Siberian Haiku

“Siberian Haiku” is a paper-animation production created in a visually poetic and technologically refined style, tracing the experience and vision of a young Lithuanian boy, Algis, as he is deported to Siberia together with his family. The performance is based on the multi-award-winning Lithuanian graphic novel of the same title, created by writer Jurga Vilė and artist Lina Itagaki. Director Valters Sīlis and the creative team have shaped this work into a technically nuanced and emotionally rich story for audiences of all generations from the age of 10 about the deportation experience of the peoples of the Baltic states, revealing these pages of history from a child’s point of view.

In 1941, on the night of 13 to 14 June, 15,425 Latvian civilians were arrested in Soviet-occupied Latvia and deported to NKVD concentration camps or lifelong exile in remote parts of the USSR. Among those deported were 3,751 children under the age of 16. In the same night, arrests and deportations took place in Lithuania and Estonia. Before that, on 22 May, the same had happened in Ukraine and Poland, on 12 and 13 June in Moldova, and on 19 and 20 June it continued in Belarus. This was done in order to destroy people who might organize resistance to the occupation regime, while additionally obtaining cheap slave labor for the gulags and settlements in Siberia.

Creative team:

Director, playwright: Valters Sīlis

Set designer: Uģis Bērziņš

Music: Gatis Krievāns

Video artist: Toms Zeļģis

Lighting designer: Uldis Andersons

Translator: Dace Meiere

Cast: Rihards Zelezņevs, Baiba Vanaga, Elīna Bojarkina, Kristīna Varša, Artūrs Putniņš

Rules: Theatre visit rules - Puppet Theatre

Performance of the Year for Children and/or Teenagers. "Spēlmaņu nakts" 2023/2024

Foreign Jury Award. "Spēlmaņu nakts" 2023/2024

LMT Theatre Innovation Award. "Spēlmaņu nakts" 2023/2024