PERFORMANCES

“THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR”

A democratic comedy without a liberal finale

The Director of the play/ Stas Zhyrkov
Author/ Pavlo Arie, based on Nikolai Gogols’ play „The Government Inspector“
Dramatists/ Andra Kavaliauskaitė, Stas Zhyrkov
Scenography/ Artūras Šimonis
Composer/ Bohdan Lysenko

Cast/ Andra Kavaliauskaitė, Eglė Juškaitė, Jonas Gaižauskas, Ona Gudaitytė, Povilas Adomaitis, Tomas Pukys, Vaidas Praspaliauskas, Vincas Vaičiulis, Erika Jasinskaitė – Salickienė

Assistant Director/ Alma Purvinytė
Video projection/ Alius Mikelionis
Lighting Directors/ Natali Melnychuck, Vytautas Skruibys
Sound Director/ Justinas Raudonis
Art Director/ Ksenia Romashenko
Director/ Inesa Pilvelytė

Duration: 120
Premiere: October 7, 2022

Calm down…
Don’t worry…
Take a nap…
Don’t notice…
Pretend to fall asleep…
Pretend not to see…

Every time we immerse into a dream, someone else is living our life.

The classic “The Inspector General” is a story about corruption, a story how power corrupts a person.
Our The Inspector General is a story about what democracy is now and what it gives to us.
Does a democratic approach to democracy provide a guarantee of security?
Freedom, security, democracy… Are we really able to separate these concepts?
Fed by daily media scandals about the exposed corruption schemes, we are convinced that the games of the hair-raising manipulators are well recognizable to us.
But is it really so?
Let’s try to guess together and understand who he/she is – the today’s Inspector General.
Is he/she a young “stand-up artist” from Vilnius, paying a brief visit to a small town?
Or a girl who is persistently keeping a big secret?
Or perhaps he’s just the Mayor of a small town who hasn’t been able to forgive his father all his life…
Who is the Inspector General and when is he/she going to come?
Will we be able to recognize him/her?
There are more questions than answers.

It will be funny, bright, sad and scary!

Smoking and profanity are used during the performance.

“HOTEL Renaissance 

Instruction: How to disappear?

Director and author of the idea/ Matteo Spiazzi
Scenographer/ Artūras Šimonis
Mask artist/ Alessandra Faienza
Director assistant/ Alma Purvinytė
Cast/ Povilas Adomaitis, Jonas Gaižauskas, Ona Gudaitytė, Andra Kavaliauskaitė, Vaidas Praspaliauskas, Vincas Vaičiulis

Duration: 70
Premiere: June 10, 2022

Hotels are small elements of reality – cities within a city. We often think of a hotel as a place to relax or wait for something, but we rarely think how alien a hotel room can be to our everyday life, like a place beyond time, where we can meet ghosts of our past. A place, where the strongest emotions experienced once can be repeated again.

Or maybe it is there, in the hotel, where we can be who we really are?

And do things that we would never allow ourselves in everyday life?

A hotel room with its numerous stories weaves into a fragmented narrative. It looks like a puzzle composed from the life experiences of different people who are united by one goal: search for personal freedom.

The historical period in which the play takes place includes the last period of the Soviet regime, with a completely different perception of freedom that we have nowadays.

Each of us has our own hotel, the place where we are, just we and no one else.

“THE DIARY OF A CIVILIAN”

Mono performance based on Pavlo Arie play „The Diary of a Civilian“

Autor/ Pavlo Arie
Director/ Stas Zhyrkov
Actor/ Vaidas Praspaliauskas
Translation (LT)/ Andrius Merkevičius
Composer/ Bohdan Lysenko
Sound director/ Justinas Raudonis
Light designer/ Natali Melnychuk
Author of video projections/ Alius Mikelionis
Director assistant/ Alma Purvinytė
Producer/ Ksenia Romashenko
Theatre director/ Inesa Pilvelytė

Duration: 80
Premiere: September 16, 2022

The play by Ukrainian playwright Pavlo Arie was written in the first 14 days of Russia`s full-scale war against Ukraine. These texts from historical memory give our descendants the opportunity to understand situations that have occurred and know the truth about what happened. This performance has literary and historical value.

The entire European world is in suspense. People do not  know and do not understand how to live when there is a war in your country? Fear and not knowing how to deal with a problem create chaos. But the main thing, always and in everything, is a person. His path of struggle, awareness, acceptance and struggle…

Fix these events in time and live together with the audience and actor for these 14 days. 14 days – when your whole familiar, beloved, free world becomes different. 14 days when you go from denial to acceptance. 14 days, each of which is a new life. 14 day of loss and pain. 14 days when life will never be the same again. Or will it?

„MARY“

Drama

Play authors/ Alvydas Šlepikas and creative team
Director / Stas Zhyrkov
Composer / Andrii Symonovych
Scenographer / Artūras Šimonis
Director’s Assistant / Alma Purvinytė
Cast / Andra Kavaliauskaitė, Eglė Juškaitė, Ona Gudaitytė, Povilas Adomaitis, Vaidas Praspaliauskas, Tomas Pukys

Duration 90
Premiere 2020

The performance “Mary” tells the story of the children called Wolfskinder”, how at the end of the Second World War and after the war, they were sepa- rated from their families or remained orphans. There were about 7,000 of them. Being young and small with one of the parents (usually the mother) or completely with strangers, they went in search of a bite of bread, the larger ones to bring home a bite. Due to starvation, the “wolf children” fled to Lithuania, some reached Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Hunger and fear were the companions of their childhood. The “wolf children”, who lived in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, could not share their memories publicly, and victims of violence and abuse were deliberately kept quiet. The renunciation of their identity was the only condition for the survival for these children.

Only after regaining independence of Lithuania these people got the oppor- tunity  to find their indetity, find out and register the real year of birth, places, names and surnames, find relatives. The German “wolf children” living in Lithuania (3-16 years old) focused on the Edelweiss-Wolfskinder community, which still exists today, helping to discover its roots and nurture traditions and culture.

„SEEN“

Mono performance for teenage girls.

Director and performer / Andra Kavaliauskaitė
Composer / Elena Neniškytė
Choreographers / Saida Saldukaitė and Guoda Dinsmonaitė-Morkūnė
Poster designer / Karolina Jarmalytė
Video director / Alius Mikelionis
Photographer / Povilas Jarmalkovičius

Duration 120` (no intermission)
Premiere 2018

“Seen” is maybe the only performance in Lithuania for teenage girls. The themes that it touches are very sore and topical for them. The mover and the performer Andra Kavaliauskaitė invites the girls to an intimate dramatic experience. In social network there are millions of photos that illustrate a perfect life and are worthy of magazine covers. “Like share and subscribe” became a kind of modern-day mantra. The play sucks in, reality mingles with illusion and there is an equal sign between the lie and the truth. But a day comes when even hundreds of thousands of followers are worthless and the only wish is not to lie, not to pretend being perfect.

Vlog of the main heroine Ūla is filmed and the new magazine “Seen” is presented during the performance. Do not miss a chance to get acquainted with one of the best Lithuanian vlogers! It may be the chance of a lifetime!

2019 Gold stage cross. Best debut / young artist – Andra Kavaliauskaitė (for social research and creation of a mono performance “SEEN”).

„NOT A CHILDREN’S GAMES“

Social drama, grotesque.

Playwright / Herkus Kunčius
Director / Albertas Vidžiūnas
Scenography / Artūras Šimonis
Composer / Antanas Jasenka
Cast / Eglė Kordiukovaitė, Andra Kavaliauskaitė, Jonas Gaižauskas, Vidas Vaškius, Vaidas Praspaliauskas, Ona Gudaitytė, Eugenijus Rakauskas, Eglė Juškaitė, Vincas Vaičiulis

Duration 90

Premiere 2017

…Mother solves crosswords # father swears# virtual people plays a war # dogs barking on their owners # owners are training their children # and the children interacts with their peers trying to play not a childish games …

This is a fairly realistic caricature of the modern family seen in the performance created by the director Albertas Vidžiūnas and one of the most scandalous Lithuanian writers – the dramatist Herkus Kunčius, whose prose is characterized by obscene themes, shocking depiction and breaking of moral scruples.

The performance is a sharp social drama that highlights the topicalities of modern Lithuania, incorporates the issues of parent-child relations and youth interaction. The performance space is a block of flats and “children’s games” that are played around it, i.e. not a childish communication or something left behind it. Some play a “war”, others “doctors”, and the third ones lie drunk – and after all – under the balcony there is a cemetery where things are incomprehensible … These recognizable and associative strengths makes the whole dramaturgy of the performance, rising the meaning from the household level to the universal dimension.
The performance articulates the most sensitive topics of (not)understanding each other, aggressiveness, manipulation, cruelty, lacking of spirituality, and introduces the audience to the shocking and uncomfortable theater. Eye-blowing images and “special effects”, different means of expression, brutal teenage psychological and physical violence will reveal the alienation of the society. The Easter family dinner would be a direct hint of biblical sacrifice and redemption, that will put all viewers a mind-blowing question: “For what why, for God’s sake ?”

„THE AMERICAN DREAM“

A play by Upton Sinclair‘s novel Jungle.

Director and set author/ Albertas Vidžiūnas
Composer/ An­ta­nas Ja­sen­ka
Scene motion consultant/ Giedrė Kalinauskienė
Actors/ Vidas Vaškius, Rasa Grigutytė, Tomas Kunčinas, Inesa Pilvelytė, Jonas Gaižauskas, Eugenijus Rakauskas, Eglė Juškaitė, Ona Gudaitytė, Paulė Konstancija Giniotaitė, Vaidas Praspaliauskas, Jonas Verseckas, Gita Strikytė-Jakučionienė

Duration 135` (one intermission)
Premiere 2015

It is a performance according to a short story by Upton Sinclair The Jungle written in1906. The life of the emigrant families who work in Chicago slaughterhouses at the beginning of the twentieth century is shown as a completely unique environment – a closed, intimidated community forced to unconditionally obey their employers and managers — boiled with passion and vileness.

The main character Jurgis Rutkus works in the slaughterhouse, where, according to the author, only pig squeal is not used. He clings to life and puts on the market all his values in order to create a “good” life for his family.