[citation needed] He obtained his first theatre and stage experience when he attended Riga pantomime studio under Roberts Ligers.

In 2003, Hermanis directed Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, which won the Young Director's Award.

This success paved his way for a long-lasting career in German-speaking theatre, starting in Frankfurt and at the Ruhrtriennale, then in Berlin, Zürich and Vienna.

He has frequently worked at the Burgtheater, Austria's national theatre, where he presented Arthur Schnitzler's Das weite Land [de] in 2011 and a new version of Gogol's The Government Inspector in 2015.

[2][3][4] Since 2012, Hermanis has also directed and created sets for opera productions – first being invited by the Salzburg Festival to stage Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten conducted by Ingo Metzmacher.

In 2014 he was responsible for a production of Il trovatore with Anna Netrebko, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Francesco Meli and Plácido Domingo.

[9] For his role in Fotogrāfija ar sievieti un mežakuili [lv] he received the Best Actor Award at the Lielais Kristaps festival in 1987.

In 2003, Hermanis and his theatre won the Young Director's Award at the Salzburg Festival with Nikolai Gogols The Government Inspector.

In 2007, he received the IX Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, in Thessaloniki, with the following motivation:The founder of the New Riga Theatre, Alvis Hermanis has a fantastic memory for the details and objects of ordinary life.

One can watch it and recollect the smell of Kasa, the occasional glimpse of a bright red slip peeping from under a loud printed cotton dress, and female faces changed by layers of cheap cosmetics.

Among their old photographs, rugs, plaids and battered sofas, five old people swarm, grunt, quarrel and love each other from dawn till sunset.