Professor of the Latvian Academy of Culture, Māra Ķimele is a theatre director, who has been creating contemporary productions for fifty years, synthesizing psychological and theatrical forms in plays of various genres.
M. Ķimele is a student of the great director Anatoly Efros, graduating in 1969 at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts – GITIS. Her productions include such authors as V. Shakespeare, H. Ibsen, A. Chekhov, and J. A. Strindberg, J. Anouilh, T. Williams, and others. Notable productions are her interpretations of the works of Latvian classics R. Blaumanis and J. Rainis, as well as plays by present-day playwrights.
M. Ķimele's productions in addition to being psychologically and formally elaborate actor works; an important aspect is the visual space. Here her co-workers are high-level stage designers: Andris Freibergs, Ilmārs Blumbergs and others. M. Ķimele's productions have won the Latvian National Theatre’s Professional Awards several times.
Māra Ķimele is an outstanding professor of theatre actors and directors; she is able to unleash the emerging stage artists for a creative search path as well as being capable of professionally analyzing methods of artistic expressions. Her students work in all Latvian professional theatres, among them are directors Elmārs Seņkovs, Valters Sīlis and Alvis Hermanis (the Director of the New Riga Theatre).
Māra Ķimele was awarded the highest state award of the State of Latvia - the Order of the Three Stars.
He works at the Institute of Literary Research in Warsaw (Polish Academy of Science). He is the editor of the online academic journal „View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture (pismowidok.org). His main interests are contemporary philosophy, theatre, visual arts, literature, and critical political thought. He is the author of the following books: Politics of Theater. Essays on Engaging Art (2008), Godard. Arcades Project (2010), The Idea of Potentiality. The Possibility of Philosophy According to Giorgio Agamben (2013), We Also Have Our Past. Guy Debord and History as a Battlefield (2015). Photo-constellations. On Marek Piasecki (2016), Snapshots from the Tradition of the Oppressed (2017), Chaplin. The Prevision of the Present (2017). He lives in Warsaw.
Prof. Vajdička is a member of the Department of Directing and Dramaturgy of Theatre Faculty of Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava. He has worked as a director in National Theatre in Prague, Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava and Slovak Chamber Theatre in Martin.
He is a director who already during his university studies of theatre science inclined markedly to directing. His qualifications for a theatre theoretician manifested themselves in the dramatic initiative and intellectual approach to a dramatic text, its thorough analysis, and shift of marked accents inside the drama. The basis of this approach does not consist of a radical adaptation of original, but it consists of its innovative interpretation. His productions of Russian classics drew attention not only by the original director's interpretation but also by the synthesis of director's version, exact acting, meaning-carrying creative component and other components of stage work. Moreover, productions of Slovak classics dominated his work as well; here he became, by the overcoming of and often in contrast to the traditional concept of national classic heritage, a pioneer in present modern interpretation.
His important works include productions of plays by Chekhov, Gorky, Ibsen, Moliére or Schiller. Besides directing, prof. Vajdička has also translated theatre plays from French and Russian.
Photo: TASR/Milan Kapusta
