During the last decade summer theatre has become an inseparable part of both the Estonian cultural summer and theatre life. Performances beyond the theatre building, in the open air, are naturally nothing new. The first larger-scale open-air performance in Estonia occurred in 1920 on Kaevumäe (Well Hill) in the Viljandi castle hills - it was Oscar Wilde's drama Salome. After the 8th song festival in 1923, the Tallinn Drama Theatre presented, in the Kadriorg stadium, Sophocles's King Oedipus. Some open-air performances were also organised by the Drama Theatre and the Endla Theatre in Pärnu in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the post-war decades, trying to attract a larger number of people, theatres in Pärnu and Viljandi presented at least one open-air performance every season. The repertoire usually included a national-patriotic piece or a classical tragedy. Mighty open-air performances, quite often operas, always constituted the final stage of the song festivals organised every five years. These were productions performed once or twice during a summer and at as large a site as possible. These open-air productions could not become anything more significant or permanent because of the primitive sound systems used and also due to transportation problems - the small number of cars meant that the people attending mostly lived nearby. Therefore for a long time the summer theatre constituted professional troupes who drove their own bus and stage sets from one village to the next and entertained audiences on small stages.

The birth of summer theatre as we know it today occurred in 1977, when the Tallinn Youth Theatre adopted the courtyard of the Dominican monastery in the Tallinn Old Town and staged Molière's The Ridiculous Damsels. The play was performed throughout the summer many times. The Dominican Monastery courtyard became a popular summer theatre location for decades. Two major projects between these old walls were Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, staged by Merle Karusoo in 1981, which lasted over 6 hours, beyond midnight; and the punk-style Hamlet in 1986, a joint effort of Kalju Komissarov and his students. The Dominican Monastery courtyard started an approach leading to today's summer theatre - established locations for one particular theatre where regular new productions form a part of a theatre's repertoire. As a rule, the actors participating in them are members of the same theatre.

scene from seven samurai

Another approach is to find increasingly exotic locations, where, in addition to the innovative elements in the production, visitors are lured by a chance to get to know a remote place which nevertheless is fascinating in a historical or natural sense. This was initiated by the Tallinn Youth Theatre (today's Tallinn City Theatre), where, in 1980, Merle Karusoo had the bold idea of performing a play outside - on the beach of Kloogaranna, 40 km from Tallinn. The production was titled I am Thirteen and depicted the life of schoolchildren in a very daring manner. It was performed, over several summers, more than one hundred times. Beach theatre as a permanent phenomenon was not established, but each summer many a performance now takes place on a bog island or islet, among some castle ruins and of course in farmyards. There is no longer a need for a proper open-air stage, as manor houses, churches and even boiler-houses can be easily adapted for performances in the changeable Estonian weather. Professional theatres are also looking for new venues, although performances in exotic locations usually take place on the principle of the 'project' theatre. In that case, actors from different theatres participate, and producers are companies often set up specifically for one production.

Summer productions are quite numerous in Estonia - 19 in 2004, and 14 new productions in 2005. The more successful of them are performed several summers running. To see all of them requires a hefty purse, a car and a good sense of geography. Under these circumstances it is the more surprising that almost all projects are in fact profitable. The audience is not lacking even when, in addition to a long car drive, the location is accessible only by a subsequent hourly walk along a path through a marsh or across a strait with a motorboat. People have not been deterred even if the performance starts at 4 in the morning or finishes at 2 at night.

The summer theatre repertoire is naturally quite diverse. The past few summers offered serious drama (Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, Arnold Wesker's The Four Seasons), musicals Chicago and outspoken buffoonery (Adam Long, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor's The Bible in Two Hours, and Marc Camoletti's Pyjamas for Six). However, theatre producers seem to be increasingly keen on drawing a clear line between theatre and buffoonery or show business, which is only meant to make money. The actors have no wish to see their audience lying around guzzling beer, and thus the repertoire is chosen more carefully. Examining what goes on during an Estonian cultural summer, we can see that there is an audience for both obvious trash (lightweight entertainment or concerts of pop bands) and for truly good theatre. Still, if there were any shortage of audiences, this would be at the 'rubbish' theatre. Theatre directors are therefore offering more original material for summer productions - stage versions of novels or films, where the harmony between the content of the play and the location becomes essential. Among the plays based on films, I would mention the production based on Federico Fellini's Orchestra rehearsal in the ruins of the Narva Alexander Church, the revival of Thomas Vinterberg's Festen at Rägavere or Sagadi manors, the theatre version of Emil Lotjanu's The Gypsy Camp Vanishes into the Blue, under the ancient trees of a Tartu suburb, and a production relying on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in the abandoned swimming pool in Kadriorg park. Famous literary works were the basis for several productions, such as George Orwell's Animal Farm at the City Theatre and John Fowles' The Ebony Tower at Kalvi manor. We can supplement the list with Lemminkäinen, based on the Finnish epic Kalevala and performed in the Tallinn open-air museum, and by Luigi Pirandello's Man, Beast and Virtue in the Old Town of Pärnu. Together with the above-mentioned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and The Four Seasons, plus various other productions, we get an impressive picture of what has been going on during the last few summers.

scene from a freezing artist

On the other hand, Estonian playwrights have in recent years been commissioned to produce works for specific locations. Good examples here are plays based on Estonian art history - Mart Kivastik's Portrait of a Freezing Artist and Hell Stuff in the Viinistu village art museum, Triin Sinissaar's Bog Boat in the Soontagana stronghold, Kauksi Ülle's Taarka, about a Setu folk singer, performed in the courtyard of the Obinitsa Community Centre in Setumaa, and Jaan Tätte's humorous piece Lantern, performed on the beach at Laulasmaa.

An exciting location and high-quality literary work on which a play is based do not guarantee the artistic success of any production. Summer productions therefore include 'one-summer butterflies', where the area for the audience gets increasingly less populated. Others, however, may well run successfully for many summers, such as The Three Musketeers, staged by Elmo Nüganen in 1995 at the City Theatre.

A visitor to Estonia is advised to go to the fishing village of Viinistu, on the northern coast about 50 km from Tallinn. Jaan Manitski, who was born there and later worked as a manager of the famous Swedish pop group ABBA and in 1992 briefly as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Estonia, has substantially invested in his native village. The previously useless fuel tanks, boiler-house and harbour buildings have been reconstructed into a restaurant and a hotel accommodating one hundred visitors, a concert and performance venue for five hundred, and a museum exhibiting an impressive collection of Estonian art. The art collection inspired the idea last year of staging plays about Estonian artists at Viinistu. The texts were commissioned from the playwright Mart Kivastik and actors mostly came from the Estonian Drama Theatre. Portrait of a Freezing Artist is about Konrad Mägi (1878-1925), one of the best Estonian painters. In 2005 another play was staged: Hell Stuff, based on the life of Eduard Wiiralt (1898-1954), one of our major graphic artists. Both productions present a colourful range of Estonian cultural figures during the first half of the 20th century. The young actors play their predecessors with great gusto and warm humour. The productions contain both comedy and tragedy. For the role of Konrad Mägi, Hendrik Toompere (Jun.) received the best male actor award last year, and the director Aleksander Eelmaa the Great Annual Award of the Estonian Cultural Endowment. Next summer will hopefully bring the third part of the art trilogy, about the painter Elmar Kits (1913-1972) and, therefore reach the second half of the 20th century.

scene from hell stuff

At the other end of the country, in Obinitsa rural municipality, Tartu's Vanemuine Theatre performs Kauksi Ülle's play in the Setu language, called Taarka. Setumaa is a singular historical and ethnic area, divided between Estonia and Russia in the south-eastern corner of Estonia. Taarka is a tragicomedy, with song and dance, about the Setu people's life as subjects of Russia and about their arrival in Estonia. The protagonist of the true-life story, Hilana Taarka, was a lively young woman and a talented singer, who grew up in a wealthy Setu family. When she grew up her father became a drunkard and a gambler who failed to provide her with a proper dowry. According to old Setu customs, she was destined to remain a spinster servant at her brother's house. Taarka could not accept that. She gave birth to illegitimate children and tried to feed them by singing and begging, going from one farm and wedding party to another. Her talent was discovered by the young Finnish folklorist Armas Otto Väisänen, who wrote an article about Taarka and even arranged for her to sing for the Finnish president.

In addition to the fascinating life story of this young woman, the production gives an overview of the Setu cultural heritage - we learn about their farm life, old customs, songs and dances. The main character is played by the actor and poet Merle Jääger, who comes from the same area, and many local singers and dancers participate as well.

Last summer the young director Mart Koldits of the Tallinn City Theatre, together with drama students, staged George Orwell's cult novel Animal Farm. He blended extracts from other works into it, including a longer episode from Slavomir Mrozhek's play In Open Sea. Koldits himself called his work a power game. The production has a lot of youthful sizzle, music and movement, but it has to be admitted that the authors failed to find a precise social equivalent in contemporary Estonia to Orwell's totalitarian society. As an advertising trick, the theatre offered tickets to MPs for half price, but our people's representatives could sit through the performance quite unperturbed - the arrows of satire never reached them.

Two summer productions that became rather notorious will unfortunately not be performed next summer. The currently youngest and hottest theatre in Estonia, 'NO 99', discovered Kadriorg Park, more specifically an abandoned swimming pool quite near the presidential palace, soon to be demolished, as a suitable venue and adapted it for a production based on Akira Kurosawa's world-famous film Seven Samurai (1954). Samurai is a story about seven men prepared to defend a small, poor village against robbers. In performance technique and design, the director Tiit Ojasoo and artist Ene-Liis Semper maintained the samurai style, with its combat moves, but introduced many parallels with contemporary Estonia, so that the whole story could almost be seen as a defence of the old swimming pool against demolition. Interestingly, a shorter version for children was produced as well and performed during matinees.

The highest domestic award - the National Culture Award - was given to Estonian Ballads, which premiered in summer 2004 and was performed again last summer. It was produced by conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, one of the most talented and internationally best-known Estonian musicians, and the head of the little Von Krahl Theatre, Peeter Jalakas. The Ballads were performed in the hay barn of a former collective farm in Kuusalu, near Tallinn. The barn was considerably reconstructed and redesigned for the occasion.*

The new theatre summer of 2006 will soon be at hand and all theatres are preparing something for the season. We can be certain that the three summer months will not be a dull period and thus Estonia can be recommended as a summer theatre destination even to the most demanding theatre lover.

More specific information can be found on the English-language homepage of the Estonian Theatre Information Centre: http://www.teater.ee and the database of Estonian cultural events: http://www.culture.ee.

* More about Estonian Ballads in de cultu civili estonico No I (V) MMV.

Jaak Allik (1946), politician, theatre director and critic.