Author: Joshua Sobol

Director: Gintaras Varnas

Set designer: Gintaras Makarevičius

Composer: Anatolijus Šenderovas

Costume designer: Aleksandra Jacovskytė

Video artist: Kornelijus Jaroševičius

Lighting artist: Vladimiras Šerstabojevas

Playwrights: Daiva Čepauskaitė ir Gintaras Varnas

Actors: Sigitas Šidlauskas, Dainius Svobonas, Mantas Zemleckas, Jovita Jankelaitytė, Liubomiras Laucevičius, Gytis Ivanauskas, Ričardas Vitkaitis, Vaidas Maršalka, Saulius Čiučelis, Tomas Erbrėderis, Gintautas Bejeris, Albinas Budnikas,  Martyna Gedvilaitė, Arnas Ašmonas, Gytis Laskovas, Karolina Elžbieta Mikolajūnaitė, Deividas Rajunčius, Pijus Narijauskas, Liucija Rukšnaitytė, Audronė Paškonytė, Dominyka Budinavičiūtė, Skaistė Grašytė, Mindaugas Gargasas, Rokas Lažaunykas, Boy with violin:. Jurgis Bajoras ir Jonas Venckūnas, Musicians: Darius Krapikas, Asta Markevičienė, Ugnė Petrauskaitė, Laimonas Salijus, Gintarė Kaminskaitė, Tadas Vilčinskas

Duration – 3 hours 50 minutes (with intermission)

The performance is showed with ENGLISH SURTITLES all the time.

World War II. Nazi-occupied Lithuania has become a death trap for Jews. Men, women, and children are imprisoned in ghettos and the only way out leads to a pit in the ground. “Ghetto” is a story of how people imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto came up with a unique idea – establishing a ghetto theater, which even in the face of death became their beacon of inner strength and resistance against the Nazi. This is a drama about their collective fight for physical and spiritual survival, even when they knew that the enemy was a hundred times stronger. “Ghetto” also tells the story of those who were holding the guns and trading shoes of their victims among themselves. Never before had Lithuania seen so many pits in the ground and so many spare shoes as in 1941.

Director: Agnius Jankevičius

Set designer: Laura Luišaitytė

Actors: Goda Piktytė,  Vaidas Maršalka, Gabrielė Ladygaitė, Daiva Rudokaitė , Gytis Laskovas, Inga Mikutavičiūtė

Duration – 2 hours 45 minutes (with intermission)

It is a story of passion, manipulation, hypocrisy, and devastating relationships of true love, a story about moral decline and fornication. The two aristocrats Marquis de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont begin a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to enliven their boring existence. Innocent people become the tools of their game. In order to avenge her lover who betrayed her, Marquis de Merteuil incites Vicomte de Valmont to seduce his fiancée. However, for Valmont, a professional Casanova, a young and innocent girl is the easiest task. His target Dora is a religious married woman. To conquer such a fortress is a challenge for any experienced womanizer. They are like a pair of gamers, who ignore their feelings and only focus on their own rules of the game, which turns the surrounding people into useful or unnecessary cards. When the intrigues of cynics entwine, and the reaction of victims brings unexpected results, it becomes evident that the endgame will be much serious and brutal than anticipated.

Rūta’s Hall. Age limit 16+

A collaborative project with “Mens publica”

More iformation: https://dramosteatras.lt/en/spektaklis/dangerous-liaisons/

Author: Daiva Čepauskaitė

Director: Eglė Kižaitė

Set and costume designer: Justė Kondratė

Composer: Artūras W Blažys

Actors: Eglė Grigaliūnaitė, Greta Šepliakovaitė, Pijus Narijauskas, Gytis Laskovas, Martyna Gedvilaitė, Andrius Gaučas, Goda Petkutė, Arnas Ašmonas, Rokas Lažaunykas

Duration – 1:50 h

When you are fourteen, your life is crazy: you dive headfirst into things, you hang out with your friends, fall in love, climb on the rooftop and drown in the music. All you want is kisses, adventure, parties, laughter, appreciation, power and support. The play In a rush portrays teenagers’ world, which sometimes might be complicated and harsh, yet lively and moving. This play is based on Internet forum stories and real life stories told by 13-16 year old children. Today, adolescents face new challenges: love and sexting, friendship and betrayal, bullying and solitude. But, in the middle of it all, teenagers only want to be heard and understood.

Based on the book The Fox and Overshoes by Liudvikas Jakimavičius

Director: Agnė Sunklodaitė

Set and costume designer: Ramunė Skrebūnaitė

Composer: Deividas Gnedinas

Actors: Saulius Čiučelis, Artūras Sužiedėlis, Henrikas Savickis, Inga Mikutavičiūtė, Ridas Žirgulis, Ugnė Žirgulė

Duration – 1 hour

A funny and playful play presents a very serious topic – emigration and love for the homeland. The hare Bernadetas, a small businessman, decides to emigrate from his home forest to Vilnius. On his way, he meets friends with the same fate, emigrants from the Petruška farm: the pig Kleopatra, the dog Cezaris and the goat Makedonas. How was their journey? Did they find the city of dreams friendly? You will find all the answers if you come to watch the play. It can be perceived both as a playful and funny fairy tale for kids and a grotesque parabola of modern times for adults. The play perfectly fits various tastes. Actors not only act on the stage but also communicate with the audience, ask to join the play and at the same time personify various characters and sing on the stage.

Author: Ivan Vyrypaev

Director, set and costume designer: Nino Maglakelidze

Video artist: Ridas Beržauskas

Actors: Dainius Svobonas (Robert), Goda Petkutė (Sara), Sigitas Šidlauskas (Donald)

Duration – 2 hours

Translation from the Russian language by Artiomas Rybakovas

From the first glance, the storyline of ‘Summer Wasps Bite Us Even in November’ reminds us of a detective: a man, his wife, and their family friend are trying to find out where their friend Marcus was on Monday’s evening. Each of them claims that he’s been with them. They even have clear evidence and witnesses. They try to convince others that the truth is on their side. All of them sound very believable but Marcus could not have been at a few places at the same time. So, where was he really at? The innocent discussion is slowly turning into a strange game, provoking open confessions, and exposing wounds. The storyline is shifting towards absurdity. It goes over the limits of a love triangle or family drama and finally becomes irrelevant. Here, something else matters more – the world in which each of us attempts to force our views on others. As in many other plays of the Russian playwright Ivan Vyrypaev, here the action takes place in one room with the door to outer space. In this space, eternal questions and current relevant issues are floating – but on which side lies the truth? Or maybe it can be on more than one side? Can we accept other people without trying to re-educate and change them? Without forcing them to perceive the world as we do? How can we communicate in today’s divided world? How can we live when it is impossible to do so?

Author: Mika Myllyaho

Director: Kamilė Gudmonaitė

Set and costume designer: Barbora Šulniūtė

Video artists: Ridas Beržauskas, Barbora Šulniūtė, Jonas Litvinas

Actors: Mantas Zemleckas (Max), Vaidas Maršalka (Johnny), Gytis Laskovas (Leo)

Duration  –  2 hours 15 minutes (with intermission)

The play Panic directed by Kamilė Gudmonaitė, based on the dramatical piece Panic by Mika Myllyaho, a contemporary Finnish playwright. The play invites the spectators to step into a provocative and realistic urban universe where contemporary men go through real and imaginary crises. This intelligent and incisive comedy tells the story of three friends who are trying to cope with their lives.

Following eastern practices and adhering to psychotherapy principles, the men embark on an absurd, comical, and intense journey of self-cognition, revealing the problematics of masculinity as a social stamp. What are the challenges faced by men today? What do society and family expect of them? What are the requirements imposed on them by this era? What neuroses lurk behind the exterior of a cool and domineering breadwinner? Director Kamilė Gudmonaitė challenges the “normalcy” stereotypes produced by society and presents a slightly absurd comedy, which nonetheless discloses considerable tensions of contemporary social life.

Opening – December 18, 19, and 20, 2019

Rūta’s Hall.  Age limit: 18+

The play translation was sponsored by TINFO (Theatre Info Finland)

Text copyright belongs to NORDIC DRAMA CORNER OY

Attention! During the performance, uncensored speech, imagery, and certain smells are used.

The play is sponsored by The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

Author: Darryl Pinckney

Director stage and lighting designer: Robert Wilson

Co-director: Anna-Christine Rommen

Author of music and songs: Christian Friedel

Associate set designer: Stephanie Engeln

Costume designer: Jacques Reynaud

Associate Lighting: Marcello Lumaca

Hair and Makeup Design: Manu Halligan

Video artist: Tomek Jeziorski

Assistant of the costume designer: Birutė Jašinskaitė

Assistant of the Associate Ligtning: Džiugas Vakrinas

Assistant director: Aivaras Micius

Stage managers: Edita Laurinaitienė, Asta Mačiulytė

Actors: Dainius Svobonas, Mantas Zemleckas

Duration: 1.30 hours

Dorian is a premiere by world-recognised director Robert Wilson in the National Kaunas Drama Theatre; it has been created together with the D’haus Theatre (Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus) in Germany, Düsseldorf. Robert Wilson is one of the most significant theatre creators of our times, who has changed the audience’s comprehension of the process taking place on the stage. His creations combine elements from dance, performance, architecture, painting, music, and drama.

The storytelling of the performance is combined of motifs from the lives of Oscar Wilde, his character Dorian Grey, and English painter Francis Bacon. All of them valued beauty, youth, and life pleasures, sought external perfection and led egocentric lives. Oscar Wilde was beloved by London society until he was sent to jail for an ‘indecent relationship’ with his lover Alfred Douglas. Francis Bacon suggested for the burglar, who broke into his studio, George Dyer, to become a model instead of calling the police. The beautiful Dorian Grey dreamed that his portrait would get old instead of him and he himself would stay forever young and dashing. These three more or less made-up stories tell us about the link between life and art. American writer Darryl Pinckney connected them into associative threads of narrative in which memories, experiences, thoughts, and feelings are intertwined. The direction, movement architecture, and light magic of Robert Wilson create a perfect view engulfing with its precision and mastery.

Performance is part of the Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 programme.

by Dovilė Zavedskaitė

Director: Eglė Kižaitė

Set and costume designer: Laura Luišaitytė

Composer: Pijus Narijauskas

Actors: Mantas Bendžius, Tomas Erbrėderis, Kamilė Lebedytė

Duration- 1 hour

Postman and Currants is a performance for 5-10-year-old children, based on the book of the same name by Dovilė Zavedskaitė. Sometimes a pipe bursts at home and water floods the whole floor of the bathroom. Sometimes dad’s good mood disappears. The world is not perfect, but if you don’t just sit around without lifting a finger, you can change something. You can write letters. Letters connect people. And together people can do many great things. Let’s talk, communicate, unite, and become friends – then the world will become a better place to live.

A performance for 6-10-year-old children

Director: Augustas Gornatkevičius

Set designer: Simona Davlidovičiūtė

Dramaturgy: Domas Raibys

Projection designer: Kristijonas Dirsė

Composer: Marija Paškevičiūtė

Movement director: Gintarė Šmigelskytė

Actors: Mantas Bendžius, Saulė Sakalauskaitė, Marius Karolis Gotbergas, Pijus Narijauskas, Goda Petkutė, Greta Šepliakovaitė

The performance for teenagers “Schooler” was inspired by the 1985 American cult film “The Breakfast Club”. Director Augustas Gornatkevičius, the creative team, and the National Kaunas Drama Theatre’s young actors created an original version where five teenagers try to find answers to their questions. Who am I? What is the meaning of life? Usually, it is hard even for adults to find the answers. Teenagers have more time and willingness to dig deeper; however, this desire is often suppressed – “you’ll grow up and see”, “stay in your shoes”, “be the person we want to see you as”. The performance delves into the world of adolescents and attempts to challenge prevailing stereotypes. The media and society often portray teenagers in a biased way, imposing stereotypes or behavioural patterns on them: geek, beauty, athlete, artist, etc. “Who I truly am?” the characters of the performance ask – five teenagers trapped in the school’s basement – trying to free themselves from the pressure of parents, teachers and society and to throw off the masks that have been put on them.

School – purgatory – rules… Is it a place where we learn, a place where our sinful souls are purged, a place where you have to follow certain rules and where you will be prepared for life? The school’s basement becomes a surreal place where dreams, authorities, characters from childhood tales and read books wander all around.

Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Director: Gintaras Varnas

Set designer: Gintaras Makarevičius

Costume designer: Juozas Statkevičius

Puppet designer: Julija Skuratova

Composer: Vidmantas Bartulis

Visual artist: Rimas Sakalauskas

Cocreator: Antanas Obcarskas

Actors: Vytautas Anužis, Dainius Svobonas, Vainius Sodeika, Arnas Ašmonas, Eglė Špokaitė, Egidijus Stancikas, Jovita Jankelaitytė, Vilija Grigaitytė, Saulius Čiučelis, Liubomiras Laucevičius, Sigitas Šidlauskas, Vaidas Maršalka, Gintautas Bejeris, Artūras Sužiedėlis, Andrius Gaučas, Dovydas Pabarčius

Duration – 2 hours 45 minutes (with intermission)

Once upon a time in the Eastern lands there lived a man who had a magical ring. Whoever wore the ring was followed by God’s grace and glory. The ring was always passed from one generation to another to the most beloved son in the family. Once, however, it ended up in the hands of a man who had three sons whom he loved equally. The man could not make up his mind to whom he should give the ring. Before his death, he went to see the jeweller and asked him to make two more such rings. Then he secretly gave a ring to each of his sons and passed away. When the sons saw that all of them had rings, they began quarrelling and arguing. Which ring is the real one? Which two are worthless copies? Who is destined to become the chosen one? Three religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – even nowadays try to prove that only one of them is true and fair.

Nathan the Wise, a utopian tale of the Age of Enlightenment (18th century), exalts the human mind and the power to make the world prefect and tries to convince us that three sons – three religions – can live in peace and harmony.

Director: Augustas Gornatkevičius

Movement director: Gintarė Šmigelskytė

Set and costume designer: Simona Davlidovičiūtė

Composer: Mantvydas Leonas Pranulis

Playwright: Daiva Čepauskaitė

Actors: Greta Šepliakovaitė, Andrius Alešiūnas, Marius Karolis Gotbergas, Povilas Jatkevičius, Dovydas Pabarčius

The creation of the performance was inspired by the famous Emil from Astrid Lindgren’s book Emil of Lönneberga. He’s constantly playing pranks and carving funny wooden people while sitting in a woodshed as a punishment. However, all of us have played pranks and made mistakes in our childhood, right? Troublemakers and adventure seekers can be found in each yard, street or classroom. Sometimes they grow to become city mayors or even presidents. Director Augustas Gornatkevičius and the actors of the National Kaunas Drama Theatre have created a performance based on their childhood adventures and their mistakes that teach us how to live and evoke our creativity. Emil of Emils is speeding on roller-skates and inviting to adventures as well as to rejoice, to try and discover new things, and to do parkour.

A performance for 8-12-year-old children

Duration – 1:30

The Long Hall

Author: Vydūnas

Director: Jonas Vaitkus

Set and costume designer: Jonas Arčikauskas

Composer: Tomas Kutavičius

Choreographer: Lina Puodžiukaitė

Video artist: Ridas Beržauskas

Video artist: Vladimiras Šerstabojevas

Assistant director: Rokas Misikonis

Actors: Liubomiras Laucevičius, Jūratė Onaitytė, Motiejus Ivanauskas, Vaidas Maršalka, Inga Mikutavičiūtė, Greta Šepliakovaitė, (Iveta Raulinaitytė ), Henrikas Savickis, (Justin Burškaitytė), Daiva Rudokaitė, Audronė Paškonytė, Sigitas Šidlauskas, Gintautas Bejeris, Martyna Gedvilaitė, Andrius Alešiūnas,  Saulius Čiučelis, Dovydas Pabarčius, Kęstutis Povilaitis, Kamilė Lebedytė, Marius Karolis Gotbergas, Saulė Sakalauskaitė

Duration – 2:10 h

The Self Forgotten is more than a performance. It is a performance mission that spreads the fundamental ideas of the Lithuanian humanist, philosopher, and writer Vydūnas. To educate a nation of conscious and free people, its spiritual culture-science, art, and morality – that was the main goal of the great thinker. Director Jonas Vaitkus considers Vydūnas’ personality to be one of the guiding principles in nowadays’ devaluation of moral values ​​and invites the theatre community to march in the direction of love, compassion, conscience, and virtue. Let us become human beings for ourselves – essentially, but not superficially, free people, let us not worship the golden calf, but strive for higher and more perfect humanity. Let us be people in the nation – let us love our homeland, let us work sincerely for it, and be worthy of respect. Let us be human beings in the universe – let us see the world through the nation and contribute to the good of the world. Composer Tomas Kutavičius and scenographer Jonas Arčikauskas turn Vydūnas’ philosophical thought into an impressive mystery – a musical spectacle that combines the shadows of the nation’s history, the echoes of natural elements, and the desire for human improvement.

Author: Anton Chekhov

Director: Rolandas Kazlas

Set and costume designer: Neringa Keršulytė

Actors: Rolandas Kazlas, Liubomiras Laucevičius, Dainius Svobonas, Ričardas Vitkaitis, Artūras Sužiedėlis, Raimonda Šukytė, Lili Stepankaitė, Arūnas Stanionis

Duration – 1:50 h

The play is based on Anton Chekhov’s stories The Ward No. 6 and The Black Monk. The play focuses on the fateful meeting of a doctor and a patient. Both are interested in and troubled by fundamental questions of human existence, faith or disbelief, life, death and immortality. How to live? What to choose? Whether to stay as a part of a shallow and lousy society or step back to the loneliness and live in the world of fantasies, ideas and even hallucinations? Whether to sensitively react to the environment or keep to the philosophical world view where the feeling of satisfaction can be found only in yourself? What is wellness and where does the illness start? What is the difference between the theory and the real life? Is the ward a prison or a citadel or lee which could it be a place to get better, where a person finds the inner-self again? These are the questions and topics that set apart and bring back together the heroes of the play. The ward and its only habitant attracts doctor Ragin like a magnet. Visits to the patient become more and more frequent…

Director  – Ivan Uryvskyi (Ukraina)

Set designer  – Petro Bogomazov (Ukraina)

Costume designer  – Tetiana Ovsiichuk (Ukraina)

Actors: Saulius Čiučelis, Martyna Gedvilaitė, Vaidas Maršalka, Audronė Paškonytė, Kęstutis Povilaitis, Agnieška Ravdo

Author: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz-Witkacy

Director: Antanas Obcarskas

Playwright: Laurynas Adomaitis

Set designer: Lauryna Liepaitė

Costume designer: Juozas Valenta

Composer: Rolandas Venckys

Video artist: Saulė Bliuvaitė

Director assistant: Deivydas Valenta

Actors: Gytis Ivanauskas, Saulius Čiučelis, Deividas Breivė, Mantas Bendžius, Augustė Šimulynaitė, Aistė Zabotkaitė, Saulė Sakalauskaitė

Duration – 2 hours 50 minutes (with intermission)

The production is a co-production of the NKDT (National Kaunas Drama Theatre) and Utopia Theatre. The production is also realized together with the Polish Cultural Institute in Vilnius and the Adam Mickiewicz Foundation. The performance is a part of International Theatre festival "Stage 10x10"

The Shoemakers, although left unfinished due to the author’s suicide, is considered the best Witkacy’s work for the theatre. The last decade of Witkacy’s life and work (1930–1939), coinciding with a difficult period for the whole of Europe as well, was full of pessimism and anxiety. The artist saw the waking demons of totalitarianism and feared for a bleak future – the play The Shoemakers perfectly discloses the atmosphere of that time.

The Shoemakers is a kind of play of visions, which draws predictions about the future of literature, art, politics, society, and the human condition. Paradoxically, Witkacy’s visions are surprisingly accurate in relation to today’s reality, testifying to the author’s astounding ability to diagnose very broadly the diseases of his time and the evils of the future. The play exhibits three social classes (bourgeois-capitalists, working-class, and aristocrats) and their flaws through the composition of three acts and the characters assigned to a particular class. Every act ends with a revolution that reverses the power relationship. The central theme of the play’s plot is the changes in social situations, roles, and individual personal status before and after the revolutions. Will those who were oppressed and now in power change anything after the revolution? On the other hand, maybe they will also suffer from the moral sickness of their oppressors? A closer look at Witkacy naturally raises a question: what kind of revolution awaits us?

The creation of the performance is partially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and LTKT (the Culture Council).

Director: Eglė Kižaitė

Stage adaptation director: Daiva Čepauskaitė

Set and costume designer: Justė Kondratė

Music and sound designer: Edgaras Žemaitis

Actors: Martyna Gedvilaitė, Pijus Narijauskas, Audronė Paškonytė, Sigitas Šidlauskas

Based on the fairy tale Happiness is a Fox by Evelina Daciūtė

Duration – 1 hour

The relationship between the Boy and the Fox started a long time ago when Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a pilot. People say that they are still friends. Could it be another boy and another fox? It could be, but that is not the most important. A friendship that starts with a bun given as a present and never ends is the most important. To swing together on a park swing, listen to strange stories, enjoy the view of the Smoked Salmon Constellation and be a part of the Generosity Ocean is the most important. The Boy Povilas and his parents moved from the book Happiness is a Fox by Evelina Daciūtė to the National Kaunas Drama Theatre. He tells young spectators a cosy and light orange story of his childhood. Once upon a time, Povilas went out to buy some buns and took an unknown path in the park. Behind the turn, a breathtaking flight on the swing and long-tailed, fluffy happiness were waiting for him.

Director: Vidas Bareikis

Set designer: Paulė Bocullaitė

Costume designer: Aistė Radzevičiūtė

Composer: Marius Stavaris

Dramatist assistant: Austėja Lunskytė–Yildiz

Actors: Vainius Sodeika, Dainius Svobonas, Liubomiras Laucevičius,  Saulius Čiučelis, Tomas Erbrėderis, Vaidas Maršalka, Goda Petkutė, Andrius Gaučas, Gintautas Bejeris, Mantas Klimas.

Many directors have tried to recreate Hamlet on stage, today the play became a synonym for the theatre. Each generation has a different answer to the question of existence.

Hamlet’s personality in director’s Vidas Bareikis play is neither that of a romantic hero nor of an idealist. He is just a man looking for the truth. His feelings are real ranging from love and hectic revenge to mourning, rage and desperation. All the emotions create a real human being with all possible colors and shades. Perhaps that is the reason which makes the play so relevant after hundreds of years.

The play is a part of Vidas Bareikis’ beloved initiative “Theatre in the Theatre”. This initiative treats theatre like a shining light that helps to see what is hidden behind shadows – author’s intentions, his dualistic personality, existance itself and everything what happens in or outside the theatre. Hamlet thinks of the theatre as the last institution of justice and raises the question why we are so influenced by our environment? Can our lives be more meaningful? What does duty mean? Why just a few of us have the courage to break the boundaries of limitation?

The Main stage.

Author: Maurice Maeterlinck

Director: Vaidotas Martinaitis

Set designer: Artūras Šimonis

Composer: Antanas Jasenka

Costume designer: Aleksandra Jacovskytė

Video artist: Vladimiras Šerstabojevas

Actors: Saulius Čiučelis, Giedrė Žaliauskaitė, Goda Petkutė, Vilija Grigaitytė, Gintautas Bejeris, Martyna Gedvilaitė, Inga Mikutavičiūtė, Daiva Rudokaitė, Liucija Rukšnaitytė, Artūras Sužiedėlis, Aušra Keliuotytė, Ričardas Vitkaitis, Arnas Ašmonas, Eugenija Bendoriūtė, Ugnė Žirgulė, Ridas Žirgulis, Nijolė Ona Lepeškaitė, Algirdas Pintukas, Audronė Paškonytė, Tomas Erbrėderis, Mindaugas Jankauskas, Gytis Laskovas, Dainius Svobonas, Arūnas Stanionis

Duration – 2 h (with intermission)

The play The Blue Bird by National Kaunas Drama Theatre recreates the Nobel Prize Laureate Maeterlinck’s allegoric tale about two children who are charged with the task of finding and catching the Blue Bird on a dark Christmas night. The children set out on an adventurous and magical journey to fantastic worlds, palaces, and gardens. However, the resolution and courage to cover long distances, encounter the powers of Light and Shade, and Good and Evil, are not sufficient to find the Blue Bird: recognizing it requires a simple yet miraculous capability – being able to see the invisible.

Two siblings, a boy called Tyltyl and his sister Mytyl, are given a magical diamond, turning which enables them to see the inherent personalities or the essence of objects and phenomena. The siblings can now see those simple things like Bread, Water, Sugar, and Fire have souls of their own, which helps distinguish and perceive true values. This fantastic story reminds us that traces of happiness may only be detected with our eyes and hearts wide open, and with an innocent glance of a child. We do not have to seek happiness far across the seas, for the Blue Bird is flying everywhere, leaving its magical feather in every home. The Bird may just have visited the Land of Memories, home to the ones who passed away, but are still alive because we cherish the memories of them. It may have just perched on a sumptuous palace of Night or has flown over the magic garden, where Bliss of Maternal Love, Bliss of Thinking, and Bliss of Understanding reign; it may have just left the Land of the Future, having touched our dreams… Maybe one does not have to possess the magical gem in order to be able to see the real face of the world, because, in the words of Maurice Maeterlinck, all stones are equally precious, it is just that people do not see the value of them all? This fantastic story invites us to open our eyes widely, to take a close look at the world and our souls, and to achieve a blissful understanding that “we are only worth the happiness that we are capable of perceiving” (Maurice Maeterlinck).

William Shakespeare

The director – Peeter Jalakas

The playwright – Taavi Eelmaa

The scenographer and costume designer – Kristel Zimmer

Composers  – Gavin Bryars and Yuri Bryars

The video director and scenographer – Emer Värk

Translated from English by Tomas Venclova.

The cast: Artūras Sužiedėlis, Henrikas Savickis, Dainius Svobonas, Ričardas Vitkaitis, Arūnas Stanionis, Ridas Žirgulis, Gintautas Bejeris, Agnieszka  Ravdo, Martyna Gedvilaitė, Mantas Bendžius, Deividas Breivė, Motiejus Ivanauskas, Kamilė Lebedytė.

“The Tempest” – one of the latest dramatic works by W. Shakespeare, staged many times in various places in Lithuania. Written in the XVII century, this tragicomedy reflects the disappointment of the ideal of humanism and connects reality with the magic and fantasy elements of fairy tales. On a distant nameless island live the outcasts – a wizard and an artist, Prospero, with his daughter Miranda. Prospero controls the elements of nature, evil and good spirits. He seeks revenge on his enemies, who once made him run away from Milan and took his duke throne. Using spells, he stirs up a tempest in the sea, in which the enemies’ ship is sailing, breaks it, and flings away the crew to the same island. Once the enemies are lured, Prospero chooses forgiveness.

“The Tempest” is one of the few works by W. Shakespeare with a happy ending.

Peeter Jalakas, an Estonian director and avant-gardist, creates a modern and theatrical show where live theatre and modern technologies are merged, employing the exotic surroundings of the island. The director offers a unique interpretation - he proposes to look at the inhabitants of the nameless island as the beginning of a new, more perfect, better humanity. The audiences are invited to try to imagine a future in which the roles of mythological creatures, spirits, and nymphs are taken over by artificial intelligence. This interpretation questions Prospero's forgiveness and nobility, it emphasises the lack of human essence. The ending is happy, but did human kind had contributed to it?

This play is a dramatization of the novel The White Shroud by exodus writer Antanas Škėma (1910-1961).

Number 87 takes down the elevator. Up and down. He is wandering through his cracky memories in places of the interwar Kaunas, High Panemunė and Vilnius. The 87th poet, Antanas Garšva, having no opportunity to vow to his creative work and achieve immortality of his soul, is forced to carry out a Sisyphean-like lift operator’s work in the biggest hotel in New York. His fragmented consciousness is haunted by homesickness, and sometimes images of women whom he loved. Garšva rejects love, ruptures human relationships, remains lonely in the cage of an elevator, but he still lives in the desire of hope fruition.

Mr Garšva as a cog in a huge machine is recklessly looking for self-actualization. He discards all his illusions and keeps to himself his poetry. However, creative giddiness and desperate efforts to discover the truth brings suffering.

Director: Aleksandr Špilevoj

Projection designer: Paulius Jakubėnas

Composer: Paulius Trijonis

Set and costume designer: Barbora Šulniūtė

Actors Nelė Savičenko (Ulja Richtė), Inesa Paliulytė (Ulja Richtė), Mantas Zemleckas (Kšištof Zelinski), Deividas Breivė (Kšištof Zelinski), Gytis Ivanauskas (Styv), Gintautas Bejeris (Styv), Indrė Patkauskaitė (Natali Blumištein), Martyna Gedvilaitė (Natali Blumištein), Matas Dirginčius (Maikl), Arnas Ašmonas (Maikl), Dainius Svobonas (Voice of the Author ).

Disquiet is a performance-based on a play by the popular contemporary Russian playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev. The action takes place in New York, in the apartment of a famous American writer Ula Richter. An ambitious Polish journalist interviews the celebrity. This interview is of great importance: to the journalist, it can become a trampoline for his professional career in New York, while for the writer, it is a great opportunity to tell the truth or maybe to mess with everyone and create another myth of herself. The mysterious intrigue begins when the journalist asks questions he has been warned to avoid – about the writer’s German origin, allegations of anti-Semitism, and her scandalous removal from the Nobel Prize nominees. Disquiet is a story about authors creating not only their works but also their own myth – the most specific and intense as well as the brightest and the most genuine reality. Disquiet is what people feel when they love. Disquiet is what people feel when they create. Disquiet is what people feel when they kill. This whole spectrum of contradictory feelings, which we call disquiet, is experienced by the creator, the artist. “The creation is the Creator’s disquiet at every second of creation, in every single part of this strange universe, and in every single one of us”, says the protagonist of the performance. Disquiet is a modern, ironic performance about the essence of creation.

Duration – 1 h 40 min ( without intemission)

Director: Aidas Giniotis

Set designer: Laura Luišaitytė

Composer: Ignas Juzokas

Actors: Jūratė Onaitytė , Liubomiras Laucevičius,  Egidijus Stancikas,  Dainius Svobonas,  Albinas Budnikas,  Saulius Čiučelis, Tomas Erbrėderis,  Martyna Gedvilaitė,  Eugenija Bendoriūtė,  Pijus Narijauskas,  Ugnė Žirgulė,  Dovydas Pabarčius, Audronė Paškonytė,  Henrikas Savickis,  Artūras Sužiedėlis,  Ridas Žirgulis,  Gintautas Bejeris,  Elžbieta Banaitytė, Ula Dekerytė.

Duration – 2 hours 50 minutes (with intermission)

The small, impoverished town of the province, where the factories have been out of service for a long time and there are no trains carrying important passengers, is visited by the fabulously rich lady Clara. This town is a place where she grew up, but one day left and returned after more than four decades. The multimillionaire Clara, who can financially support the townspeople, is the last hope to restore the town’s prosperity. The old lady agrees to donate one billion francs, but with one condition – justice must be restored in the town by killing one man who broke her heart when she was young. At first, the townspeople are outraged by the fact considering that they live in a cultural European country which was visited by Goethe and where Brams created his quartets. But the rich lady agrees to wait and gradually the position of people begins to change. They begin to spend more money, seek entertainment and behave as if the agreement to kill the man has been made and one billion francs have been granted.

“The Visit” is a play, which brought the swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) worldwide fame. The writer believed that the time of tragedies passed and only the comedy could define the tragedy of life nowadays. Dürrenmatt can make one laugh and cry, guffaw and get horrified, like a clown, which demonstrates fascinating tricks on the brink of the abyss.

The Main Hall

Director – Aleksandras Špilevojus

Playwright – Daiva Čepauskaitė

Set and costume designer – Ugnė Tamoliūnaitė

Actors: Vilija Grigaitytė, Liubomiras Laucevičius, Jūratė Onaitytė, Inesa Paliulytė, Audronė Paškonytė, Algirdas Pintukas, Liucija Rukšnaitytė, Lili Stepankaitė.

Everyone tries to delay it, avoid it, or outrun it. Some people ignore it, while others try to overcome it with the latest scientific innovations, and still, others mock it. No one eagerly awaits it, but it inexorably arrives. It often catches us unprepared because, throughout our lives, we assume it is distant, that it belongs to others, and that it will somehow miraculously bypass us. Yet, it comes and lingers, transforming us into individuals who find themselves undeservedly on the fringes of society. It is the merciless old age.

Premiering at the National Kaunas Drama Theatre and directed by Aleksandras Špilevojus, this story centres around the often forgotten, undervalued, mocked and discriminated against group of elderly people. It delves into the lives of those whose experiences are priceless treasures, individuals who carry more memories than future plans. This narrative prompts reflection on our present and our elderly future. As the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir once said, “If we do not know who we will become, we cannot know who we are now.” To prevent old age from becoming a frightening and shameful taboo, it is essential that we engage in open conversations about it.

A colourful group of seniors gathers for the funeral of their old friend. They have much to catch up on, much to discuss, yet very little time. This comedic performance brims with humour, memories of youth and talented actors from the older generation.

Author: Algirdas Landsbergis

Director: Gytis Padegimas

Set and costume designer: Birutė Ukrinaitė

Composer: Raimundas Martinkėnas

Choreographer: Indrė Puišytė

Actors: Arnas Ašmonas, Jurgis Jarašius, Andrius Gaučas, Rokas Lažaunykas, Dainius Svobonas, Henrikas Savickis, Ugnė Žirgulė, Artūras Sužiedėlis, Milė Šablauskaitė, Dovydas Pabarčius, Karolina Elžbieta Mikolajūnaitė

Duration – 2 hours 45 minutes (with intermission)

Director Gytis Padegimas comes back to the Kaunas National Drama Theatre after a few years break with the emigrant writer Algirdas Landsbergis’s play The Wind in the Willows. [A.] The writer discusses the inward conflict – how one is to live facing historical tragedies. Clear poetical intonation which is characteristic to Lithuanian historical dramas is apparent in the dialogues of the play, and the plot takes back to the XVI century, the moment Lithuanian-Polish forces wait to battle the Russian army for Livonia. Saint Casimir together with an angel comes down to earth for a brief moment to see people and their earthly lives, however the visit takes longer than expected…

“Similar to other plays as Our Town and During the Long Christmas Eve, this play is strongly Wilderesque, as its theme revolves around ordinary people, their strangely connected fates in the face of war. Since nowadays we feel strong geopolitical tension, I believe this play is very important. Also, Algirdas Landsbergis’ texts are like remedy for strengthening the Lithuanian consciousness” says the director of the play with confidence.

Author: Kārlis Krūmiņš ir dirbtinis intelektas

Director: Valters Sīlis

Set and costume designer: Uģis Bērziņš

Composer: Arvīds Saulītis

Lighting artist: Lauris Johansons

Actors: Inga Tropa, Kārlis Reijers, Vaidas Maršalka, Deividas Breivė

In English with Lithuanian surtitles

Duration - 1:40

The human is competing with the computer. Which one of them can make a better performance? The humans would like to think that only they are able to create art, but Artificial intelligence challenges that belief.

This time the Playwright is called to the Arena. By winning he will gain almost as much as the Gladiator, but in the case of losing he will have to give his Playwright’s title to the winner.

In English with Lithuanian surtitles

Director, playwright, set and costume designer – Gintarė Minelgaitė-Duchin

Composer – Sandra Kazlauskaitė

Lighting artist – Paulius Voronenka

Cameraman – Edgaras Jocius

“Snow White” is a performance by the prominent performance author Gintarė Minelgaitė (Dr. GoraParasit). Based on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, she offers a reflection on current global issues. The artist asserts that Hollywood interpretations of Snow White have significantly distorted the story, resulting in cultural insensitivity. Minelgaitė has rewritten it, constructing an ever-expanding array of variations within the posthumanist world. The plot is enriched by themes such as the climate crisis and iceberg ecology, refugees and migration, racial discrimination and gender dynamics. The relationships between Snow White and the characters she interacts with are explored through the lenses of power dynamics, gender studies and societal constraints imposed upon individuals. By harnessing today’s technological advancements in theatre, along with a glitchy, hyperlink-and-advertisement-ridden video game aesthetic, the artist constructs a world plagued by the injustices of the 21st century. Through this creative lens, she implores us to take action before it’s too late – an allegory that prompts viewers to reflect on humanity’s shortsightedness and the profound impact our choices have on the environment. It also challenges us to reconsider traditional gender roles, confront our fears and drive positive change.

Performed by the actors of the National Kaunas drama Theatre. The role of Gaia Steel is played by Susana AbdulMajid.

Age limit: 18+