FRESH STREET #5 - series of articles: Interview with the Estonian collective Big Wolf Company

Three Sisters draws on Nordic folklore and traditions to explore womanhood, strength, and community. How do you see these themes resonating with international audiences from different cultural contexts?

While lots of our inspiration comes from the 18th to early 20th century, the themes we explore are still highly relevant today. We’re looking at the social norms and pressures placed on women — expectations that do change over time and across cultures, but never fully disappear. There’s always that double demand: to be strong and gentle, hard and soft, independent yet devoted. We’ve seen the show resonate differently depending on the place. Our main audiences have been in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, but recently we’ve opened up more to Central Europe and, thanks to Out There Arts and FRESH STREET, also to the UK. For Eastern European audiences, the themes and imagery click immediately, but for the others, it’s sometimes the “package” that draws attention first. Beating each other with a leafy branch isn’t necessarily an obvious sauna ritual nor is a wood chopping competition recognised as a free time activity. Because of this, we created an online resource for the audience to discover a bit about the background before the show through a QR code. Although, across contexts, women in particular seem to connect deeply with the show, often sharing their own stories of sisterhood, recognition, and longing, after the performance.

The show reflects on historical gender roles through acrobatics and comedy. How do you balance this cultural commentary with accessibility and humour, especially in diverse outdoor settings?

For me, humour is what makes difficult topics bearable. When we started creating Three Sisters, it was right around the time when small-town maternity hospitals in Estonia were being shut down and a future minister commented that there’s no problem as “women could easily give birth in the fields.” Today, it sounds absurd, but just a hundred years ago it would have been perfectly normal. That kind of tension between the ridiculous and the real is where humour becomes essential. I believe that contemporary circus and the performing arts in general, has enormous potential. Most of our audience would be unlikely to come to a lecture about gender roles, especially in rural areas where we often perform, but they can be deeply touched by this show and the stories it carries. Outdoors, surrounded by people who may or may not have been exposed to contemporary circus, we’ve found that mixing humour, beauty, and sorrow opens a door. And since most of our shows are free, the audience is incredibly diverse. Some walk away entertained, some deeply moved - we can’t control how far the story travels in each person, but we can offer the invitation.

Big Wolf Company is the first professional contemporary circus troupe in Estonia. How has this pioneering role shaped your artistic identity across international stages?

Being among the first Estonian circus troupes has definitely added a certain factor of curiosity, something new and exotic that tickles the interest of international presenters. Still this is just something to awaken the interest, but then needs to be backed up by the quality and uniqueness of performances. Throughout the years we have worked more towards the Baltic scene rather than a separate Estonian circus scene. Estonia alone still develops slowly, but in the collaboration between the three Baltic states, we’ve found our strength and way forward. There’s a lot of cross-Baltic troupes around, also Three Sister is performed by two Estonians and one Latvian, and most of Big Wolf’s creations involve Latvian and/or Lithuanian artists. We believe that the Baltic circus scene is something unique, built from a deep sense of community and this is what we find important to share. As many know, Lizeth and I (Grete Gross, editor’s note), as the founders of Big Wolf Company, are also the main organisers of EPICIRQ showcase - an artist-run showcase for Baltic contemporary circus. I believe that carrying these very different, but interconnected roles reflects upon the way we create and collaborate within the Baltics.

Why was it important for you to present Three Sisters at the 2025 Out There Festival, and how do you see the FRESH STREET #5 international conference contributing to visibility and exchange for emerging companies from the Baltic region?

Performing at Out There Festival was important for several reasons. It was our first performance in the UK, which opened up negotiations for future shows with multiple UK- festivals and organisers. It was also a great test for us — both in the practical sense of bringing a production overseas, and in the artistic sense of learning how to connect best with a new audience. At the same time, FRESH creates a rare space where so many professionals gather — not just a marketplace, but a meeting ground. For us, coming from the Baltics, it’s easy to stay inside our own “bubble.” Events like this are vital because they pull us into the wider European conversation. For Baltic artists, visibility at FRESH is not only about appearing once in a while as something exotic, but about being seen as an integral part of the European circus and street arts scene. Our goal is for Baltic work to be a natural part of that diversity.