Travestied Myths of European Culture in the Production of J. J. Jillinger
Travestied Myths of European Culture in the Production of J. J. Jillinger

Summary/Abstract: The main hero of my story is a young man. However, not so young as you might imagine when you get acquainted with his public activities. Born in 1966, he is now 35 years old. First of all, there is no simple answer to as simple question as to what his name is. When he began to study theatre directing at the Latvian Academy of Culture at the beginning of the 1990s, he was enrolled under the name of Raimonds Rupeiks. However his first production Emma Bovary in 1995 was signed by the name of J. J. Jillinger. After some time he disclosed that his stage name had been derived from the name of the famous American gangster Dillinger who was a successful bank robber in the 1920s. Jillinger considers himself to be an intellectual gangster of Latvian culture. Moreover, his claims to intellectualism are based on a firm ground. His productions, including the stage versions of his own playscripts, are based on highly valuable literary works which mostly belong to modernism and post-modernism. Many of these authors were first introduced to the Latvian theatre by Jillinger. For instance, Vladimir Nabokov with Invitation to a Beheading, Isaac Bashevis Singer with The Musician and the Prostitute, Peter Handke with The Ride Across Constance, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with Venus in Furs. He has also worked with Goethe’s Faust, August Strindberg’s Games with Fire, Tankred Dorst’s Fernando Krapp Wrote This Letter, Samuel Becketts’ Molloy, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Don Juan, Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters.[...]

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