On the Estonian national Independence Day, the 24th of February 2022, Russia started a war in Ukraine. The Estonian border town Narva is situated between two civilisations: it is only a winding river that divides Estonia from Russia. Narva has a unique socio-political status: once a beautiful example of Baroque architecture in Europe, the town got almost totally bombed in the Soviet air raid during the Second World War. After that Soviet immigrants moved in and now only 5% of the inhabitants are Estonians. Until 2018 Narva was neglected by the rest of Estonia both culturally and politically. Narva is situated 200 km from the flourishing capital city of Tallinn. The whole area of East Estonia was and still is the site of ecological exploitation (factories, mines, electricity plants). In 2018 a new performing arts venue Vaba Lava (Open Space) was opened in Narva. Before there was no professional theatre functioning in the third largest city of Estonia. The inhabitants of Narva were (and part of them still are) under the influence of Russian propaganda. To win this part of the population culturally to our, democratic side, is the matter of sustainability – both as a country and culture.

In recent years Narva has seen a wide range of innovative theatre performances.

The presentation asks: what is the power of theatre? Which strategies can theatre use to cast attention on social and political issues?

Madli Pesti is a theatre researcher and critic from Estonia. She has studied at the University of Aarhus, at the Humboldt University and Free University Berlin and holds a PhD in theatre research from Tartu University, Estonia (dissertation“Political Theatre and its Strategies in the Estonian and Western Cultures”, 2016). Pesti is working as a senior researcher in the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and runs the practice as a research PhD programme. Her research areas are political and applied theatre, performance analysis and theory.

In 2018 she published “100 Years of Estonian Theatre”, an overview of Estonian theatre in the past and today. She has also been writing theatre reviews since 2002, winning the award as the best theatre critic at the Estonian Annual Theatre Awards in 2019. In 2015–2017 she curated the programme of the performing arts centre Open Space (Vaba Lava) in Tallinn, together with Thomas Frank.