December 3-14 A creative workshop of acting mastery based on the work of a well-known dramaturgy classic took place in the Vilnius State Small Theater. This workshop is the beginning of an important longer project. The Vilnius Small Theater starts working with the content and form of the most famous work of the Italian playwright Carlo Osvaldos Goldoni, "The Summer Vacation Trilogy".
The author, considered one of the most significant European playwrights, becomes a significant turning point in the history of theater. Having found himself in the Italian theatrical tradition, he refuses to create commedia dell'arte works, removes the masks from the actors and brings "live" characters to the stage, inspired by his time, its expectations and, above all, the decline, which he expertly captures. It is sometimes joked that the author managed to predict the Great French Revolution that took place thirty years later, which fundamentally changed the social face of Europe.
"The reason for this project is clear, concrete and logical - playwright C. Goldonis is one of the playwrights who changed the course of European theater development. His work, which is rarely produced in Lithuania, is on the same level as the world's great dramatists in terms of quality, depth and creative skill. And only a rare director knows how to reveal that knowledge on stage. In other words, working with such works is a professional joy and ambition, he is an author who deserves to be translated, presented, shown and interpreted for the Lithuanian audience. Many of us in Lithuania have heard Dante and parts of his "Divine Comedy", but only very few know C. Goldonis", said Simonas Keblas, manager of the Vilnius Small Theater.
The Summer Vacation Trilogy is a monumental work that consists of three parts that differ in their dramatic structure: Summer Vacation Fever, Summer Vacation Adventures, and Returning After Summer. The texts are not only characterized by mathematically precise dramaturgy and syntax, but above all by poetic maturity and achieved almost cinematic realism.
"C. Goldonis has been staged on the stage of the Lithuanian theater, but it has not yet been studied in detail. The specificity of his work can remain unnoticed or misunderstood without a closer look, so this project not only provides an opportunity to present the "Summer Vacation Trilogy" in Lithuanian for the first time, but also to present Goldonis by properly articulating him and showing the complexity of the creator. Interest in this author was also stimulated by the relevance of his texts today, his ability to create universal, easily recognizable situations, as well as his great sense of humor, characteristic of the rich Italian cultural tradition. The talented form of the work also opens up extremely wide opportunities for the talent of the actor and the director to spread, for their artistic dialogue", notes Vincentas Klipčius, head of the literary section of the Vilnius Small Theater.
The acting mastery workshop was led by Italian theater actor and director Luciano Roman, who came from Goldoni region - Veneto region in Northern Italy. During 35 years on stage, L. Roman played the main role in plays based on C. Goldoni's works more than 20 times, some productions traveled all over the world. While creating the characters of Goldoni's plays, L. Roman worked with such legendary Italian directors as Massimo Castri ("The Summer Trilogy" and "The Lovers") and Giorgio Strehler ("The Quarrels of Chioggia"). Played the main role of Filiberto in Rim Tumin's play "Playful Adventure", staged in 2023 in Italy.
"When you meet a new group of people for the first time, you are filled with curiosity, surprise, the desire to understand who is in front of you, but also indecision, shyness, fear of showing off too much. When working with C. Goldoni, you need actors who are free, open to emotions, able to bring to life every phrase and every pause. We need the authenticity of actors, those who recognize that there are no limits to their expressiveness and theatrical play, which Goldonis himself demands. Once you understand this (and the body understands this before the head), you can travel together at high speed, as if you were driving on a highway, towards the most unexpected destinations, where the dialogue between the actors and the director becomes a dialogue of souls, when you know exactly which way you are moving and where you need to get to in order to enjoy himself and entertain the audience. And so it happened in the workshop, both with the actors and with the students. We managed to understand where the core of Goldoni's philosophy lies," Italian theater actor and director Luciano Roman shared his impressions of the workshop.
When asked what differences he sees between Italian and Lithuanian actors, Luciano Roman answers: "Lithuanian actors are "pure" (this is what they say about Italian wines, when all the grapes are of the same type, and they are not mixed with other wines). Here I saw actors and students who are extremely well-prepared, curious, able to catch even the smallest reference, returning it charged with their own physical and expressive power, characteristic of each of their stage presence. They are used to improvisation (improvisation is necessary when creating a character), and this ability is not so common in Italy. In Italy, in general, young actors do not have the opportunity for long-term theater experience. They are distracted by acting on television, which is very poor, by the desire to be successful, although not everyone succeeds. That's why I say that you can feel their "purity" from Lithuanian actors, you feel that they are training actors who can maintain high artistic quality, who are able to think".
Luciano Roman sums up when talking about working in the Vilnius small theater: "It is always a great happiness to work in a country where you don't speak your own language, where the culture is different and the history is very different. Then you can discover both similarities and differences. In other words, it is nice to recognize yourself in another culture and realize that you basically belong to the same great Europe, despite the peculiarities of each nation living in it. But I understood this two years ago, when we worked intensively with Gabriele Tuminaita, and then with Rim Tumin of bright memory, staging C. Goldoni's play "Playful Adventure" at the Malibran Theater in Venice. This time, a mature and deep dialogue was established with both Lithuanian artists from the war, in which language no longer became a problem, but a filter, because simultaneous translation is not an obstacle, but a necessary diaphragmatic breath pause of the mind, an opportunity to reflect, absorb and turn thought into voice and body reaction, this is specifically needed for a moment."
During the workshop, the participants had the opportunity to hear and Vilnius University lecturer Assoc. Dainius Būre's lecture on the life of C. Goldonis and the most important aspects of his work.
The workshop was held in cooperation with the Institute of Italian Culture and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater.
On the initiative of the Italian Cultural Institute, Assoc. D. Būre has also prepared a detailed translation of the "Summer Vacationers Trilogy" with explanations and presentation of the cultural context. It is planned that this dramatic trilogy will be published and available to a wide readership in the future.