of the EU Creative Europe programme project The Big Green.

The Big Green is a European-level collaborative project involving organisations from the science and arts fields, based on the notion that culture serves as an instrument of social change, and that it is therefore the task of the cultural and creative sectors to promote the mitigation or improvement of the impact of environmental change.