Performances that Disappeared

The article explores the alternative theatre and performance culture of the late 1980s in Latvia focusing on two independent companies that were established in 1987, namely The Experimental Theatre Studio led by theatre director Ilmārs Elerts and The Theatre Studio No. 8 uniting young theatre makers who refused to join the dominant state-funded repertory theatres. Both companies existed only for a few years and their activities and impact on Latvian theatre have not been properly researched until now. The article suggests negotiating the inherited strict binary division in research between professional and non-professional or semi-professional theatre, as well as official and underground culture in case of artistically innovative practices and recognizing the rhizomatic nature of Latvian theatre processes. Both companies are remarkable because of their significantly different aesthetics from the mainstream Latvian theatre of the time. They could be regarded as performative transgressions in terms of both aesthetic choices and organizational models.