Битеф

DIRECTOR ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is usually understood as a celebration of romantic love. It is, really, an instance of social drama. In dramatic circumstances, an ordinary love becomes invested with tragic power of the highest order. What interests me most in this tragedy is how love can come forward and thrive in an atmosphere of hatred or war, as in Verona. Love is born out of hatred, as a way to overcome hatred. Hatred in its turn is due to the evil of Nothing. The example of Montague and Capulet is eloquent, since no one knows the reason for their enmity. It has been forgotten long ago. Young Tybalt embraces hatred, and defends it as tradition. We often nurture traditions that create conflict out of alleged differences, and thereby keep hatred alive. This, alas, is a principle applied more and more often - to strengthen a community by looking for external enemies. In this production, I wanted to analyze how hatred shapes difference and becomes common ground, I feel that hatred is the foundation on which the differences between Montague and Capulet are built. This is deceptive, and pulls them ever further apart All societies seem to be sub-divided in this way. Love negates difference. Only love can show that there is essentially no conflict between the two clans. Love creates freedom, and in freedom there are no oppositions. Sadly, Romeo and Juliet find their freedom only in death. They were both single children. When they die, their families die with them. The sacrifice of freedom ruins not only the modernity created by these children, but also the tradition their parents seek to protect. Oskaras Korsunovas ABOUT US Oskaras Korsunovas made his debut at a pivotal moment in history and rose the challenge admirably. The first production by the then twenty-one year old director Ten buticia (There To Be Here, 1990), was beyond a doubt one of the most striking events heralding the honest of a new generation in Lithuanian culture, a generation of directors who would revive the reformminded theatre which had existed in the begining of the twentieth century, which its resonant programmers and earnest manifestos, the memory of which Soviet rule had virtually effaced in Lithuania. Even Eimuntas Nekrosius and Rimas Tuminas did not have the debut that Korsunovas did - both had started out less spectacularly, having to work under the rigours of the communist regime. They development was slower, and it took time before their theatres showed what they were truly worth. Oskaras Korsunovas' production of There To Be Here in tones of black and white was a statement, a loud and proud: "Here I am." This all-but impudent declaration was never challenged becouse it was rooted in a knowledge rare among young theatre directors. Korsunovas seemed to have spent decades living under the communist yoke where he absorbed the stuffiness of that culture, and accordingly developed a vision of theatre as confrontation. In the past-communist era he was one of the first to stage the writings of the Oberiu, a group of Russian absurdists from the 19205. There To Be Here was based on oral tradition: recollections of the never staged, frowned-upon work of the Oberiu,

In the humorous and paradoxical tone of the play one could hear the indignation, or surprise to be exact, of young people who could not believe how these works could have been condemned and suppressed. The title of Korsunovas' first production might help understand his theatre generally: there be here implies that what was there is repeated here and now . The director turned his attention to a forgotten artistic style, and came up with a theatre that is retrospective in its programme, and so found an individual niche among the established structures of Lithuanian theatre. Korsunovas' first production was astoundingly professional. Lively, elegant, inventive and ironic, it hinted at the birth of an extraordinary and provocative stage idiom, which the director continues to use when staging other texts by Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Viedenskii - Sene (The Old Woman, 1992), Elizaveta Bam, 1993, Labas Sonia NaujiMetal (Hello Sonya New Year, 1994), Sene 2 (The Old Woman 2, 1994), Mes nesame pyragai (I We're No Pastries, 2001). From the start Oskaras Korsunovas' theatre has been marked by a combination of Professionalism and provocation, a precision of aesthetic challenge. Korsunovas has invoked aesthetic arguments as proof positive of the genuineness of this theatre. The young director never let himself be patronized, nor patted approvingly on the back; he was simply good from the start, Korsunovas is part of a generation that made its debut as the Berlin Wall was coming down, and his theatre has the intellectual independence to prove it. His first production already opened the door to the West. Thanks to a well-deserved Edinburgh Fringe First award in 1990 and his success at the Kontakt Festival in Toruh, Poland, he was able to move freely between the two Europes. Cliches about artistic projects facilitating the cultural integration between East and West are warranted in the case of Korsunovas. Though the director has been known to get ironic about his profiting from the trends in cultural policy, he has never been merely a cynical exploiter of European standards, trying to conform to the image of a young artist from the East. His asset is what once would have been referred to as the spiritual nature of art: a feel for the present time and space, an intense investigation of the moment and the urge to face reality. These are all traits to be found in his productions of cutting-edge drama: P.S. Byla O.K. (P.S. File 0.K., 1997),