Its seems to be self-evident - everyone IS as young as he feels. The pathos of this slogan serves as the first safe shield for the theatre festival Homo Novus fans, when encountering attempts to doubt the nature of this international event, which is gathering strength. Yes, Homo Novus is a search for new means of communication within the sphere of ephemeral theatre art. Without barriers, without prejudices, with an upstart's pride and a healthy awareness of its own goals.

But isn't the question HOW as important as the question WHAT, while we are waiting for the global orgies of the Millenium? What are the contents of the theatre? What defines the modernity, the contemporaneity of theater? Only modernity, freshness of style and awareness of the market situation (we should not forget that theatre is ALSO a product - and a global network of festivals is the most vivid confirmation of it) and are they not the essence of art?

We put this question, we want to and dare to put this question - does the theatre have the meaning of topicality that goes hand in hand with formal, aesthetic and eternal quests as an equal fellow-traveler? End of the 20th century, maybe exactly this year when Jerzy Grotovsky, the most outstanding theatre reformer of the second half of the 20th century, left his "own" laboratory, monastery village in Ponendera, Italy and the Earth as a whole, it is worth listening attentively to his words, that he, already being fatally ill, dedicated to his famous disciples during the last seminar in Volterre: "It is difficult, but not impossible to unite the religious, sacral nature of theater with the egoism of man, the creator, the giddiness of artistic permissibility, it can be compensated only by theatre as the most lively contemporary artistic form. Only one question remains unanswered - what does "today" mean to theatre. I do not know, but I have my suspicions."

These words… And Grotovsky's gesture, in spite of life: a lit cigarette, a glass of wine. The art of living - here and now.

Exactly because of it, this art of living because of art! Let the leit-motif of this years' Homo Novus - the contemporary drama texts for theatre - be one of the possible answers about the role of culture in the social bustle of the global village.

Theatre as a medium between real life and its creative, extratemporary tasks. Homo Novus'99 as an attempt to give a constructive answer - man, human society, his life does not have one single dimension, one single identity. They are numerous. One of its names might be - reality. The present day. Yes and, of course, the delights of getting acquainted and (at least) becoming more informed. The world is shrinking smaller and smaller, thanks to Homo Novus. And Latvian theatre has got its own color and place in this world.

* Latin, trivial. - a young man, courageous upstart, parvenu, denier of accepted norms.