To begin an acquaintance with Lithuanian theatre with the name of director Gintaras Varnas is to find oneself in the epicentre of theatre artists of the younger generation. There are always plenty of young people - actors, directors and scenery designers - on the stage, but not always can one assert that a new generation has come into theatre. In Lithuania, a country which has slightly more than ten state-financed drama theatres and several alternative theatre companies, more than ten young theatre directors are actively working. Nearly all of them are based in Vilnius and work with the same group of actors, scenery designers and composers, their contemporaries. However, the centres of attraction are obvious: Oskaras Koršunovas and Gintaras Varnas. They are far from being fascinated by each other's performances, but follow closely each other's premieres. In their work they seem to look in the opposite directions, but feel each other with their backs. They need each other as a challenge or a whip to go forward. Though Gintaras is eight years older than Oskaras, they studied theatre directing together and both started to work in professional theatre already as students of the Lithuanian Musical Academy. History did not give them time to go the usual way: first a degree of higher education, and then creative work and professional career.
Gintaras Varnas won fame with the performances Lullabies of Revolution and Nostalgias of Communism produced in 1989 and 1990 in the newly-created "Sëpa" theatre. The word "sëpa" (szopka) is of Polish origin and means a standard wooden wardrobe. Following the tradition of mediaeval theatre, the director divided the wardrobe into two halves: the Kremlin was depicted in the top compartment, and Lithuania - in the bottom one. Masked actors - the Guardian Angel and the Grim Reaper - commented on the events taking place in the wardrobe. In this way Varnas created the whole world: the hell, the heavens and the earth, in which miniature puppets of Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush, Vytautas Landsbergis and other well-known politicians were acting. The puppets could more freely say what was still hushed up officially (rhymed satirical texts for both performances were created by two young writers). The history of the Lithuanian-Russian relations up to the latest hot issues was presented as the eternal struggle between God and Devil, good and evil. During the performances of the "Sëpa" theatre the spectators' cheeks used to flush with excitement and tension. It was a unique moment in Lithuanian theatre, a civil and artistic act of great power. This kind of theatre could be created only by a person who did not have anything to lose except his own future. Judging the mood of society, Varnas hit the mark.
The first performance by Oskaras Koršunovas There to Be Here produced in the same year (1990) did not attract much attention, but only at first. Soon the performance collected its own audience, started to go on tours and win international awards. Later Koršunovas produced The Old Woman (the first variant in 1992, the second variant in 1994), and the musical Hello Sonya New Year (1994), and this trilogy became the manifesto of the young generation. All three performances were based on the works of Danil Charms and Alexander Vvedensky, Russian absurd writers who wrote in the twenties and thirties under the Stalin regime and whose work cost them their lives. In the performances of the trilogy Koršunovas did not agonize over solving the eternally perplexing questions of Lithuanian culture: who we are, where we have come from, or where we are going. Korsunovas did not seem to be oppressed by anything: theatre interests him first of all as a game, or as "unbearable lightness of being", to borrow the title of the famous Czech writer Milan Kundera's novel. The director himself explained that in his theatre essential is being "here and there" simultaneously. It is an unstable world without any landmarks, an optical and acoustic delusion, in which really important and real is what cannot be guessed, what is not immediately visible and recognizable. For example, an accidentally met elderly ballerina is Death.
Two years ago (1996) the international theatre forum "The Shifting Point" held by the Open Society Fund-Lithuania provoked a direct confrontation between the theatres of Gintaras Varnas and Oskaras Koršunovas. Both directors staged play-readings which evoked a strong response and later developed into independent fully-fledged performances. Varnas chose a little-known play by Federico Garcia Lorca, El Publico (The Public), and Koršunovas - the play P.S. File O.K. by Lithuanian playwright Sigitas Parulskis. The title of the latter play signalled the manipulation of meanings characteristic of Koršunovas theatre: P.S. can be interpreted both as "post scriptum" and the playwright's initials; accordingly, O.K., apart from the generally used English abbreviation also marks the first letters of the director's first and family names. The production of Parulskis' play showed that Koršunovas already got interested in the "accursed" questions "who we are" and "where from" (note that in this case "we" means those who are around 30). The offered reply was so extraordinary that it evoked cutting remarks in the local press. The duet of Parulskis and Koršunovas sent a challenge to Lithuanian playwriting nurtured in the Romantic tradition, the ultimate goal of which has always been the preservation of national identity, often associated with the idea of statehood. They took the liberty of revising the values which have been sacred in Lithuania for ages and were defended in the clashes with Soviet troops in January 1991, when blood was spilled. P.S. File O.K. brought to the fore the conflict of generations. At the end of the play it is stripped down to the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, father and son, but the story is reversed in an odd way (contrary to the canonical text, the son sacrifices the father in the performance). The authors of the performance tread on corns of the parents of those who are now in their early thirties, by showing their other, unattractive side and demythologizing their generation. The parents of today's young people are inclined to boast and justify their life with their resistance to the Soviet regime. The public hoisting of the national flag and its legitimization at the turn of the 9th and 10th decades filled their life with meaning. Their children are, at best, indifferent to these symbols. And, finally, P.K. (Parulskis - Koršunovas) ask: who are the parents of modern young people - the best pilot in the world or the best mushroom-picker, as they were often convinced in their Soviet childhood? Or perhaps this "father" was a former KGB interrogator who now works as a school watchman and only approves of training "with a rod of iron"? What and where are the values cherished and implanted by the parents, which the young generation could trust and foster?
The young man's existence is Koršunovas' focus in his latest performance based on the play Roberto Zucco by Bernard-Marie Koltes (1997). Yet this time the mass culture entourage - the most tempting bait for the young audience - nearly stifles the main hero's line. The story of the killer without a motive, Roberto Zucco, gave way to the aggressive but not fully exploited image of a roller-skater ramp and deafening, excessively used discotheque music by Gintaras Sodeika. The last two performances by Koršunovas produced on the main stage of the Lithuanian Academic Drama Theatre are not so integral and complete as the trilogy rehearsed and performed in chamber spaces. The trilogy performances had their usual audience, ready to spare a couple of beers for two hours of Koršunovas' theatre. Having transferred his "off" theatre to the main stage, Koršunovas certainly lost part of his former fans, but having turned to large forms, moved into another "weight category" as a professional.
Gintaras Varnas chooses a different way: he makes capital out of consciously avoiding conventional performing spaces. In the performance The Public based on the play by Federico Garcia Lorca (1996) on the main stage of the Academic Drama Theatre, he places the audience on the revolving part of the stage. The revolving stage makes one feel like in a merry-go-round. A funny director looking like Salvatore Dali and slightly "touched" actors are rushing around the audience. This odd crew is trying to put together a crazy performance of surrealist scenes, and strangely enough, they are bothered by only one basic question: is the audience going to watch it? The most impressive is the final scene of the performance, reminiscent of the dream in theatre in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Bunuel. At the end of the performance the curtain is raised and the audience sitting on the stage are suddenly left staring at the empty and dark hall of the Academic Theatre, in which the actors, having already taken off their costumes after the performance, are sitting and scrutinizing them. This exchange of roles between the audience and the actors, the tension-ridden confrontation, the mutual exploring of each other marked a very important moment in Lithuanian theatre. The physical transference of the audience to the centre of action was not the director's formal trick. Varnas produced a performance about theatre waiting for a new public after the shift in society had occurred.
In his next performance, the director himself waited for the audience in an unusual place - the attic of over 400 year old Vilnius University. The Great Theatre of the World by Calderon de la Barca was shown several times as part of the larger project Observatory. Varnas chose the play by Calderon not by accident; he had been moving in this direction with the "Sëpa" theatre, "the political theatre of the world", and with the production of the play When Five Years Pass by another famous Spanish playwright Federic Garcia Lorca on the small stage of the Academic Drama Theatre in 1993. Allegoric heroes of Calderon's mystery, the well-suited romantic environment and the spring wind whistling through the holes in the roof were all members of the performance. The audience sitting on rough wooden benches was attracted not by mysteries recreating the whole image of the world and naive morals, but the magic of theatre. This performance taught Lithuanian theatre accustomed to traditional scenes and production of performances in customary conditions, a lesson of searching for new territories.
It was a possibility to produce a classical play in an untraditional space that attracted Varnas when he received an offer to rehearse Hedda Gabler by Ibsen in the Long Hall of the Kaunas Academic Drama Theatre (the premiere took place in the spring of 1998). Hedda Gabler uses the stage, long as a corridor, as a shooting-gallery, in which she is training to keep herself in form. But nobody needs her good form - the people who surround her are petty, shallow and boring, while she (a wonderful role of Jurate Onaityte) is a remarkable, strong personality with an intense emotional life. Sometimes she is childishly playful, sometimes - rapacious and wanting to have her life filled to the brim. She is like a cat who likes to walk alone. The moving force of the performance is the longing for beauty which Hedda is obsessed with. This longing for a different life is equal to the absolute, a search for the impossible. One of the most impressive scenes of the performance starts when having returned from a late party, Lovborg loses the manuscript of his capital work, which falls into Hedda's hands. Ceremoniously slowly Hedda soaks the pages in alcohol and covers the floor with them as if paving a long path. She strikes a match - and Lovborg's whole life bursts into blue flames in front of the audience. Only this Hedda can play with another person's fate so charmingly. But there isn't any other, "more beautiful" life. It is only the same life with the same people. Hedda is impelled to take the final decision blackmailed by Brack attempting to fetter this personality beyond his control. Hedda chooses freedom, or, in other words, herself, though only death can make it possible.
Decorative and colourfully baroque, Varnas' theatre became simpler and purer in Hedda Gabler. This time the director limited himself to the black and white colour scale (scenery designer Jurate Paulekaite) and several precise scenery details, e.g. soda-siphons placed at every possible spot to be at hand when somebody needs to ease the hangover or calm the outbursts of passions. In Varnas' performances one often finds the theatre theme, either as the key theme, as in The Public, or less manifest. The director receives the audience coming to Hedda Gabler with a kind of installation: the lobby is full of portraits of various actresses of the world who played Hedda Gabler. Varnas finds it important that people would feel having come to theatre. He emphasizes the general theatre tradition rather than the concrete tradition of Hedda Gabler, as a cultural medium or micro-climate, which is so necessary and which has lately found itself in danger of extinction.
"To create theatre means to build a house", - these words are often repeated by another Lithuanian director, a representative of a different generation, Rimas Tuminas. In Lithuania an image of theatre as "a temple of art" is still very popular. Its authority is supported by the greatest potential of Lithuanian theatre, the middle generation of directors who began their work in the mid-seventies and found shelter in the sacralized theatre space. Eimuntas Nekrošius, Rimas Tuminas and Jonas Vaitkus are the three main figures, the "Olympus" of contemporary Lithuanian theatre, who have been forming its image during the last two decades.
The best Lithuanian directors oppose literary theatre dominated by text and widely spread in countries of different cultures, to the polyphonic speaking in images. Speaking about Lithuanian theatre before 1990 (after the collapse of the Soviet empire, this boundary divided the life of many countries into "before" and "after"), Jonas Vaitkus followed the lead of Jonas Jurašas - having emigrated to the West in 1972, this director produced only a few performances and became a legend. Jurašas was like a matador raising a red cloth in front of the outraged authorities. Performances by Jonas Vaitkus produced in the same Kaunas Academic Drama Theatre scrutinized the mechanisms of the empire of evil and confronted it with an artist as a relatively free personality. In addition to the performances analysing the "superman" phenomenon (Caligula by Camus, 1983; Richard II by Shakespeare, 1985; Golgotha based on the novel by Chingiz Aitmatov, 1987), Vaitkus created several performances-visions about artists: musician and artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Pilgrim of Dreams by Eugenijus Ignatavicius and Jonas Vaitkus, 1975), poet Straždas (opera Thrush - The Green Bird by Bronius Kutavicius and Sigitas Geda, 1984). If the play did not offer the opposition of the positive and negative elements, the director would introduce a new character he needed. For example, in the grotesque farce based on Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry (1977), two new lyrical characters appeared: Father-Bird and Child-Bird, who would begin and end the performance with poetry sounding like a prayer. Vaitkus' performances, produced from 1974 to 1987 in the Kaunas Academic Theatre, and since then in different other theatres are unique in style and cannot be mistaken for other directors' work. Vaitkus' talent is fully revealed in the realm of conflicting elements. He is interested in rebellious characters rising above the mediocre. Be it Nora in The Doll's House by Ibsen, or Father in The Father by Strindberg (produced in 1995 and 1997 respectively in the Vilnius Youth Theatre), they confront the hypocritical society and leave it in search of another, metaphysical reality. This farewell of the characters to, in Vaitkus' words, the depraved material world and their journey toward God constitutes the essence of Vaitkus' theatre today.
Vaitkus' "linear", assertive and declarative theatre, and Nekrošius' theatre open to a plethora of interpretations, have been carrying on the main intrigue of Lithuanian theatre for fifteen years. They both began as oppositionists to official art. Performance after performance, Vaitkus and Nekrošius turned out to look at the world and regard it from totally different positions. Vaitkus was preoccupied with extraordinary personalities beyond their age and time. In the meantime, the hero of Nekrošius' theatre was an ordinary person like "me and my neighbour". In one of the most remarkable performances by this director, The Square based on the documentary short story by Russian writer V. Jeliseyeva (1980), a story of a prisoner evolved into a moving metaphor of the Soviet life. According to Vaitkus, the wheel of history is turned by the mighty of the world. In Nekrošius' theatre history is created in any remote homestead (A Day Long as a Thousand Years, based on the novel by Chingiz Aitmatov, 1983). In Vaitkus' theatre characters-signs act in the esoteric space of symbols and create symbols themselves. In the course of Nekrošius' performances, simple objects of daily environment are transformed into polysemantic metaphors reaching into the deepest archaic layers. Finally, in the visions of the world conceived by both directors the transcendental, unearthly world is always present. Heroes of Vaitkus' theatre - supermen and martyrs - seek death as the absolute liberation. In Nekrošius' theatre "the other" world takes part in the affairs of this world and is not separated from it. This can be said about his last performance, Shakespeare's Hamlet (1997). Hamlet's dead father becomes one of the most important characters of the performance who appears in his son's life at the crucial moments. The Father's Ghost stirs up all trouble when it gives the young prince of Denmark a large lump of ice. Having broken it into pieces Hamlet takes out a dagger, an instrument of avenge. Cruelty gives rise to cruelty, and in the final scene the Ghost mourns over the dead son whom it armed and sent into struggle. The elements of the performance are ice and fire, the coldness of death breathing on one's back and the passions of reckless people. The time of the performance is twilight, an obscure period between light and dark. As always, Nekrošius diagnoses the state of the society in which he lives.
At the peak of political events Nekrošius remained silent for several years and did not produce anything. The first performance after the break was Mozart and Salieri. Don Juan. Plague based on the small tragedies by Alexander Pushkin (1994). In this performance the director bluntly asked: who needs art in the time of revolution, and what is the mission of the artist by God's grace. Produced a year later (1995), Chekhov's Three Sisters signalled the coming of a new epoch as a trial. Chekhov's characters - officers, once dashing and charming, can no longer withstand it at mid-life, but the generation of young spirited people, first of all the three sisters, are able to break through, though they have already gathered their own bitter experience. Nekrošius' performances are like anthologies of certain historical moments, from which society learns what changes are taking place in its depths. In Nekrošius' performances the aesthetic, emotional and intellectual information is so intense that the director can afford himself not to reckon with the time of the audience living in a different rhythm than ten years ago, and impose on it 3-4 hour performances - revelations. Certainly, it is not easy to watch them.
To watch Rimas Tuminas' performances, on the contrary, is a pleasant entertainment. His work that evolved out of chamber spaces belongs to the "blood group" of Nekrošius' theatre. Tuminas has always been interested in "the man in the street". When the director places him in a context wider than a room space, his most interesting performances are born - romantically light, full of gentle humour, carelessly playful and also tinted with sorrow. Basically in all his latest performances Tuminas acts on the idea that life is a journey toward death. One of Tuminas' most successful works, Smile Upon Us, Lord, based on Grigorij Kanovich's prose (1996) is a story about a few Jews who put all their belongings in a cart and are travelling from a remote Lithuanian village to the capital to visit a son of one of them. This long journey all across Lithuania to Vilnius, called Lithuania's Jerusalem, becomes a metaphor of the tragic fate of the whole Jewish nation. Tuminas' latest performance, The Masquerade based on the poetical drama of the 19th century Russian romanticist Mikhail Lermontov, is reminiscent of a Christmas card. The director substantially changed the play and relegated the melodramatic love intrigue to the background. The main character of the performance is the environment - the city of St. Petersburg covered with snow, where a clustering crowd roams around or couples waltz in and out. From time to time, to connect the episodes, the Watchman rolls a snow-ball along the stage, which appears bigger and bigger every time and reaches a phantasmagoric scale in the final scene. Larger than people, the white ball as if gets caked with the history of the whole city.
Lithuanian theatre is really strong and diverse in the domain of drama. Two generations of directors are productively working in this genre, and each of these generations boasts a number of outstanding personalities. Yet this idyllic view gets dimmer when you look at statistics. In Lithuania Nekrošius' performances are shown more seldom than on tours abroad, since the director works for a non-state theatre structure, which finds it too expensive to show his performances frequently. One might think that the Vilnius Small Theatre founded by Tuminas is thriving with The Masquerade in repertory, collecting full house and winning international awards. But this theatre which is considered repertory, offers only two or three performances in general and has not staged a single premiere several years in a row. The yearly number of performances given by the Lithuanian Academic Drama Theatre is three times less its capacity, either because they don't have anything to show, or when they do, an audience does not gather. To put it more plainly, Lithuanian theatre management is still weak and has not adjusted itself to new conditions.
The Lithuanian scenic art cannot boast of a manifest alternative theatre movement. The most "alternative" theatre artist is both the most recognized Lithuanian director Eimuntas Nekrošius, if we consider "alternative" the one who works for a non-state theatre and each time advances astonishing new ideas. True, several years ago quite a few talented theatre artists left state-financed theatres in various cities of Lithuania. Some of them got fascinated with the prospect of working "independently of directors", others protested against the theatre routine or against the unsuccessfully launched (and still unfinished) theatre reform. This wave of naive idealistic "free-lance artists" brought quite a few interesting performances. However, without solid support it subsided as soon as it rose, and now only the most adamant individualists are working outside state-financed theatres. One of them is the actor of unlimited scale of expression, Valentinas Masalskis, the founder of the group "Menu samburis" (Arts Convention) uniting visual artists, musicians and actors for joint projects. Another example is the open-air theatre "Miraklis" (Miracle) established by artist and director Vega Vaieiunaitë. It first won attention a couple of years ago during the festival "Vilnius days '95", with a musical puppet and firework performance Pro Memoria Sv. Stepono Street 7 in the ruins of this house, in memory of its former residents, and in 1997 it produced a puppet mystery of fire on water based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, in a popular Vilnius park on the bank of the Vilnelë river. In Šiauliai the stoical couple of artists, director Audrone Bagatyryte and actor Edmundas Leonavicius carry on with "Edmundas' Studio-3", which has produced three experimental mono shows based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, poetry of the Far East and Oedipus the King by Sophocles.
By the way, in Lithuania any aesthetical heresies are possible in any of the existing traditional, i.e. state-financed repertory theatres. What one theatre regards as a heresy, finds shelter in another one. This most often happens with performances of modern dance or mixed genres, which more easily take root in drama theatres than in opera and musical theatres, which are strongholds of official and salon culture. Sometimes Lithuanian theatre is none whatever; it doesn't have anything to show, let's say, for adolescents. At the same time, Lithuanian theatre is all: it is both dynamic, moved by a desire and having the potential to change, and stuck in the routine, inharmonious and under inefficient management. Theatre is like our life in general. Nekrošius calls this time twilight.
April 1998
Translated by Aušra Cizikiene