Let's try to be logical. After all, many problems in logic and riddles are based on a very simple principle: if it is impossible to solve the structural problems inside it, you just have to move outside the given limits (frame) of the structure. Let's say - to join three dots by two lines…

Are we capable of grasping the structure (situation, conditions) of contemporary Latvian theatre? Has the younger generation found its paradigms? Is there (are there) a new leader (new leaders)? Is the conflict between generations aesthetic or ethical in nature? Or, maybe, mercantile? … Oh-o! You ask for particulars? What exactly happened to the "Unbearable Artel"? What did Džilindžers sacrifice? JRT? - coincidence, exception, damnation? Three Damsels or Dostoyevsky? Distribution of money or counting of success? Does the addressee on the parcel "Cultural policy" live in the street written on the envelope? Lately the press has so frequently invoked the Important, Wise, Omniscient, Omnipotent Playwright, perhaps this is a rite of summoning spirits? Let someone come and tell us, like Rainis or Blaumanis did, - about our life, about our sufferings… But we ourselves, what and how would we like to tell our story?

Albanian theatre has got a very simple and staggering excuse. This play and performance is performed and watched by people who were shot at. Its every word and every gesture is a sign, which makes the Albanians freeze, laugh, get cross, weep.

But the Czech puppet theatre performance "Pishkanderula" - is simply good, old, real theatre. Have you seen much of it? Both "Archa" theatre managers kept telling us: "Please, don't forget, both the actors of the puppet theatre are very, very old." The Czechs know how to keep and to honor old things and creative people. But we? The English will come to us with their horror. For them, in their serene and affluent country, it means something real and noteworthy. For us, after the historical "horror stories" of this century that does not seem horrible, that is the reason why our newspapers and TV sometimes play games with tragic news items. The English do that at the theatre.

Six Finnish women will show something about what Latvia will say: "Oh, that's not theatre!" But what other name can be given to this one hour long experience, which makes you feel like a child in an old farmstead, at night, where six old women rustle and potter arround, gossip and quarrel, make music and rows and messes, but in the meantime the porridge gets scorched… Prits Pedayas directs the monolith, funny- sad family story "Serpent's way", as fundamental as "The Green Land", but another Estonian director, Lembit Peterson restores the ideal theatre of Maurice Maeterlinck. And with performers who have no ambitions to be called professional actors. Estonian Artel, but very bearable indeed. Restoration as a novelty.

Both Lithuanian directors are young and important. In Lithuanian Theatre it is impossible to be small and humble. People spend themselves and are loved. No one is calculating: this one has been given too much in advance! Gintara Varnas plays out the wonderful actress of Kaunas Drama theatre J?rate Onain?te as Heda Gabriel, and now it is impossible to imagine a different Heda. And a different acting space. But Kosrshunov takes a "notorious and much demanded" play "Shopping & Fucking" and treats it as an absolute and most serious classic work. "Because That one is…", he does not finish his sentence. And the problems of the English young generation become ours. What else? The Italians are going to tell African tales; Russians will remind us that actors' work is of crucial importance for theatre. They all will bring their views as untaxable property and then it will be worth asking: What is it for and what is in it for us? - a question that we often use to hide our small confusions when meeting the big world and art.