Sonja

Melodramatic but also hugely amusing and poetic, this production owes much to the tremendous acting of Gundars Abolins and Jevgenijs Isajevs.

- Hugues Le Tanneur, Les Inrockuptibles

"The character created by Tatiana Tolstaya has strongly contrasting qualities - ugly on the outside but very sensitive on the inside, a hard life and a delicate soul," explains director Alvis Hermanis. "I decided on a male actor to interpret these polar opposites because it's not so much about becoming a woman as understanding women. We don't want to impersonate a woman, we want to create a feminine image, a character, and talk about her soul. I doubt that the soul has a gender." Since 1997, this award-winning Latvian director (Young Directors Award at the Salzburger Festpiele 2003 and the European New Reality Theatre prize amongst others) has been in artistic charge of the Jaunais Rigas Teatris theatre in Riga, a company which has won over audiences at the major European festivals thanks to the originality of his work and a top quality group of actors.

At times ironic, compassionate, grotesque and sad, this work sketches out a portrait of a lonely, not very attractive and rather difficult woman who one day receives a passionate love letter which will change her life for ever.

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