TARTU CHILDREN'S THEATRE
Tartu Children's Theatre was founded in October 1989. It had emerged from Jaan Toomingas's studio at the Vanemuine theatre; the studio was active from 1985-1989. In starting years, the repertoire of the theatre was dominated by the folklore of small natio ns. The group aimed to search for and show an integral world view that the contemporary world had lost sight of. Thus the group staged plays inspired by the folklore and music of peoples such as the Udmurts, Laps, Jews, Chukchi, Irish, native Americans an d many others. With little butaforia, the actors performed soulful performances of poems and songs that had their origin in the work of Tagore, W.B. Yeats, Uku Masing and many others. In intellectual circles, the Tartu Children's Theatre was known as the "most magic theatre in Estonia."
By the year of 1994, however, this field seemed to be exhausted. The Theatre started to search for new sources of inspiration. When Mart Kampus became the director in 1997, the Theatre rediscovered its identity and has cont inued uphill ever since. The plays of Mart Kampus are unconventional, playful and theatrical in the positive sense of the word. They contain a message for both children and the adults. He has charmed his audience of all ages with plays such as Huygen's "How to Write a Big Book about Dwarfs", Beagle's "The Last Unicorn", and Ende's "The Neverending story". The rule of thumb for the directors of the Children's Theatre has been that even if a child does not understand every detail of a play the way an adult does, there are theatrical symbols and means (lighting, sound, movement) that captivate even the littlest spectator. Understanding the meaning of a message need not be uniform; rather, the message should have many levels, in order to avoid tedium.
The type of the stage of Tartu Children's Theatre is so-called black box, which creates special possibilities for usage of space. Mass culture has no place here. The small size of the theatre hall (it seats 56) and the absence of a stage minimise the dist ance between the actors and the audience, thus creating an intimate atmosphere that makes it possible to talk about issues that cannot be tackled in bigger theatres.
Our plans for the near future are as follows:
1) Invite actors and directors from other theatres, in order to create new possibilities and impulses for development,
2) Stage plays that enrich children as well as the adults;
3) Bring to the audience new authors and novel problems.
TARTU CHILDREN'S THEATRE
Jaama 14, Tartu, Estonia
phone&fax: (372) 7 403032
e-mail: laste@uninet.ee