The Sooster School / Final Performances

Ülo Sooster’s legacy × Ilmar Laaban’s poetry × Tartu Uus Teater × actors and directors from TÜ VKA’s 16th cohort

How do you create a production about an artist whose aim was not to depict what he saw, but to expand the viewer’s perception? For whom a picture was not a wall decoration, but an invitation to a journey of discovery. For whom what was depicted had to be one thing and another at the same time—and ideally a third and a fourth as well. And who, alongside all this, was also the last Pallas artist, a repressed person and, in keeping with the previous century, the last genius? How can this be translated into the language of theatre—is it possible?

The production uses drawings by Ülo Sooster, documentary materials from the Tartu Art Museum archive, and poetry by Sooster’s contemporary Ilmar Laaban, whose life took a very different course.

The production was created in collaboration between Tartu Uus Teater (production team), TÜ Viljandi Culture Academy (acting and directing students) and Tartu Art Museum (collection of drawings by Ülo Sooster).

Cast: acting and directing students from the 16th cohort of TÜ VKA’s performing arts programme
HELERIIN LASS
HELERY PIKK
JETE LIISA KIIK
MARGOT LEHTSALU
POLINA KRYUCHKOVA
SAARA KALJUJÄRV
GREGORI JOHANNES NÕMM
JENS-PATRIK RAND
JENSS LOOTUS
KASPER SEBASTIAN SILLA
LEONHARD SASS TAALMAA
VALERI BAŽENOV

Writer-director: IVAR PÕLLU
Artist: KRISTIINA PÕLLU
Composer: TAUNO AINTS
Lighting designer: RENE LIIVAMÄGI

Premiere: 25 October 2025, small hall of Tartu Uus Teater

Partners: Sooster Foundation; TÜ Viljandi Culture Academy; Tartu Art Museum
Supported by: Estonian Ministry of Culture; City of Tartu; Estonian Cultural Endowment