National Drama Theatre of Lithuania
NATIONAL DRAMA THEATRE OF LITHUANIA
Showcase
26-29 April 2012
April 26th and 27th, 17.00, Big Stage
Dante Alighieri
THE DIVINE COMEDY
Director – Eimuntas Nekrosius
Set designer – Marius Nekrosius
Costume designer – Nadezda Gultiayeva
Composer – Andrius Mamontovas
Cast: Rolandas Kazlas, Vaidas Vilius, Remigijus Vilkaitis, Darius Petrovskis, Simonas Dovidauskas, Ieva Triskauskaite and others.
Performance in three parts
Premiere – 26 April 2012
Duration – 4 hrs 30 min
Producer: Meno Fortas Theatre
Co-producers: Teatro Pubblico Pugliese in collaboration with Aldo Miguel Grompone (Italy), International Stanislavsky Fund (Russia), Baltic House Festival (Russia), National Drama Theatre of Lithuania, with support from the Ministry of Culture of Lithuania.
“The Divine Comedy” byDante Alighieri, which has never been produced in Lithuania, is a great challenge even for the director who is famous for staging “unstageable” works. According to Nekrosius, “The Divine Comedy” is “a test aimed to find out if this work is translatable into a human, theatrical language. This task almost borders on the limit of impossibility.”
After “The Song of Songs”, “Faust” by Goethe and “Idiot” by Dostoyevsky, Nekrosius’s production based on Dante’s poem becomes a profound stage interpretation of a classic of literature reflecting the basic human qualities and philosophical attitude.
In the director’s words, “It is a fundamental literary, philosophical, and poetical basis. ‘The Divine Comedy’ still makes a great impact on young poets, and there are many who continue to draw from it as if from some inexhaustible source until the end of their lives.”
In “The Divine Comedy”, the attention is focused on Dante – the Author of the Poem, and Virgil who leads him through the realm of the dead. According to the director, “It is necessary to find something positive in each character, which would warm up both the actor and the audience.” Nekrosius as if gives the poem a new reading and recounts us the stories of friendship, love, and life, and draws the history of the world in concise but very suggestive lines.
The leading roles are played by the actors having a long experience of work with the director: Rolandas Kazlas (Yago in “Othello”), Vaidas Vilius (who appears in all the latest productions by Nekrosius), and Remigijus Vilkaitis (who is known from Nekrosius’s early productions at the Youth Theatre in Vilnius). A whole batch of young and talented actors give a great deal of energy to the performance.
April 26th, 14.00, Studio
SAD SONGS FROM THE HEART OF EUROPE
After ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Script, direction, set design – Kristian Smeds
Performer – Aldona Bendoriute
Costume designer – Jurate Paulekaite
Music – Nigel Kennedy & The Kroke Band, Georg Ots, Topi Sorsakoski & Agents, Arvo Pärt
Producers–Audronis Liuga Production, Smeds Ensemble
Co-producers – Baltic Circle (Suomija), KunstenFESTIVALdesArts (Belgium),
Helsinki Festival, Vilnius International Theatre Festival “Sirenos”
Co-producers of the renewed performance – Finnish National Theatre, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre
Performance in one part
Premiere – 27 September 2006
Premiere of the renewed performance – 14 March 2011
Duration – 90 min
“Sad Songs from the Heart of Europe” consists of ten scenes of songs, a literary form that affords the author a certain freedom in the writing and can be associated with melancholy, desire and even beauty. Whereas in Dostoyevsky the murderous Raskolnikov is the central character, Kristian Smeds zooms in on the figure of Sonya, his lover. He strips ‘Crime and Punishment’ of its historical veil and transposes the characters and their respective stories to 21st century Europe. To the Lithuanian suburbs, for example, or the periphery of Paris...
In “Sad Songs from the Heart of Europe” the protagonists are unquestionably the disadvantaged. Smeds gives a voice to the grey margin of our society. To those individuals who, against their will, are at the mercy of the centrifugal force of the centre. He is talking about our Europe, a continent where violence stems from powerlessness, a continent disfigured by consumption. However painful this may be, it does not make Kristian Smeds more cynical. On the contrary. He seeks beauty in the ugly, and belief in the possibility of a miracle is never far away.
This quest for beauty is also expressed in what the audience gets to see on stage, in its form. Smeds opts for a very warm and direct dialogue with the audience. In the case of “Sad Songs”, for example, you are invited into Sonya’s room. A small and intimate space where the distance between the performer and the audience barely exists. She tells you her story at bare arm’s length. The shared intimacy forms the proverbial buffer against the cynicism and coldness that deaden our society.
Kristian Smeds. In his theatre Smeds is boiling a melting pot of very diverse artistic means and genres, but this director avoids experiments. He addresses the present and the past of his nation raising universal questions. Smeds is one of the very few theatre artists who are able to reveal a multifaceted picture of the contemporary individual and the world through his national mentality. In 2011 he received the European Prize of the New Theatrical Realities.
April 27th, 14.00, Small Stage
Mika Myllyaho
CHAOS
Director – Yana Ross
Set designer – Marijus Jacovskis
Costume designer – Jolanta Rimkute
Composer – Antanas Jasenka
Video artist – Egle Eigirdaite
Cast: Jolanta Dapkunaite, Algirdas Gradauskas, Dalia Micheleviciute, Arunas Sakalauskas, Rimante Valiukaite, Toma Vaskeviciute.
Performance in one part
Premiere – 7 October 2011
Duration – 1 hr 45 min
Mika Myllyaho (b. 1966) is one of the leading Finnish directors who also became a writer. While working with Helsinki’s “Theatre Group”, he directed and wrote texts. As an innovative theatre practitioner, he produced a number of remarkable productions, both classical and contemporary plays. He productions are quite accessible and often also funny, but at the same time they provide powerful and complex theatre experiences. Since the autumn of 2010, Myllyaho acts as the general manager of the National Theatre of Finland.
“Chaos” (2008) is a story of three women. Sofia is a teacher whose school is being closed, Julia is a therapist who is having an affair with one of her patients, and Emi is an impulsive reporter in the middle of a custody battle.
In director Yana Ross’s opinion, “Chaos” explores the contemporary individual who seeks to keep everything in control and, on the other hand, balances on a thin line between a psychological crisis and an outburst of violence.
“In this intellectual comedy which puts in parallel the lives of three main female characters, different but equally broken women, and social commentaries in public space, the brutality of our everyday struggles is revealed: changed and deformed family values, crazy rushing and stumbling on the career ladder, a stupefying routine provoking the premonitions of ungrounded paranoia, and fragile balancing between a rational survival and a destructive wish to ‘drop everything’… ‘Chaos’ lays bare the reality of the contemporary individual, which we conceal every day with social rituals, which we abhor as we look at the crime pages in the newspapers, and in which each of us performs a series of roles until we burst out”, says the director.
The black stage box is dotted with hieroglyphs of consumer society – thousands of bills for take-away coffees, unreadable letters urging to choose, buy, and choose again. This embodies the state of an individual in the grip of the psychological and emotional pressure generated by contemporary life. To move quicker, to climb higher, to reach wider, and to control and be able to do everything.
April 28th, 14.00, Small Stage
Marius von Mayenburg
THE STONE
Director – Agnius Jankevicius
Set and costume designer – Laura Luisaityte
Cast: Jurga Kalvaityte, Vaiva Mainelyte, Gabriele Malinauskaite, Migle Polikeviciute, Agne Ramanauskaite, Nele Savicenko, Paulius Tamole and Monika Vaiciulyte.
Performance in one part
Premiere – 16 March 2012
Duration – 1 hr 40 min
Marius von Mayenburg was born in Munich in 1972. He studied Old German at Munich University before moving to Berlin in 1992, where he did a course in playwriting at the Hochschule der Künste from 1994 to 1998. In 1995 he worked with the Münchner Kammerspiele, and in 1998 became a member of the artistic direction team at the Baracke, a studio theatre of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 1999 he began to work as the artistic director and playwright-in-residence at the Berliner Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz.
The playwright won international recognition with his play “Feuergesicht” written in 1997, which was produced in the same year in several German theatres. His plays have been translated into many languages and produced all over the world. In Lithuania, there have been several productions of his plays: “Feuergesicht” and “Parasiten” (both in Oskaras Korsunovas Theatre), “Das kalte Kind” (Klaipeda State Drama Theatre), and “Der Häßliche” (Kaunas State Drama Theatre).
“The Stone” (Der Stein) written in 2008 tells a story of a house in Dresden. In 1935 it belonged to a Jewish family until it emigrated. In 1945 the house survived the bombing of the Allies, and in 1953 its then-owners fled to the West. In 1978 they visited the house again, and in 1993, already after the unification of Germany, the house was returned to them. The scenes of the play kaleidoscopically connect the events that occurred at a different time. A thing common to all these historical periods becomes distinct – an opportunistic treatment of the past. The stone in the title of the play is its dramatic centrepiece: for each generation the same stone means different things.
Marius von Mayenburg: “Stories told by my grandparents, parents and friends of the family become intertwined in this play. A great deal of archival material on this topic is available, and it is extremely interesting. However, above all I wanted to tell stories that are emotionally important to myself, as I have been obsessed by them since my childhood.”
Director Agnius Jankevicius: “The play speaks about shame provoked by the feeling of guilt. This guilt is related with personal responsibility of an individual who is part of a nation, which in its turn has to bear responsibility for its actions. In the life of an ordinary person, collective guilt turns into a huge shame. Guilt gives birth to shame, shame gives birth to lies, lies falsify historical facts and create a distorted picture of the present time.”
“The history of one house and several members of the family related with that house depicts the history of the country and thus asks a question about the value of historical memory in the lives of contemporary people. The characters of ‘The Stone’ retrospectively revising their life bring out the contours and consequences of deeply rooted lies. This play by Mayenburg is an open, though difficult, reconciliation with the past for the sake of the present.”
April 28th, 18.30, Big Stage
Marius Ivaskevicius
EXPULSION
Director – Oskaras Korsunovas
Set designer – Gintaras Makarevicius
Costume designer – Agne Jagelaviciute
Composer – Saulius Prusaitis
Cast: Ainis Storpirstis, Vytautas Anuzis, Marius Repsys, Monika Vaiciulytė, Toma Vaskeviciute, Oneida Kunsunga, Martynas Nedzinskas, Elze Gudaviciute, Migle Polikeviciute, Gintare Sabaliauskaite, Monika Biciunaite, Tadas Gryn, Arunas Sakalauskas, Paulius Ignatavicius, Irmantas Jankaitis, Vitalija Mockeviciute, Rimante Valiukaite, Marius Cizauskas, Algirdas Dainavicius, Arunas Vozbutas, Jolanta Dapkunaite, Neringa Bulotaite, Daumantas Ciunis, Ramutis Rimeikis, Remigijus Bucius, Mindaugas Juscius, Dovydas Stoncius, Algirdas Gradauskas.
Live music by Saulius Prusaitis (vocals, acoustic guitar), Laimonas Jancas (electric guitar), Kestutis Pavalkis (keyboard), Paulius Adomenas (bass), Gediminas Augustaitis (percussion).
Performance in three parts
Premiere – 22 December 2011
Duration – 4 hrs 50 min
“Expulsion” is Oskaras Korsunovas’s return to the National Drama Theatre of Lithuania. Still as a student of the Music and Theatre Academy, he produced in this theatre the legendary Oberyut trilogy: “There To Be Here” (1990), “Old Woman” (1992; 1994 – “Old Woman 2”), and “Hello Sonya New Year” (1994). The sensational productions by the twenty-year-old director were invited to international theatre festivals and won a number of awards. In 1997 Korsunovas produced “P.S. Case O.K.” after the play by Sigitas Parulskis written specially for this director and theatre, and in 1998 – “Roberto Zucco” by Bernar-Marie Koltès.
Korsunovas has long wanted to address the painful topic of emigration in one of his productions, and finally did so in “Expulsion”. According to playwright Marius Ivaskevicius, the play is based on true stories of Lithuanian and East European emigrants whom he met and heard in London. Yet, the play does not describe or document emigration, the departure from one’s home country, and the attempts to take root elsewhere. “The play is an attempt to explore that what we call identity. It is best revealed against the background of other, different identities, and a metropolis like London is the perfect place for observing this phenomenon”, explains the playwright.
In Korsunovas’s words, “The play touches upon a very urgent topic – emigration. We probably hardly realize its extent even statistically: it is only guessed how many people have emigrated, but this situation is not analyzed in the political space, let alone the cultural and artistic scene. In art we don’t have a serious analysis of what is happening in Lithuania. It implies not only the interests of the nation and state; it also implies the broken fates of people, and entire odysseys – will these people return or not?... Perhaps nowadays emigration is different, but at the beginning it was very cruel: people used to leave with one-way ticket not knowing where they were going, not knowing the language, having nothing… This is a situation depicted in ‘Expulsion’”.
The characters (there is quite a bunch of them – almost thirty actors are engaged in the production) gather in some bar or club, where the action is basically set. A bar is a place where people come either looking for something or having lost something. It is all the more so in ‘Expulsion’, which is centred on the loss of one’s homeland. People also go to a bar to make acquaintances, and if we go to a bar in our own country, it means that we’re getting ready for a trip whose aim is at least to get drunk”, Korsunovas shares his thoughts.
The director ponders: what is emigration? What lies behind this word? A lot of things, and one of the most significant is the loss of identity. Or is it a discovery of identity in another country? In general, the issue of identity is one of the most urgent in our times. Basically, emigration is a horizontal spiritual journey “into happiness”, which often turns into a vertical descent into unhappiness.
April 29th, 18.30, Big Stage
EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE AGAIN
After “The Madwoman of Chaillaut” by Jean Giraudoux
Director – Cezaris Grauzinis
Set designer – Laura Luisaityte
Costume and make-up designer – Vilma Galeckaite-Dabkiene
Composer – Martynas Bialobzeskis
Cast: Vytautas Anuzis, Brigita Arsobaite, Remigijus Bucius, Paulius Cizinauskas, Algirdas Dainavicius, Evaldas Jaras, Mindaugas Juscius, Vytautas Kontrimas, Birute Mar, Martynas Nedzinskas, Sarunas Puidokas, Vilma Raubaite, Vytautas Rumsas, Jurate Vilunaite.
Performance in two parts
Premiere – 24 February 2012
Duration – 2 hrs 30 min
In the production “Everything Will Be Fine Again”, Grauzinis wears many hats: he is both the director and the author of the script based on the play “The Madwoman of Chaillaut” by the famous French intellectual, one of the leading French playwrights from the interwar period Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944).
Director and theatre teacher Cezaris Grauzinis graduated from Anatoly Lunacharsky’s Institute of Theatre Art in Moscow in 1990 (under Andrey Goncharov and Mark Zakharov), and produced his first stage work, “Miss Chan” by Yukio Mishima, at the National (then – Academic) Drama Theatre of Lithuania eighteen years ago, in 1994. It was followed by “The Mysteries of Love” by Roger Vitrac (1997; Big Stage) and “Baal” by Bertolt Brecht (1997; Small Stage).
In 1996, Grauzinis established the community of “The New Generation of Lithuanian Theatre”, and in 2003 – the company “cezario grupe”. In 2007–2009 he was the artistic director of “Viirus” Theatre in Helsinki. During 22 years of creative work Graužinis produced more than 30 productions, some of them based on his original plays and scripts, in Lithuania and abroad. His works won highest recognition both in Lithuania and abroad, and were presented in many international theatre festivals.
Graužinis has a strong preference for rarely produced works. This time he presents an original interpretation of “The Madwoman of Chaillaut” by Giraudoux.
“The Madwoman of Chaillaut” is Giraudoux’s last play, produced after his death by his friend and colleague, actor and director, a famous reformer of the French theatre, Louis Jouvet. The play was inspired by the English comedy “Old Ladies”, which Jouvet decided to produce in 1935. Giraudoux adapted it and invented characters based on “crazy women” – old ladies whom he saw walking on the streets of Paris dressed in quirky attires.
“I aim to produce a kind of performance which does not exist, but which I would very much like to see as an ordinary spectator. Most often I avoid clear declarations about the idea of one or another production. I do this out of respect for the audience, leaving it the right to perceive and realize in its own way the mood and meaning of the performance. These days the audience is being intensely ‘programmed’ and given very precise indications how it should understand some performance, film, or book. And in this way it is being duped or robbed. It is deprived of the possibility to perceive the works personally, intuitively, and emotionally”, says the director.
Video screening
Time will be announced later
Henrik Ibsen
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Director – Jonas Vaitkus
Set designer: Jurate Paulekaite
Costume designer: Jolanta Rimkute
Composer: Raminta Serksnyte
Video artist: Ville Hyvönen (Finland)
Cast: Dainius Gavenonis, Viktorija Kuodyte, Dalia Micheleviciute, Gabriele Malinauskaite, Egle Prakaitaite, Marcele Zikaraite, Dainius Jankauskas, Julius Paskevicius, Vytautas Anuzis, Juozas Budraitis, Vytautas Rumsas, Tadas Montrimas, Arunas Sakalauskas, Paulius Tamole, Edgar Bechter, Martynas Nedzinskas, Remigijus Bucius, Rimantas Bagdzevicius, Darius Meskauskas, and others – all in all 60 actors and members of the theatre’s staff.