19 Facts About Alvis Hermanis

Alvis Hermanis is a Latvian theatre director, set designer and actor.

Alvis Hermanis was forced to leave sport at the age of 15 for health reasons.

Alvis Hermanis obtained his first theatre and stage experience when he attended Riga pantomime studio under Roberts Ligers.

From 1981 until 1982 Alvis Hermanis attended the Riga Peoples artist studio.

Alvis Hermanis continued his education from 1984 until 1988 in the theatre department of Latvian State conservatory.

In 2003, Alvis Hermanis directed Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, which won the Young Director's Award.

Alvis Hermanis has frequently worked at the Burgtheater, Austria's national theatre, where he presented Arthur Schnitzler's Das weite Land in 2011 and a new version of Gogol's The Government Inspector in 2015.

Around 2009 Alvis Hermanis adapted eight of Vasily Shukshin's short stories for stage in a collaboration with the Theatre of Nations in Moscow, entitled Shukshin's Stories.

Alvis Hermanis transformed the Great Festival Hall into a gigantic museum with moving walls and the singers into museum custodians and personalities from the paintings shown.

In 2015 Alvis Hermanis cancelled a production with the Thalia Theater planned for spring 2016.

Alvis Hermanis has seven children, including 3 with his wife, Latvian actress Kristine Kruze.

In 2007 Alvis Hermanis refused to receive the Order of the Three Stars from the hands of the president Valdis Zatlers.

Alvis Hermanis eventually received it in 2012, when Zatlers had already left office.

The founder of the New Riga Theatre, Alvis Hermanis has a fantastic memory for the details and objects of ordinary life.

Alvis Hermanis is one of those few who appreciate the disappearing reality.

Alvis Hermanis looks into the past with a nostalgia tinted with irony and tries not to stylize but to reconstruct it.

The real hero of this and many other Alvis Hermanis' productions was time, a time that stood still.

Alvis Hermanis looks at the former USSR simultaneously from inside and outside.

Alvis Hermanis is a master of verbatim but of theatrical verbatim.