Download MENO FORTAS, Vilnius

MENO FORTAS, Vilnius
SONG OF SONGS based on the poetics of the Song of Solomon of the Old Testament
Premiere: 21st of October, 2004
One-act performance, duration > 2 hours
Director > Eimuntas NEKROSIUS, Set designer > Marius NEKROSIUS, Costume designer >
Nadezda GULTIAJEVA, music composer > Mindaugas URBAITIS
‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love’. So speaks a young lover in
the Song of Solomon, one of the strangest and most beautiful sections of the Bible. Its verses
have been transfused into a drama about human passion and urban civilization by the company
‘Meno Fortas’.
As with most performances directed by Nekrosius, SONG OF SONGS despite being a striking
spectacle, proved quite challenging for the ordinary viewer. Using only the original Biblical text
in Lithuanian, the director sets the action in a Lithuanian village at the turn of the last century.
The plot has little to do with the original text. In this way performance leaves a space in which the
audience's fantasies can develop.
Co - producers > Festival De Otono (Madrid), “Baltijskij dom” festival (Saint Petersburg), The
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
Awards > Nominated in three categories for the best performance of 2004/2005 theatre season
and awarded „Golden cross of the stage” for the best set design (Marius Nekrosius).
Reviews >
‘It is evident, that Nekrosius, despite of his well-deserved status of the great philosopher of
theatre, still knows how to return to the basic source of inspiration – to nature, to the living
essence of things. In the thousand-year old text of the Bible he has encountered a game of love,
played by the young body and the young spirit’.
Nikolaj Pesochinsky > "Vedomosti" - Omni Laikas
‘Neither the Jewish, nor the Christian confessions would find any reason to reproach Nekrosius.
As regards the love between this Solomon and this Sulamita, the director did not allow even for a
shade of stage vulgarity. Nekrosius is not merely directing, but rather raising a performance about
love that creates temples and moves the Sun and the stars’.
Gleb Sitkovsky > “Drying out of love”, 2004 10 03
Eimuntas Nekrosius (born in 1952) graduated from the State Lunacharsky Institute for
Theatre Arts in Moscow (1978). Nekrosius was working for Vilnius Youth drama theatre
and Kaunas Drama Theatre. All the performances directed by E. Nekrosius had received
prestigious awards in various Lithuanian and Baltic theatre festivals. In 1994, the
European Theatre Union and Taormina Art Committee (Italy) awarded E. Nekrosius the
New European Theatre prize. In 1998, the director was awarded the 3-rd degree Order of
Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas. Since 1998, E. Nekrosius has been working as art
director of the theatre studio ‘Meno fortas’. The same year he received the National Art
Award.
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LITHUANIAN NATIONAL DRAMA THEATRE
(member of the European Theatre Convention)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky THE DEVILS
Premiere: 29th of April, 2005
Performance in three acts, duration > 5 hours
Director > Jonas VAITKUS, composer > Algirdas MARTINAITIS, set > Medile
SIAULYTYTE
Reviews >
‘It is possible to say that this performance was meant personally for the admirers of the theatre
director Jonas Vaitkus. The spectators who know and love this master of theatre will instantly
recognize all the familiar attributes: the impressive visuality, the symbolism of action and text,
and the wide staging dimension, that needs more than one look to be taken in completely. Those
who are not so familiar with the style of this director shouldn‘t be disappointed either: the first act
provides a sufficient insight into the secrets of Vaitkus‘s art‘.
Aistė Ptakauskaitė > bernardinai.lt, 2005 05 02
‘DEVILS implies that we should understand, that possession may equal a mental illness, and that
its consequences as grave as what the humanity has experienced having trusted the leaders of the
proletariat’.
Rūta Oginskaitė > Lietuvos rytas, 2005 05 03
JONAS VAITKUS (born in 1944) - theatre and film director, the docent of Lithuanian Music
and Theatre Academy. In 1969-1974 he studied theatre directing in Leningrad State Theatre,
Music and Cinematography Institute. In 1990-1995 he worked as an artistic director in Lithuanian
State Academic Drama Theatre.
Vaitkus is one of the most active directors in Lithuania. Since 1974 J. Vaitkus has created many
performances, operas in the main theatres of Lithuania and a number of cinema and TV films. He
has been granted different awards in Lithuania as well as abroad. He has worked as a visiting
professor and has directed in the United States, Norway and Japan.
Vaitkus was the initiator of the first course of theatre directors in Lithuania and a teacher of the
outstanding Lithuanian actors and directors.
Vaitkus is one of the most interesting and the most controversial figures of Lithuanian theatre.
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AUDRONIS LIUGA PRODUCTION
Natacha de Pontcharra LES RATES
Premiere > 8th of October 2004
One act performance, duration > 1 hour 10 minutes
Director > Agnius JANKEVICIUS
A tragicomic approach to disabled, or simply particular, people in the contemporary “society of
success” directed by one of the most interesting newcomers in Lithuanian theatre Agnius
Jankevicius.
Jef and Jeffy, twins from birth and from misfortune, were born with rats' heads. With their faces
hidden inside hoods since their earliest childhood, they try in vain to integrate into the human
community. Their exclusion is never straightforward and their integration is a hybrid one
mirroring their half-human half-animal image. Closed off somewhere in the outskirts, excluded
from groups and from going inside places, closed off in themselves, in their rat's skins and in their
"twin-ness". Obsessed with the idea of some metamorphosis that would open up the doors of
normality for them, one day they make themselves human masks, but their suffering and
difference resist dissimulation.
Agnius Jankevicius (born in 1979) is one of the leading directors of new Lithuanian theatre
generation. In 1999-2005 Jankevicius has studied theatre directing at the Vilnius Academy of
Music and Theatre with professor Jonas Vaitkus. In 2001 he was awarded a prize in Brno Festival
of Theatre Schools for the performance he directed, The Beyond based on V. Pelevin’s The Blue
Lantern. In 2004 he produced a conspicuous performance of Les Ratés by Natacha de Pontcharra,
produced by Audronis Liuga Production. He has starred in cinema and theatre as well.
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AUDRONIS LIUGA PRODUCTION, CEZARIS GROUP
Martin Crimp ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE
Premiere > 28th of May, 2005
One-act performance, duration > 2 hours
Director and set designer > Cezaris GRAUZINIS, costume designer > Jolanta RIMKUTE,
composer > Martynas BIALOBZESKIS
A new production by the representatives of the new generation of Lithuanian theatre, Cezaris
Group, based on an extremely innovative contemporary play.
Cezaris Group production is a new project of the company recognized as the most innovative
newcomers in Lithuanian theatre (Award for the Best Lithuanian Theatre Debut in 2003). Five
young actors led by the director Cezaris Garuzinis interpret the play by Martin Crimp and
continue to investigate the possibilities of „the theatre of imagination“, which is based on the
assumption that performance does not take place on the stage, but rather in the imagination of the
audience. Having resorted to the innovatively minimal instruments of stage acting, Cezaris Group
manipulate the imagination of the audience, erasing the border between reality and fiction.
Applying the clichés of the contemporary mass media, the actors provoke the audience to use
their imagination for filling in the empty screen in front of them to create an individual version of
each episode, like a short film of their own.
Co-producer > British Council in Vilnius
Cezaris Grauzinis (born in 1976) – studied stage directing at Moscow Lunacharsky Theatre
Arts’ Institute and graduated in 1990. Also in 1993 he studied Suzuki Method of Actors’ Training
under the supervision of Tadashi Suzuki (Suzuki Company of Toga, Japan).
Since 1989 Grauzinis is a freelance director. Directed a number of performances based on
classical and contemporary texts in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Faeroe Islands. He is a lecturer
of acting and directing at Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy and a visiting professor at
Malmö Theatre Academy and Helsinki Theatre Academy.
In 1995 he founded an independent theatre company Lithuanian New Generation Theatre
Community and led it until 1998. In 2003 he founded theatre company Cezaris Group and since
then he has been an artistic leader of it. In 2004 Cezaris Group was awarded for the best debut of
a year. Grauzinis staged more than 20 productions in Lithuania and abroad.
“Cezario grupė” (Cezaris Group), under the leadership of one of the leading Lithuanian
directors Cezaris Grauzinis, consists of five young actors who have finished studies in 2003 at
Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy. The company has emerged during the making of the
performance Arabian Night by Roland Schimmelpfennig which was initiated and produced by the
New Drama Action.
Cezaris Group created 3 performances based on contemporary plays and classics. All the
performances represent the consequent search for a new artistic trace in Lithuanian theatre based
on experimenting with relations between physical expressions of artists’ body and the text.
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KAUNAS STATE DRAMA THEATRE, ARTS PRINTING HOUSE
Tankred Dorst MERLIN OR THE WASTED LAND
Premiere: 3rd of June, 2004
Performance in three acts, duration >3 hours 30 minutes
Director > Gintaras VARNAS, composer > Giedrius PUSKUNIGIS, set designer > Marta
VOSYLIUTE, costume designer > Jolanta RIMKUTE
One of the most impressive Lithuanian theatre productions of the 2003/2004 season directed by
the prominent young Lithuanian theatre director Gintaras Varnas together with the team of the
best young Lithuanian actors.
The “Wasted Land” is a gigantic dramaturgical mystery relating the Dark Ages to our days and
envisioning the formation and failure of Utopia. The conception of the project is related with the
concept of “wasted land” in the contemporary world - as a space of vanishing historical memory
or aggressive post industrial landscape, - is not only geographical but philosophical category as
well. It exists between Past and Present, between Civilization and Nature – the main
contradictions tearing apart the contemporary society.
The realization of the project had involved various non-theatrical spaces underpinned by true
historical memory (the former printing house of the soviet newspaper “Pravda” in Vilnius, the
former shipyard in Klaipeda, the former fur factory in Kaunas, the former shipyard - the birthplace of “Solidarnosc” in Gdansk etc.). These spaces function as the scenery of the project. The
artistic expression ranges from oriental shadow theatre, to middle age puppet theatre, to
contemporary new aesthetics.
Co-producers > Intercult, (Sweden) (in the frame of the SEAS festival), Ministry of Culture of
Lithuania, festival “New Drama Action” (Vilnius) and Goethe’s institute in Vilnius.
Awards > the best direction (Gintaras Varnas) and the best leading actor role (Dainius
Kazkauskas) of the 2003/2004 season.
Reviews >
‘The performance has broken through to the layer of eternal-naïve-universal themes avoiding
pseudo-intellectualism, rather primitive allegory, or temptations to contrast the ideals of
legendary Camelot with the destructive time of modern megalopolis. Having adopted a playful
and almost childish theatricality, the performance indirectly and unintentionally speaks of love,
friendship, and betrayal thus leaving room for any generalizations. Of course, it has irony,
sometimes slightly stinging; there is also an ornamenting flirt with historical theatre forms and
post-modern kitsch elements. Yet all the elements are so transparent that no attempt is made to
conceal them’.
Vlada Kalpokaite > The Theatre, No 2-3, 2004
‘In this performance one can see not only dramatic but also closely observed experiences and
discoveries of the director. All the human geography is placed in Wasted Land.
The magic of Gintaras Varnas starts from love for the actor. It cannot be hided’.
Daiva Sabaseviciene > www.omni.lt, 2004 06 09
Gintaras Varnas (born in 1961) is one of the leading Lithuanian directors. He has staged drama
and opera performances in Lithuania and abroad. He staged Lorca, Ibsen, O’Neill, Calderon,
Dostoevsky as well as contemporary playwrights: Jean-Luc Lagarce, Marina Carr, Tankred Dorst,
Thìmothee de Fombelle. Since 2004 Varnas holds a position of artistic director of Kaunas State
Drama Theatre. In 1998, 2001 and 2005 Varnas was awarded as the best director of a year in
Lithuania. As well in 2003 he received a prize for the best opera directing.
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KAUNAS STATE DRAMA THEATRE
Timothée de Fombelle THE LIGHTHOUSE
Premiere: 14th of January, 2005
One-act mono performance, duration > 1 hour 10 minutes
Director > Gintaras VARNAS, set designer > Gytis IVANAUSKAS, music composer > Giedrius
PUSKUNIGIS
“The Lighthouse” is a metaphor of solitude that along with all its metamorphoses is reflected in
the eyes of Gytis Ivanauskas as he lights a match. In several years the young actor has lived an
enviably mature stage life: from a rebellious teenage, to the most romantic all time lover and,
finally, the sickly world-leveller Roskolnikov.
Besides being a debut of the director Gintaras Varnas and the actor Gytis Ivanauskas in the genre
of mono performance, the performance is also the first try of the actor in scenography. In the
environment of prepared decorations, the actual scenography is being created on the stage itself –
on the papered walls the actor is drawing the world that his characters inhabit. It is the world of
childhood, dreams and fantasies that can only be seen in the darkness and emptiness of solitude –
when the light of the real lighthouse fades out.
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KAUNAS STATE DRAMA THEATRE
Sarah Kane 4.48 PSYCHOSIS
Premiere: 17th of September, 2004
One-act performance, duration > 1 hour 10 minutes
Director > Valius TERTELIS, set designer > Kotryna DAUJOTAITE, composer > Giedrius
PUSKUNIGIS, cello > Saulius BARTULIS
The play is staged by the director Valius Tertelis, who is mainly working in Moscow. Tertelis is a
student of the famous Russian theatre master Fomenka. “I was staging the play like a scream in
silence – the same as in the painting by Munk. And though the play is very expressive, it is also
impressionistic. I tried to convey S. Kane‘s words through the actors as carefully and sensitively
as I could – the director says.
Reviews >
‘Sarah Kane is not present in the performance, or rather she is present just partially – and this
presence suffices, as Tertelis is interpreting one of the important presumptions of her art – a
clearly defined and sensitively experienced time period that acquires universal features. The
author of the drama has disappeared, but the romanticism remains’.
Martynas Petrikas > A gentle end // Theatre, 2004.
Valius Tertelis (g. 1969 m.) studied theatre directing at Moscow’s Theatre Art school (the course
led by director Piotr Fomenka). At the same time was working as an actor at the Russian drama
theatre in Lithuania. 1998-2004 staged a number of performances at the Russian drama theatre in
Vilnius, Kaunas State drama theatre, attended the trainee courses in Japan and Greece.
Since 2003 is studying for magister degree in directing at Meyerhold’s Theatre centre (Moscow).
At the same time he is staging the performances at the different theatres in Moscow and casting
as an actor in Russian cinema.
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“KEISTUOLIŲ” THEATRE
THE OPEN CIRCLE
Premiere >21st of October, 2004
One – act performance, duration > 1 hour 30 minutes
Director > Aidas GINIOTIS
THE OPEN CIRCLE – is the theatre laboratory with the third course actors–students (head of
course – professor Vladas Bagdonas) from The Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy. It is a
collective theatrical improvisation based on personal memories and childhood experience. The
performance is based on two things: telling a story and improvising the story. Actors-students are
telling the true stories from their own life, and other actors are improvising the characters of the
story in the circle at the same time. It appears a very interesting theatre game, because in this way
you can speak about various things using an independent and unique theatre language. The
director of the performance Aidas Giniotis intertwined two kinds of theatre: pedagogical and
psychotherapical. All the time searching new ways and means of expression, theatre becomes the
way to share and to heal collectively. The continuous creative process – is the basic point of
working together.
Awards > Director of “The open circle” Aidas Giniotis got the main theatrical award “The
Golden Cross of Stage” for the best performance for children and youth of the season.
Performance was involved in ASSITEJ Theatre Festival programme.
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OKT / VILNIUS CITY THEATRE
PREMIERE!
Oleg & Vladimir Presnyakov PLAYING THE VICTIM
Director > Oskaras KORSUNOVAS
The Presnyakov brothers, authors of the international hit Terrorism, are the most popular
Russian playwrights in the world. Valya, the anti-hero of their new play, is employed by the
police department for whom he helps reenact the events at murder scenes: a suspected killer acts
out his deed and Valya ‘plays the victim’. But that is not only his job – it is also his lot in life, a
life that has parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Oskaras Korsunovas (born in 1969) – in 1993 finished Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy,
theatre directing (under direction of Jonas Vaitkus). Since 1990 has staged more than 20
performances in Lithuanian and foreign theatres. From the very early stage, he created his own
personal style and established the concept of his theatre. O. Korsunovas takes the present-day
reality chaos, paradox, absurdity and fragmentation and turns it into the main meaning generating
principle, thus, applying the breath of current life to the theatre.
O. Korsunovas belongs to the generation of directors that attracted the attention of organizers of
many international projects and initiatives after the fall of the Berlin Wall as the source of energy
of new theatre. His first performances (scenic trilogy based on works of early 20 th century’s
Russian avant-guardists Daniil Harms and Aleksandr Vvedensky There To Be Here, The Old
Woman and Hello Sonya New Year, 1990-1994 won acknowledgement in Lithuania and abroad.
Since 1997, the director has turned to the analysis of the socio-cultural environment of his
contemporaries, has organized a group of peers and announced the manifesto of the new theatre the theatre that would not limit itself to aesthetic quests, but rather search for contacts with the
people undergoing drama in the vicinity of new time.
O. Korsunovas is the winner of the Lithuanian National Art and Culture prize, European New
Reality prize, and the laureate of Lithuanian theatre seasons as well as many international
festivals in Europe, America, Asia, and Australia.
The newest performances of O. Korsunovas – The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of
Romeo and Juliet by W. Shakespeare (OKT / Vilnius city theatre) and Cold Child by Marius von
Mayenburg (Klaipeda Drama Theatre) – have been acknowledged as the best performances of the
2003/2004 season, and Oskaras Korsunovas – as the best theatre director.
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THE STATE SMALL THEATRE OF VILNIUS
WORK IN PROGRESS
Anton Chekhov THREE SISTERS
Director > Rimas TUMINAS
This is the newest and most awaited performance directed by Rimas Tuminas. His last production
Madagascar, based on a play of the most famous young Lithuanian dramatist and writer Marius
Ivaskevicius, dealing with especially national themes and names, became worldwide famous. It
also was awarded with the highest theatrical and literary prizes in Lithuania.
The premiere of the THREE SISTERS is planned to mark the opening of the reconstructed
building of the historical Theatre building in the center of Vilnius City.
In the close future, The State Small Theatre of Vilnius is willing to become an open space for
ambitious and creative young artists and their original projects.
Rimas Tuminas (born in 1952) is one of Lithuania’s leading contemporary theatrical directors.
After graduating from the Moscow Lunacharsky Theatrical Art Institute (GITIS) in 1978, the
following year Tuminas started working at the State Academic Drama Theater and managed to
stand out of the repertoire with his very first productions. He has been the art director of the State
Small Theatre of Vilnius since 1988. Tuminas was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for his
plays in 1994 and received two prestigious Kristoforas statues for best plays of the year in 1995
and 1997. In Tuminas’, every-day reality insensibly becomes poetry, drama gets a tint of soft
irony, and every detail on stage rouse emotions of the audience. A playful and improvising acting
dominates rather than directing effects.