Latvian Theatre in Pandemic Transition : Experience of Baltic Drama Forum 2020

Abstract

The breakout of Covid-19 pandemic and the related social distancing require- ments closed all theatres and forced everyone to move to digital platforms and look for alternative presence solutions in public events. It also made us reconsider the term liveness in the context of screen-mediated theatrical experience and brought to hybrid solutions that would have not been accepted previously. The article tackles the development of theatre processes during the first period of emergency state in Latvia (March – June, 2020) and aims to document the experience of theatre forum organized at the beginning of November 2020 literally on the threshold of the second-wave related lockdown in culture. It aims to address to immediate impacts of Covid-19 to theatre ecosystem in Latvia and illustrate the ongoing way to inevitable changes in culture industry.

Translators, Interpreters, and the Creative Class: an Exploration of the Post-Covid Profession

“…For other members of the creative class, the enforced confinements also proved vastly limiting. In some instances, in the world of theatre and the dramatic arts, the complete moratorium on live events and social mixing required significant accommodations to be made (e. g., see Mellēna-Bartkeviča [2021]; Hylland [2022]), with some events able to be moved online, as demonstrated by the virtual staging of Shakespeare's plays by the prestigious Globe Theatre in London [Marcsek-Fuchs 2022]. In general, though, the uptake of remote work proved challenging for creative professionals.…”