NO99 was a theatre in Tallinn, Estonia that began to operate in February 2005. The theatre closed in 2019, as a result of a joint decision of the whole artistic team.

NO99 has been a theatre, but also much more; it was a serial work of contemporary art. At the beginning of it was an idea that considering the inherently finite nature of time and its finality, time should instead be measured backwards: NO is an abbreviation of the word “number” and 99 has decreased by one with each new production. This served as the impetus for the directors Tiit Ojasoo and Ene-Liis Semper’s idea for a theatre where only 99 stage productions will open and which thus moves along sequential numbers to zero, towards oblivion. The nature of theatre, this naturally ephemeral and temporal art form, is contained in that immutable disappearance. Theatre is risk. Every stage production at Theatre NO99 was prepared with the feeling that it was the final production.

Theatre NO99 artistic director was Tiit Ojasoo, and Ene-Liis Semper was the chief stage designer-director. The troupe consisted of 10 actors, eight men, and two women. Every season, the theatre produced two to four new stage productions. They aspired towards artistic exactingness and social relevance. Texts were often composed by the directors themselves (or in cooperation with actors). Adaptations of film screenplays have been produced on several occasions. In some cases, finished drama texts have also been brought to the stage. Some of the authors that have been produced are McDonagh, Kurosawa, Tarkovski, Jarry, Mishima, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and others. Plays have been staged in the open air as well: in an old swimming pool (Seven Samurais), and in three abandoned airplane hangars (King Ubu). The theatre also organized so-called one-time “actions”, in which the success or failure of a somewhat crazy idea was tested.

In 2017, Theatre NO99 was awarded the XIV Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, in Rome:

[…] Theatre NO99 is anything but a simple playing space. On the contrary, it is a centre of theatrical experiment that has thrived on continuing challenges, in search of the furthest limits of the art of theatre, even leading to a breaking point where the artists and technicians working on their shows could abandon the field, after exhausting fights in the core of the group, to succeed in giving value to their respective views. In this way Theatre NO99 has shown how theatre can only be reborn by putting itself radically in question, in order to begin life again with a fiery enthusiasm demanding serious attention, especially from some European countries with a more lukewarm theatrical point of view.

< photo Tiit Ojasoo and Ene-Liis Semper by Matthias Horn

@ FIT

NO42 El Dorado: the Clowns’ Raid of Destruction
2016 Edition
30.09 – 09.10

NO55 Ash and Money
2015 Edition
12.10 – 18.10