Supervisor: Senior Lecturer Luule Epner
Opponents: Professor Emeritus (EMTA), dr Lea Tormis
dr Katri Aaslav-Tepandi
Summary:
The Doctor's thesis studies the effect of timespace on the actor's on-stage expressiveness, above all as exemplified by the life's work of the legendary Estonian actress Salme Reek. Salme Reek (1907-1996) was an original actress whose creative period covers almost seventy years of the slightly more than a hundred year history of the Estonian professional theatre founded in 1906 and the theatrical memory of more than three generations of the theatre public. In her work, Salme Reek always tried to preserve the more valuable part of the theatre of the past, concentrating on the character's inner world characteristic of psychological realism, and to open the deeper layers of the roles with the help of the means characteristic of the modernist theatre. As a result of the present study it became apparent that an actor's work is closely connected with its socio-cultural background of changing times. The surrounding timespace directs the creative choices of an actor. An essential precondition of an actor's creative longevity and versatility is constant work with herself or himself, an ability and will to adapt and develop in accordance to the changes and development of his or her social and creative environment.