Abstract
This chapter analyses the theatre of Eimuntas Nekrošius (1952–2018), one of the most important theatre and opera directors in Lithuania and the first Lithuanian director to achieve worldwide acclaim. The theatre studio “Meno fortas,” which he founded in 1998, produces several plays every year and has visited all continents with its productions.
Nekrošius’ theatre narratives—exceptionally rich with strong metaphorical imagery and replete with the authenticity of extraordinary acting—about weak, fallible and vulnerable human beings condemned to live in a dangerous world, appeared mysteriously metaphysical and yet recognisable and understandable. Nekrošius’ work was the most stable indicator of the artistic level of Lithuanian theatre; his stage language transformed the mise-en-scène’s development and influenced the changing generations of actors and directors, and not only in Lithuania. The chapter analyses his theatrical language and highlights the most important features of his performances.
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Notes
- 1.
E. Jansonas, Etiudai apie teatrą (Vilnius: Vaga, 1988), pp. 227–228.
- 2.
R. Marcinkevičiūtė, Eimuntas Nekrošius: erdvė už žodžių (Vilnius: Kultūros barai, 2002).
- 3.
E. Nekrošius, “Kokia erdvė už žodžių?” Kultūros barai, No.2 (1984), p. 6.
- 4.
The production was based on a documentary novel by the Soviet Russian author Valentina Yeliseeva. The story was about the correspondence between a teacher and a prisoner; the letters change the prisoner and, upon release, he begins a new life. The ideological subtext of the novel disappeared in the production; the play was rewritten by the playwright Saulius Šaltenis, while observing rehearsals and improvisations of the actors and Nekrošius. The inhumane environment of the prison, as fear and coercion, the warm feelings and the hopeful relation between the Prisoner and the Teacher witnessed a much more dramatic and hopeless sense of totalitarian reality: poverty, bullying, existential emptiness.
- 5.
M. Foucault, Disciplinuoti ir bausti. Kalėjimo gimimas (Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998), pp. 237–38.
- 6.
Interestingly, The Square, performed at the Youth Theatre from 1980 to 1996, was not banned by censorship. Staged during the Olympic Games in Moscow, the production was also performed during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl disaster, revolutionary movements in Poland and the “singing revolution” in Lithuania. Over the course of time it did not lose its relevance. It was a testimony, a warning, a search for human feelings and love in a country that was surviving a political, economic, even spiritual crisis. One could also see in it Nekrošius’ attitude towards politics and the social relevance of theatre—the off-stage reality did not appear directly in his production, but played the role of a tuning fork for human relations.
- 7.
As in the case of Yeliseeva, the play by Korostyliov was rewritten by Šaltenis; the two-hour performance used only four pages of text.
- 8.
Nekrošius assigned the role of the Hunger artist to the actress Viktorija Kuodytė, who worked in many of his productions.
- 9.
R. Marcinkevičiūtė, “Eimuntas Nekrošius: Complex Simplicity,” Contemporary Lithuanian Theatre. Names and Performances (Vilnius: TKIEC, Tyto Alba, 2019), p. 50.
- 10.
This motif acquired the significance of a collision between the old and the younger generation; it was no accident that Hamlet was played by a popular rock singer, Andrius Mamontovas. Nekrošius liked to say that he chose actors not by their professionalism but by their human qualities, but the age and psychophysical qualities of the performers/non-actors and their physical presence played an important role in his productions. For example, in Othello the prima ballerina from the National Opera and Ballet Theatre Eglė Špokaitė played the role of Desdemona, and her natural constitution and her movement contrasted with that of Vladas Bagdonas, the older actor who played Othello.
- 11.
Music (rhythm) was another important element of Nekrošius’ productions. Music was not only created by actors, playing musical instruments or extracting music from simple objects. Since 1997—that is, since Hamlet—music and sounds were involved in the action as a stand-alone acoustic landscape. Lehman calls such use of music in post-dramatic performance musicalisation (see: Lehmann, H.-T. Postdraminis teatras, Vilnius: Menų spaustuvė, 2010, p. 138). The Lithuanian composers who most often worked with Nekrošius were Faustas Latėnas, Algirdas Martinaitis and Mindaugas Urbaitis.
- 12.
At the State Youth Theatre, 24 years after Nekrošius’ diploma work there; in it, after thirty years of staging literary classics, Nekrošius returned to a contemporary text. Zinc is based on the 2015 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature Alexievich’s Boys in Zinc (1991) and Voices from Chernobyl (1997).
- 13.
Nekrošius staged two separated productions—Divine Comedy and Paradise (2012)—and managed to transgress the physical nature of theatre and directly address the spectator’s feelings, consciousness and even subconsciousness. In 2018 Nekrošius merged the two performances into one and named it Inferno-Paradiso.
- 14.
G. Deleuze, Cinema 2. The Time-Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Caleta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 274.
References
Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 2. The Time-Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Caleta, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Foucault, Michel, Disciplinuoti ir bausti. Kalėjimo gimimas, iš prancūzų kalbos vertė Marius Daškus, Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998.
Jansonas, Egmontas, Etiudai apie teatrą, Vilnius: Vaga, 1988.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdraminis teatras, iš vokiečių kalbos vertė Jūratė Pieslytė, Vilnius: Menų spaustuvė, 2010.
Marcinkevičiūtė, Ramunė, Eimuntas Nekrošius: erdvė už žodžių, Vilnius: Kultūros barai, 2002.
———, “Eimuntas Nekrošius: Complex Simplicity.” Contemporary Lithuanian Theatre. Names and Performances, edited by Ramunė Marcinkevičiūtė and Ramunė Balevičiūtė, Vilnius: TKIEC, Tyto Alba, 2019.
Nekrošius, Eimuntas, “Kokia erdvė už žodžių?” Kultūros barai, 1984, No 2, pp. 6–8.
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Vasinauskaitė, R. (2021). Eimuntas Nekrošius: The Poetics of Paradise and Hell. In: Stefanova, K., Carlson, M. (eds) 20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52935-2_12
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