The performance “Bazaar of Souls” by the Dirty Deal Teatro, which debuted in September 2017, was created with a support of the British Council.
It was played not only in Rīga, but also in regions of Latvia, in the spring 2018 visiting Latgale. After performances in Upīte, Viļaka, Rēzekne and Daugavpils, playwright Justīne Kļava took part in a discussion with the audience, talking over the essence of the performance and focusing on understanding the meaning of discrimination.
In the centre of the play, there is a community of six students living in Latvia, whose destinies are shaped not by the geopolitical location of the country between the West and the East, but by uncertainty for their future and living in times of unsolved social conflicts arising from the past. The leading characters form their impressions of each other not by their experience in the real life, but based on stories of their fathers, grandfathers and even great grandfathers and populist posts in the social media, degrading coexistence of ethnic groups to an unprecedented level. During the performance, 6 students get in an intellectual fight, fighting not for liberating themselves from the aggressor, but for liberating themselves from stereotypes and their grandfathers’ ghosts of the past.
More than 4000 spectators have seen this short play in a one and a half years.
In 2017/2018, the play received the prize as The Play of the Year and The Short Play of the Year at “Spēlmaņu nakts” and was a winner of foreign experts’ choice award.
The play is an event of the programme of Latvia’s Centenary.