“Cultural foot”: Each new production in the opera means four sea containers with costumes and props

Sandis Voldiņš, member of the board of the Latvian National Opera and Ballet, says that three to four new productions are created every season. In turn, each new production with its necessary accessories, including costumes, “means three to four sea containers”. “That place is just running out,” says Voldiņš. “Storage conditions are extremely important. Proper accounting is important so that you generally know where you have what is and where it came from. These are things that we have been quite actively dealing with for the last three or four years,” says Voldiņš.

Opera and Ballet is scheduled to hold its first public auction this September. Sale. In it, Latvian theater collectives or amateur collectives will have the opportunity to purchase both decorations and historical costumes from performances. “It’s not so much a question of money, but more of a story about how you recycle things,” emphasizes a member of the opera’s board.

Līga Kjapsņa, head of the costume department of the Latvian National Opera and Ballet, explains that costumes and fabrics stored in the warehouse can be reused only on the condition that they are in perfect order. “There is a person in the warehouse who monitors and organizes it all. This makes it possible to reuse the same costumes for other productions over and over again, even three times,” said Kjapsnia.

In her opinion, it is extremely profitable to invest in an employee who is only engaged in organizing and arranging the warehouse. For example, the opera has also created a digital costume bible. Each new production has a digital description, including a compilation of images of what each soloist’s costume looks like. “This allows resources to be reused,” says Kjapsnia.

In opera and ballet, fabrics and other materials are also dyed on site, as it is impossible to buy everything needed in one tone for the performance. Thus, representatives of a rare profession – textile dyers – are also attracted.

Also in other Latvian theaters, for example the Latvian Puppet Theatre, a lot of thought is put into how to use as little new resources as possible, but to use already available ones more. So, for example, the mustaches of the puppet show puppets are made from artificial grass stems, which can be found in the interior of the Puppet Theater. The mustache of the stems is painted over with a marker in a black tone.

Latvian Puppet Theater workshop artist Inese Zelmane states that she was brought up in such a way as not to throw anything out as much as possible. “When we moved, our workshops have shrunk from a penthouse to a one-room apartment,” says Zelmane. “I pack many things in boxes and take them to youth centers, to art schools, offer them to children in work training classes.”

As a good example of the use of “residue-free technology” in the Latvian Puppet Theater, she cites the play “Knight whose teeth hurt”. The puppets in the show were made from various household items, giving them a second life.

The program “Kultūrpēda” is financially supported by the Latvian Environmental Protection Fund. “Red Dot Media” SIA is responsible for the content of the program.

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