Rūdolfa Blaumaņa un Žemaites lugas: divu baltu klasiku darbi teātrim

ENRūdolfs Blaumanis (1863-1908) and Žemaitė (1845-1921) wrote for theatre roughly in the same period: the Latvian classic composed his plays over the period from 1890 to 1908, and the famous Lithuanian writer penned her comedies and soliloquies from the 1897 to 1913. No one would doubt the talent of these two authors: their plays have been staged and recast already for more than a hundred years. Žemaitės comedy "The Three Svveethearts" was re-staged at the Lithuanian Russian Drama Theatre in 2012. The play is very popular in amateur theatres, so that it is impossible to determine exactly how many times and where it has been performed. R. Blaumanis is well known not only in Latvia but also abroad. His plays "The Evil Spirit", "The Prodigal Son", "Tailors' Days at Silmači", "The Indrans" and "Thieves" have been staged in Lithuania. It is interesting to compare the theatre writings of these two excellent playwrights and try to understand what were their ultimate concerns, what kinds of conflicts they both discerned in their milieus, and how they expressed that in their plays. The two authors are very different: one wrote for amateurs, the other - for professional theatres, one's plays were published underground, ignoring the censorship, the other was forced to adapt to the circumstances. One chose satire, the other - humour and mild irony. Regardless of these differences, both authors had a common overarching central theme - human being, men's and women's efforts to overcome the obstacles of life around as well as inside themselves were of utmost significance for R. Blaumanis and Žemaitė alike. As Wolfgang Iser says, art is necessary because it is human selfinterpretation. We would certainly be poorer without the self-interpretations that the two Baltic classics - R. Blaumanis and Žemaitė - have handed over to us.