New performers have recently moved into the 130-year-old building of the Riga Circus. Having built a stage in the stables, actors Ance, Āris, Klāvs, Reinis and the other members of the theatre company Kvadrifrons are reinvigorating and preserving the tradition of live art in the circus. The name of the group is an acronym in Latvian that conveys their ethos: they are an organisation that can chill with their friends, have bursts of amazing creativity, and whose members are far from unintelligent. And all the while, the strong smell of elephants wafts through the building. Here and there, the life of the previous inhabitants makes itself known. Soon shamanistic rituals alternate with clowning around, fortune-telling with illusion juggling, stagecraft with personal choices. Then suddenly, out of Nothing… emerges Theatre.

A few years ago, analogue director Signe Birkova watched 35mm footage from the 1950s of four tigers forced to jump through a ring of fire at the Riga Circus and saw a parallel with Kvadrifrons and the younger generation of artists. The group moved into the circus building as part of the circus changing directions in 2018. Birkova then spent two years filming on 16mm together with cinematographer Dāvis Smiltiņš, which resulted in a highly subjective documentary portrait of the theatre company. In this group portrait, life backstage and the young actors are coloured in a nostalgic shade, while the theatre itself becomes a strange, albeit serious, mosaic of mysterious processes.