EFFECT

Lucija Preble

EFFECT

A Love Experiment

Premiere -

• 14.09.24.

In the New Hall

Performance in 2 acts

The formula for happiness remains undiscovered, and the theory of love undeveloped. And yet we want nothing more and at the same time nothing less than happiness and love from life, do we not?

"Effect" tells the story of two young people who cannot decide whether their love is genuine or merely a side effect of antidepressants. They are part of a clinical trial, but love and the bodily changes it causes threaten to ruin it, or turn it into a sensation if the researchers manage to prove that love is caused by the drugs being studied.

What poets have written about for thousands of years may come true... Of course, with one caveat: as long as we have the right medication. Love that happens on demand, happiness that can be switched on whenever a doctor has prescribed the necessary recipe - whether it is paradise or hell, each person can choose for themselves. The ending depends on perspective - what do we want to believe in: love, medicine, or some third party making money by manipulating human emotions?

Mental and physical health and well-being are at the center of attention for the modern affluent person. We devote time to rest, go into nature, try not to worry too much, yet life still comes a moment when we are burned out or pressed to the ground and completely helpless because of depression. Pharmaceutical companies and neurologists, psychiatrists and other doctors continue to insist that depression - a condition in which a person no longer wants anything from life - is triggered by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain that can be "fixed". A little serotonin, a little dopamine, and everything should fall back into place. Others warn about the consequences of antidepressants - dependence on chemicals and the denial of one's own negative feelings.

British playwright and author of the HBO series "Succession" Lucy Prebble has received three Emmy Awards and three Olivier Awards for Best Playwriting (including for the play "Effect"). Her play "Effect" offers an experiment - what would happen if the drugs that make us happy also made us open to love? Would that be the true and foolproof formula for happiness and the theory of love? Or yet another lie - an illusion we have created for ourselves so that we do not have to get to know life in all its variety - in success and failure, joy and sorrow, in health and sickness?

Cast: Kristīne Nevarauska (Dr. Laura Tērauda), Andris Bulis (Dr. Roberts Sīlis), Marta Lovisa Jančevska (Kate Berga), Toms Veličko (Tristan Frejs)

Cast:

Director - Diāna Kaijaka, translator - Matīss Gricmanis, set and costume designer - Ieva Kauliņa, composer - Ernests Valts Circenis, lighting designer - Reinis Zalte