INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY THEATRE
“HOMO NOVUS 2001” RIGA, SEPTEMBER 14-23

"Thirsty Birds"
Kristo Sagor
We. The Lonely Ones. At the Airport.
New Theatre Institute of Latvia & Dailes Theatre (Latvia)

The idea of the staging the play belongs to the organizers of the Non-commercial theatre festival - action Homo Alibi 2001 - the New Theatre Institute of Latvia. During the festival which took place in May there were presented three German contemporary plays in collaboration with Goethe Institute Riga and played at unconventional sites. The director Mara Kimele chose to place the action of the performance "Thirsty Birds" /Die Durstige Vögel/ in the waiting room at the former Airport in Spilve. The interior made in the style of the Soviet romanticism formed a strange context for the contemporary play written by the young German author Kristo Sagor. Behind the windows small planes are taking off resembling flying birds. The airport becomes the meeting place for people of different age and social status - the place where they express to each other the pains of the past, their anger and complexes. The play tells about the feelings that everybody is searching for, about the maximalism of the teenage years, separation and love. The everyday speech, cursing and pretending mainly serves to reveal the story about loneliness and the fear to expose the true feelings the characters carry inside themselves. In other words it tells about everything that people are hiding in themselves in this time of haste and thoughtlessness in order not to become ridiculous.
The characters of the performance are speaking walking among the spectators, which are sitting in the waiting room like passengers who are waiting for their planes. Some passer-byes (the actors unexpectedly springing out of the rows of spectators) are promptly drawn into the action of the performance. It gives the audience a feeling of being involved into the performance. The presence of the cameras and video projections of the happening shown on the walls are opening up another dimension of the public space for the spectators.
    Mara Kimele (1943) has graduated from the State Drama Institute in Moscow, the master-class of Anatoly Efross. She has worked in Valmieras Drama Theatre, New Riga Theatre and staged performances at the National and Liepaja theatres as well as in the independent theatre Kabata. In her performances she is experimenting with the model of the psychological theatre. Already since 70s M. Kimele has taken interest in the relations existing between the space and performance (like in the production "Medea" by J. Anouilh staged at the Simanis Church in Valmiera in 1975) trying to find possibly authentic ways how to induce feelings. 
Kristo Sagor was born in 1976 in Oldendorf, Germany. His first play "We Are Fine" /Es geht uns gut/ was written in 1993, the play "A Piece of a Shit"/Das Miststuck/ - in 1994. Both plays were staged in the Youth Club of the Lubeck Theatre. Kristo Sagor has studied literature, linguistics and theatre arts in Berlin. Since 1996 he has been working as a director at the theatre TREKJOP in Berlin. In 1999 he staged his play "Three Without Simona" /Dreier ohne Simone/ in the Cultural center Spandau placed in Berlin. 
The "Thirsty Birds" was written in 2000 and it was staged at the theatre Bochum. There were two more plays written in 2000 - "Unlicked" /Unbeleckt/ and "Adam point Eve"/Adam komma Eve/.
Venue - Spilve Airport