Two veteran actors will receive lifetime achievement honors at an upcoming awards ceremony. Latvian Theatre Workers Union board members selected Inta Tirole and Juris Bartkevičs for the awards.
Inta Tirole has spent 66 years on stage as an actress at the Latvian National Theatre, making her currently the oldest performing actress in Latvian theatres. She joined the theatre’s acting troupe in 1960 after graduating from the Theatre Faculty.
Over the years, Tirole created her own mono-performances and stage projects, including William Russell’s Shirley Valentine, Ēriks Hānbergs’ Vīrieši man sirdi plosa, Raimonds Auškāps’ Tāda dzīve, Roger Hall’s Grāmatu draudzeņu klubs, and Laima Muktupāvela’s Šampinjonu derība.
Most recently, she appeared in the large hall of the Latvian National Theatre playing her newest role in Ināra Slucka’s staging Viss par Ievu.
Juris Bartkevičs has a creative career spanning more than five decades, closely connected with the Liepāja Theatre and the Dailes Teātris. From 1970 to 2004, he worked as an actor at the Liepāja Theatre, where he collaborated with director Oļģerts Kroders and played roles such as Lester in Maria Stuart, Razumikhin in Crime and Punishment, Hamlet and Claudius in various productions of Hamlet, Trigorin in The Seagull, and the title role in Peer Gynt.
Bartkevičs also served as the artistic director and director of the Liepāja Theatre from 1996 to 2004. In 2004, he joined the troupe of the Dailes Teātris, where his roles have included Mark Rothko in Łukasz Twarkowski’s production Rotkho
.
Bartkevičs initiated the staging of Jānis Lūsēns and Māra Zālīte’s rock opera Kaupēn, mans mīļais! in 1999 and participated in Juris Kulakovs and Jānis Peters’ musical Stikla kalns in 2003. He also directed plays such as Lilioms, Salna pavasarī, and the operettas Nakts Venēcijā and Vīnes valsis. His other performance credits feature Denis Diderot in Izvirtulis, Roy M. Cohn in Eņģeļos Amerikā, Grandfather in Apglabājiet mani zem grīdas (which earned him a Spēlmaņu nakts award nomination), Sigmund Freud in Pusnakts šovā ar Jūdu Iskariotu, the Military Man who is also General Jānis Balodis in the documentary detective story Kur pazuda valsts, and Andrejs Pumpurs in Spīdolas naktī.
Furthermore, he participates in Twarkowski’s international production Orākuls, which premiered at the Ruhrtriennale. Bartkevičs holds the Order of the Three Stars awarded in 2020, alongside the Žanis Katlaps and Harijs Liepiņš awards and multiple Spēlmaņu nakts prizes, while Tirole received the Alfreds Amtmanis-Briedītis prize in 2011 and the Cross of Recognition from the Latvian government in 2007.
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