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to take a company from Houston to Vilnius and perhaps to cities in the U.S.S.R., staging Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in May 1989. Nekrosius and two colleagues, designers Adomas Jacovskis and Nadia Gultiajeva, have been in Houston for a few days, working with the Alley production team, which will build the sets, as part of the exchange arrangement. The costumes and props will come with the actors. Similarly, the Lithuanian teams will construct sets for the Alley’s show when it travels there next year. In Houston, Uncle Vanya opens a special preview May 9 and will play May 10-19, with Pirosmani, Pirosmani... scheduled for May 20-23. The preview is set to coincide with the Houston Convention of the American Theater Critics meeting here, officially May 3-8. The State Theater's innovative production of 'Uncle Vanya' won the Soviet Union’s prestigious State Prize (equal to the Tony Award) and has drawn worldwide attention, said Alley Artistic/Executive Director Pat Brown, when she announced the dates for the visiting theater’s appea-

rance, Nekrosius, who directed both works, has also won high state honors. Arthur Miller, who had attended a literary conference in Lithuania, said in an interview in Baltic Forum Magazine in the spring of 1986 that the Lithuanian theater in Vilnius does some of the best theater I’ve seen anywhere. He specifically cited Pirosmani as something extraordinary and Nekrosius as some kind of genius. The play is based loosely on the life of Nicolay Pirosmanashvili, a Russian Georgian folk artist whose works became well known after his death. Arrangements of the exchange were completed after Director Brown and a group from the Alley visited the Soviet Union last summer (her second visit to select the plays to be brought here), and Nekrosius and other Soviet directors visited Houston and the Alley last year along with theaters in other American cities. This is a cultural exchange between the two theaters and the two countries, Nekrosius said. Financing is no problem to the visitors. Nekrosius said the Vilnius theater actually has enormous amount of money as the government picks up the entire tab. The concerns, he

said, were more with the Alley Theater, which does not have that kind of government support, and must make its operating budget through the box office and contributions. Box office is no consideration in our country, the director said. And Jacovskis added that if their theater had to survive by box office alone, the ticket prices (averaging 2 rubles or about $8.75 U.S.) would have to jump up to 5 rubles ($21.80). Both Jacovskis and Gultiajeva said in our image of the Alley’s Main stage we were originally afraid of the space. When we saw it, it was so much warmer than we expected. -Though their drawings for the sets were marked in meters and are being translated into feet both felt that their designs could fit well on the Alley’s partial thrust. Jacovskis is the designer of Pirosmani and Gultiajeva of Vanya. Nekrosius said the set for Vanya, a family play, would not be similar, for instance, to the set for The Miracle Worker with its upstairs-downstairs, insideoutside capabilities. Totally the opposite - very open, the director

said. Smiling, Gultiajeva said, In fact, when I made my design, the lighting designer thanked me. The existence of firm masonry bunkers on the Alley stage that serve as openings, sometimes the bane of directors, are just fine with these visitors. These offer a strength - the power of a framework, as the Vanya set is a home, a framework, the designer said. Once the Vilnius company has completed its Houston visit, it will take its two shows to the Chicago, International Festival. So we're adapting the design to fit the Chicago stage, too, and it has a classical proscenium depth, she said. Uncle Vanya is Nekrosius’ second outing with a Chekhov work, his first being Ivan Ivanov, which went well as a play and which Nekrosius is completing for television, Nekrosius’ Vanya, which is comparatively new to his company’s repertory (spring of 1986) is strictly his own interpretation, Gultiajeva said he had never seen a production of it before. The classic script was used maybe with the addition of about 20 words - all from Chekhov, the director said. In the State Theater’s busy season,

there are as many as 25 plays in repertory, which are performed in rotating rep - different plays different nights. Vanya appears no more than three or four times a month, but it stays in the rep a long time. Pirosmani is about 6 years old and still turning up in repertory'. The same company of actors that appears in these in Vilnius will come to Houston to deliver their lines in Lithuanian with English subtitles. If 25 shows seems a lot for a year, some theaters there have as many as 35 or 40, the Lithuanians report. In Arthur Miller’s piece about Lithuania, he observed that Nekrosius was a man with few if any words maybe two. In this interview, and an earlier one on a previous visit, he appeared shy and was reticent to discuss any high ranking for his theater. But he lights up and grows positively voluble about the character of his theater, using at least 12 words. But our theater is probably the boldest and bravest - not fearing failure. He added that there have been great successes and some that were not up to par. The Vilnius theater is headed by

Dalia Tamuleviciute, as artistic director, Nekrosius and other directors have opportunities to direct works in which they have an interest. In the future Nekrosius has his sights set on doing Shakespeare’s King Lear, Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marcos, and is now in rehearsal with a new Lithuanian play by Saultius Saltenis, considered one of his country’s best playwrights. American theater directors can envy not only the security of big stipends from the government in support, but long rehearsal periods - as many months as you want, Nekrosius said. The Vilnius State Theater has 40 actors on its constant roster (there is a limit of 43), from an original cre'w of 12. Once you’re hired, you’re tenured for life, the visitors said. And if someone begins to go bad, then he or she gets the salary but fewer and fewer roles. The Vilnius State Theater has the word youth in its official title, one not used extensively in that it is misleading, the Lithuanians take pains to рюш! out. It was founded in 1966, some 19 years after the Alley’s founding, and has won awards at the Inter-

national Theater Festival in Belgrade. It has represented Lithuania in the 12th World Youth Festival in Moscow. Its plays, by adult actors, are for adult audiences. The group’s trip to Texas will mark the first time the company has performed outside the Soviet bloc countries. Cautious in what they say, the visitors declined to comment about their impressions of the United States, saying they have been too busy at the theater. But they feit right at home at the Alley, they indicated. Nekrosius said that of the 13 theaters he saw in a previous trip to the United States, The buildings of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Alley were the most impressive. And the people are warm and wonderful to work with. □ Ann Holmes, Huston Chronicle, Feb. 1, 1988.

Surreal method, very real emotion create a memorable ‘Uncle Vanya’ The remarkable production of Uncle Vanya that the State Theatre of Lithuania has brought to Chicago for the International Theatre Festival is no conventional, realistic rendering of Anton Chekhov’s drama. The actors of this company and their director, Eimuntas Nekrosius, are reaching for something much deeper and darker than surface naturalism. What they want is nothing less than the essential spirit of the play, and their method in digging for this soul or the drama is that of super-realism, or surrealism. The stage of the Royal-George Theatre, were the production will give

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