„Stand-up‘as for meaning and meaninglessness” is a comic play about the main characters’ attempt to communicate after the loss of their father. Black humor, self-irony and narrative humor (stand-up) are combined here with drama, intertwining a story about loss, about the relationship between mother and son with society’s attitude to mourning and the resulting need to adapt,” says the author of the play, Birutė Kapustinskaitė, who creates stories not only for theater but also for cinema. Her plays are characterized by vivid images of characters and tragicomic plots. Among B. Kapustinskaitė’s best-known works are “Therapies” (awarded with the Golden Cross of the Stage in 2018), “Dance for an Object and a Child”, “Detoxification”.
Photo by Monika Penkutė/Birutė Kapustinskaitė
This will be Eglė Švedkauskaitė’s third performance at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater. in 2022 she created “Sulphur Magnolias” based on the play by Estonian playwright Martin Algus, and in 2023 – The play “Fossilia” inspired by the book and memoirs of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, which was recently presented in the Lithuanian season in France. in 2023 E. Švedkauskaitė was awarded the “Golden Cross of the Stage” for directing the play “Memoirs of a Young Man” at the State Youth Theater.
B.Kapustiskaitė and E.Švedkauskaitė, who are creating together for the first time, bring to the theater stage a never-before-seen stand-up comedy genre, which through laughter purifies not only the narrator, but also the listener. Making another person laugh, according to the creators, is a really difficult task. And an even more difficult task – using humor as a form of communication – to touch on the painful topics of mourning, loss, and suicide that are close to all of us. To stir up something unexpected in a person, to help them laugh at themselves, to look at painful experiences from the side in order to come to terms with them.
The characters of the play: Mother – a famous presenter (actress Vitalija Mockevičiūtė) and Son – the companion of success stand-up performer (actor Karolis Kasperavičius) – both are not looking for words in their pockets, but when faced with the loss of their Father, it becomes difficult for them to talk. It’s a story about letting go of anger, shame, guilt, and finding ways to open up to vulnerability and to each other.
“Both as a person and as a creator, I want art to have a deeper meaning and content. Content is born from complex and important topics. We can try to remove death and sadness from our lives, but these things exist very close to us. Even during rehearsals, when discussing the topic of suicide with the creative team of six people, I heard that several of them have encountered suicides in a fairly close environment. It’s all shocking.
Photo by D. Matvejev/Eglė Švedkauskaitė
As a director, it’s important and interesting for me to find ways to talk about it, to help people find the answers they care about, comfort or hope in a work of art. Also, theater has always had the opportunity to examine human existence, so I want to use it,” says director Eglė Švedkauskaitė.
The performance “Stand-up‘as sense and meaninglessness” set designer – Ona Juciūtė, who also created scenography for Eglė Švedkauskaitė’s other performances “Sieros magnolias” and “Fossilia”, costumes are created by Dovilė Gudačiauskaitė, who also collaborates not for the first time, composer – Ernestas Kaušylas, who at the beginning of his career created music for the LNDT performance with Michail Skalskis “Kosmos+”, light artist – Monika Šerstabojevaitė.
The play focuses on the relationship between two well-known people with the public and their different views on the mourning process. “I raise the question of how to survive mourning if the feeling of loss lasts much longer than your loved ones expect from you. How do you deal with difficult emotions when you don’t want to talk about them? In the story of mother and son, the suicide of a family member happened a few years ago, but it is still difficult for them to reconcile and move on,” says Birutė Kapustinskaitė, the author of the play.
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