9 Lives

The current class of the youth studio of the Estonian Theatre for Young Audiences is now in its second year and preparing for their graduating production, which draws inspiration from the poems of Jüri Üdi and Juhan Viiding and Andres Ehin.

Behind the title 9 Lives we seek answers to the questions: who is a human today, what are they made of, how have they become what they are, what has it done to the world and, most importantly – what is my part in the whole. How to find your own face and accept the fact that a stranger has a stranger’s face? And in the light of it all – how to live in a way that you don’t sleep away yourself and the world around you, and do your bit to make it a better place for all of us?

Our studio actors are at a wonderful age – so much to explore, to consider and reconsider. Everyone has a chance to live at least nine lives and to find their own way. The poems of Ehin and Üdi/Viiding with their surreal world and sharp meaning, offer for that a universal mirror of the soul.

Visual theatre with various means of play (material, object, puppet, physical and multimedia theatre) supports the goal of content – to break the whole into particles and then gather it up again bit by bit and find an optimistic perspective of the future.

In two years, youth studio classes have been taught by Doris Tislar, Laura Kukk, Maria Ehrenberg, Laura Nõlvak, Getter Meresmaa, Taavi Tõnisson, Hardi Möller, Steffi Pähn, Mirko Rajas, Leino Rei

Photos by Mirko Rajas and Targo Miilimaa

Cast

Youth Studio actors Herta Marie Aadli, Marta Liise Demjanov, Reelika Kullamaa, Lauren Etverk, Marta Oru, Mia Johanna Tartu, Marie Teppart, Astrid Ulpus, Mirjam Äkke