"What do you know about the periphery of Lithuania? when were you there What have you heard about Šalčininkai and Šalčininkai district? You say everyone speaks Polish there and the Polish party rules? There is a border, and also smuggling? Many Belarusians. What else?" - ask the creators of the new play of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater.
The first LNDT performance of 2018 "Unknown land. "Salčia" will invite you to move to the city of Šalčininkai, which is surrounded by many myths and stereotypes, and is located on the border. For the director of the play, Jonas Terteliis, this is not the first attempt to discover authentic stories hidden in the periphery and transfer them to the stage: the play "Green Lawn" presented by him together with the creative group last season at LNDT revealed what the workers of the closing Ignalina nuclear power plant and the residents of Visaginas live. The debut of the LNDT documentary theater "Zalia pievelė" received very favorable reviews from critics and good feedback from the audience. "An unknown land. "Salčia" is created according to similar principles, that is, the dramaturgical material is collected by listening to authentic stories of local residents, by holding creative workshops with the local community. However, the new play will differ from "Green Lawn" in that the stage will not be told by people who have lived through the stories, but by actors. Gailė Butvilaitė (playing Eglė in "Išvaryme"), Airida Gudaitė (dancer, choreographer, awarded with "Golden Stage Crosses" for the dance performances "Journey to Home" and "Zhaidimas baigtas"), Laurynas Jurgelis (playing Romeo in the performance "The Wonderful and the poignant story of Romeo and Juliet"), Miglė Polikevičiūtė (who plays Dora and Rachelka in the play "Our Class" and Agnieszka in "The Three Sisters") and Oskar Vygonovski (known from the plays "#beskambučio" and "Jelizaveta Bam").
Director Jonas Tertelis, text creators Andrius Jevsejevas and Eglė Vitkutė, set designer Paulė Bocullaitė and performance manager Agnė Pulokaitė started collecting material for the play in the fall of 2017 in Šalčininkai. To the invitations to come to the creative workshop, to tell about their city, the people of Salčininka reacted slowly at first (just like in Visaginas), but when they started making targeted contacts, the creative process accelerated.
"As soon as we started creating the performance, we quickly defined the most relevant themes and leitmotifs gathered from television, the Internet and everyday life, and decided to "wade into the river of Cold". We went to Šalčininki proud, having done a good check-up and asking questions, ready to hear and record the most interesting and colorful stories. After the process of creating the play went to the other side, after spending a lot of time not only in Šalčininkai itself, but also after traveling around the surrounding areas, directly encountering the hospitality of the local residents, a kind of southern temperament, the perception of honor and dignity, many preconceived notions collapsed. Where we were looking for uniqueness, we found a completely normal, Lithuanian life, and where we thought we would not find anything special, we found a mystical, absolutely non-ordinary everyday life", says Andrius Jevsejevas.
"We found a region there that has its own heroes, tragedies, social challenges, disputes, and cautiously expressed joys." Who should be interested? As if there is nothing special there, maybe only an endless love for one's country and religion, a desire to return, create one's life there and romanticize history. Individual stories, fragments, and facts cannot create a generalized picture of Šalčininkai, but their totality forms a slightly different, surreal image and atmosphere of the Lithuanian peripheral town, which, in order to be as documentary as possible, using only the literal stories of the Šalčininkai residents, we are trying to convey to the audience of the future performance. This is a play not only about Šalčininki, the periphery of Lithuania, the edge of Europe, but also about the sense of reality in a completely different time," says Jonas Tertelis.
The performance is sponsored by the British Council in Lithuania. Its leader dr. Artūras Vasiliauskas says: "The genre of documentary theater in Great Britain has deep traditions and is popular among viewers. It is still taking its first steps in Lithuania, so I am very happy that the British Council can contribute to the emergence of a documentary performance on the stage of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. Currently, the British Council is running an intercultural communication program in the regions of Lithuania aimed at promoting community cohesion. Šalčininkai is a unique region in Lithuania that often receives a lot of media attention, which is not always based on facts. Documentary theater gives you the opportunity to hear real stories from real people. Therefore, we hope that this performance will be the first step towards an open, myth-denying and sincere dialogue between people in Šalčininkai and other cities of Lithuania."
The new LNDT play "Unknown Land. "Salčia" will invite the audience to leave the traditional audience seats and give them the opportunity to feel themselves in the place of the residents of Šalčininkai or another small Lithuanian town. Its premiere will take place in Šalčininkai on March 16, and in Vilnius on March 22 in the Small Hall of LNDT. Tickets are already on sale. The director of the performance is Jonas Tertelis, the authors of the text are Andrius Jevsejevas, Eglė Vitkutė, the artist is Paulė Bocullaitė, the composer is Martynas Bialobžeskis.
