Tiia Kriisa
Tiia Kriisa (Tiia-Ingrid Kriisa, from 1963 to 1966 Põldvee, b. 21. IX 1941) is an actress and prose writer.
She was born in Tallinn, deported with her family to Siberia, and later studied in Tallinn, graduating in 1963 from the Tallinnfilm training school. For a short time she worked as a secretary at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute, from 1963 to 1994 was an actress at the Endla theatre, and subsequently became freelance. She is a member of the Estonian Theatre Union (since 1966), the Actors’ Union (since 1993, honorary member since 2016), and the Writers’ Union (since 2012). She was a Merited Artist of the Estonian SSR (from 1987). Tiia Kriisa is married to the stage director Ingo Normet.
The background to the prose work of Kriisa, known chiefly as an actress, is autobiography of experience, at the centre of which is her life as a girl deported in childhood to Siberia and her growth intro a woman in her alienated homeland. The story Tüdruk (‘Girl’, 1997) deals with the lives and experiences of deportees in Siberia; the novel Võõras (‘Alien’, 2001) with the return to Estonia, and in the novel Naine (‘Woman’, 2009), Moonika, the protagonist of the first story, has grown to become an actress, who reflects on events. The novel Moonika (2011) includes all the preceding works and also contains new material. Life and the theatre, the theatre of life, and being a woman run through Kriisa’s textually dense and heartfelt works.
A. K. (Translated by C. M.)
Books in Estonian
Novels
Võõras. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2001, 111 lk. [2. trükk 2011.]
Naine. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2009, 135 lk. [2. trükk 2011.]
Moonika. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2011, 427 lk.
Stories
Tüdruk. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 1997, 79 lk. [2. trükk 2011.]
