Since the beginnings of Latvian dramaturgy – the first musical comedies by Ādolfs Alunāns – we have favoured chamber drama. When the playwright does not travel beyond the boundaries so recognisable in Latvian literature – his yard, house, land, parish or castle – the scale remains the same. But we started with flair, with poetess Aspazija's grand opuses of the history of the Latvian nation, women's liberation and noble goals. Our poet Rainis' plays featured only heroes, übermensch or people with their gazes trained on the future of the development of nation and humanity.

In drama we like to encounter opportunities for recognisable yet new interpretation. When staging plays by Rūdolfs Blaumanis, a classic, we contemporise his dramaturgy. The young playwrights like Lelde Stumbre, Inga Ābele and Evita Sniedze create socially acute plays, adding new colours to works that seem to speak to the contemporary Latvian in the same way drama did a hundred years ago. The contemporary man, who inhabits a world of computers, is thus exposed both to literature and theatre.

We have no aggressive dramaturgy that would shock and drive the audience to tears; instead, the spectator is slowly torn into pieces through self-examination. This is especially true in plays by Pēteris Pētersons, Gunārs Priede and Pauls Putniņš. Playwrights shy away from writing commercial plays. We like the code language of Māra Zālīte's and Jānis Jurkāns' plays, but the era of reality television takes its toll – we love life stories. The best thing we can do for our confidence is to speak, for we are a taciturn people. Even though a singing one.