ARCHIVES 2015 / NO51 Mu Naine Vihastas

Images are at the heart of our lives. There are images we barely glance at but that stay with us, and images that watch us. There are images we create and collect, without knowing how to sort and where to store them. There are images that our memory hoards, more or less consciously. And then, there's the image we have of ourselves, the one we try to project to others... In NO51 My wife made a scene and deleted all our holiday pictures, Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo, two Estonian artists, tell the story of a man alone with himself, after his wife and children have left. Following an argument, his wife destroyed all the pictures they'd taken while vacationing on a paradisiac island. With the help of a few people he brought together, the husband begins a strange and desperate attempt to recreate his own memories and reconstitute the pictures that have been erased. Locations and characters change, but he goes to great length to recreate the pictures' framing, composition, and meaning. The audience watches this odd attempt to contract time and space in a hotel room turned giant photo studio. A way to stop the world from turning, to assert one's existence, and to show the importance of what we've been through.

Ene-Liis Semper, scenographer and video artist, studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Tiit Ojasoo, director, attended the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Their meeting gave birth to Teater NO99, whose auto-destruction is planned for 2024 or 2025: when they created their company in Tallinn in 2004, Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo began with their first show, NO99, a countdown that will end with NO00. They are now halfway through. In February 2015 they created N046 Savisaar, which takes the form of a Greek tragedy to attack populism, in the form of Tallinn's mayor, Edgar Savisaar. In one of their previous plays, NO75 Unified Estonia, they went as far as to create a fictitious political party whose founding “convention” was attended by over 7,000 spectators! But some of their shows, like NO51 My wife made a scene..., are more intimate. Experimenting with different “formats,” they pay particularly close attention to art history and to social questions. Now at the head of a theatre that shares the name of their company, Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo have travelled the world with their plays, but have rarely come to France. The public is now invited to discover their particular brand of theatre.