Silver Vahtre's personal exhibition of theatre posters

During the festival You can visit Estonian artist and scenographer Silver Vahtre's personal exhibition of theater posters he has designed in the last 25 years.

Silver Vahtre writes:

THEATRE MONTH
Soviet Union of Estonia Ministre of Culture 1986

For the next thrilling contact with theatre I found inspiration in Theatre Government's order for young people to design a poster for theatre month. They probably wanted someone from the younger successful poster artists back then to work on the subject.

The task was quite difficult. Besides the propagandist heading, there was hardly any common theatrical image. Fortunately they didn't exept a political poster either, and rosen idea to use commedia dell' art as a style was not disputed.

But this is where the headache began. Okay, we could photograph a production poster in commedia dell' arte, but who should we photographe? We couldn't possibly use actors from each and everyone of our theatre's, but who should we use, and who should we leave aside? Should we use professional models? They on the other hand lead directly to the Mall. In the end we desided to invite artists we know to the photo shoot, who would have nothing to do with theatre and known more from Kuku Club than on the steets.

Along with photographer Tiit Vernik we built a simple set in local tones, asked our friends-artist to come to the studio and worked in pleasent collegial spirit. That's why the theatre month in 1986 is represented by designer and poster artist Aili Ermel, designer, poster artist and graphic artist Jüri Kass and metal artist Ene Kivilo.

More time consuming than shooting at the studio was creating a logo for theatre month. Actually they didn't hire me to design one, I wanted to come to a symbolic solution myself. Drawing theatrical masks in the manner of yin-yang took a lot of effort, it turned out. It was worth this much, though, that 20 years later, when I had to come up with a symbol for theatre month to celebrate theatre day as a host at Theatre "Endla", the old logo was as good as new. All I had to do was to scan it into computer, and even that was done for me by my wife Mall.

But why did I name the making of this particular theatre poster as a thrilling contact with theatre? Because we had to rent costumes from Estonia Theatre, and for the second time life took me behind the altar of the tempel. And the thrill was eager to come. Of course backstairs, hallways leading to dressing rooms, costumers, costume storages and even it's manager interesting, but I found actors even more impressing. Especially two men from the opera choir, who were smoking Prima in a completely unromantic smoke room with their fake beards and their fake coats having their fake swords hanging from the waist, discussing what to buy their children for dinner at the same time listening to rustling intercome to tell them to go on stage. All this was quite syrrealisstic and inspiring. The treas at Tammsaare Park grew themselves leaves, life seemed eternal and the joints of the Russian empire were rustling.