– You are creating a play based on your latest play. What inspired you to write it?
– One evening, while walking around Panevėžys, I wandered into the area where I grew up. Finding myself near my childhood home, I decided to go into the yard. After sitting on the bench for a while, looking at the windows of the apartment where I grew up, I approached the stairwell door. I noticed that the stairwell door was coded – there used to be no lock, but pressing a simple combination of numbers unlocked the door.
I decided to go inside to see what the staircase looked like. To my surprise, everything remained as before. It was exciting to see our mailbox, our floor where we used to build our headquarters and play as children. I didn’t realize how I ended up at the door of my former apartment. They had this feature – the handle worked poorly, so if you simply slammed the door, it would open again. Fifteen years later, returning to the door of my childhood, I saw that it was as useful as ever. I rang the doorbell, and a man opened it.
I told him that he forgot to lock the door and it was already evening, I warned him not to go to bed without locking it. He thanked him and complained that he still hadn’t fixed the old door, that it didn’t close well. I say that I know, I told you that this door was like this all my childhood. The man was surprised that a former resident was standing in the doorway and invited me to come inside.
The man showed me how he settled in my old apartment with his family, allowed me to enter my childhood room, stand by the window through which I used to look at my world at that time, through which I would throw the ball to my friends in the yard or through which I would be called home to eat. I chatted with the man, his wife, and daughter for a few minutes and left. That’s when the idea was born, which later turned into this play – what if I had “skated” enough and decided not to leave the apartment?
– Your main character decides to take this next step and stays in her childhood home. Why do you think our past is so attractive to many? Why do we keep looking at it, dream about it, and sometimes we even want to take it and hide in it?
– Perhaps the self-preservation function of our body is hidden in the past. The distance between us and our past forces us to remember it not necessarily as it really was, suppressing painful elements of the past and highlighting what is dear and pleasant to us. This makes the past more alluring. I think we wouldn’t tend to run to the past if we were happy in our everyday life. I noticed a long time ago that when we are unhappy we are not running away from somewhere, but from something. If I’m not taking care of myself today, it’s much more attractive to hide in the fog, in that beautiful-looking past, with my environment and feelings.
– This is not your first work that analyzes the themes of being stuck in the past and in life. What attracts them?
Photo by Saulius Jankauskas/Performance “Migla”
– I’m not attracted to jamming itself, but trying to reproduce it on stage. For me, being stuck is a kind of death followed by a resurrection. I came to the process of creating “Mist” after such a crash, with a renewed inner world. It’s like seeing the light after a long night in the swamp. Being in such a symbolic swamp is important – it is an opportunity to stop and look around, to stop rushing forward, to work efficiently, to consume information continuously. I’m not saying that after the crash, something changed outwardly, but I had a renewed curiosity, even for my own craft. It just became interesting to live and create again, and in my life both are very connected.
– What kind of literature accompanied the writing of the play? Who helped, inspired?
– Carl Gustav Jung was the first to help get hooked. This writing process was greatly influenced by existential philosophy, writers of existentialism: I returned to Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche. In the play, I left references to these authors and their works that were important to me – they significantly changed the development of the story.
– You write plays for your own performances much more often than you take on the works of other playwrights. What interests you about this way of working?
– I have always seen myself not as a director, but as a playwright who writes a play and stages it himself. I don’t really write because I think I write better or more relevant than others. I like to create dramaturgy, I am interested in creating a performance before the play is written, that is, long before rehearsals begin.
For a long time, I positioned myself as an actor who once wrote a play and, unable to find a director, decided to direct it himself. Eventually, the actor in me began to fade away and was replaced by the directing playwright. Today, I am usually introduced as a director, and I myself eventually got used to being called that way. When I read, I find a lot of material that interests me, and more and more often I take on productions other than my own plays.
– When writing a play, do you already think about how it will look on stage or do you go deeper into the story you want to tell?
– I always imagine how everything will look on stage. I have talked with contemporary Lithuanian playwrights, and I was surprised that they, too, do not focus on the realization of the play on stage, but focus on how to tell the story. I find it very interesting and unusual.
I pause when I think about the scene I’m creating, because the way I see things in my mind affects even the punctuation of the text. When writing monologues for the characters, I used to act them out in my mind. Performance is important to this day, so writing a play is never separated from imagining it on stage for me.
– Your creative processes are very diverse. What makes this one unique?
– I have never delved into symbolist theater as deeply as in this performance – there are a lot of its elements in “Migla”. We play with symbolism both in the visual language, scenography, and in the space behind the words. In each scene, the actors face two tasks. The first is the direct effect of a character’s words on another character. The second, somewhat more complicated, is conveying a certain idea that does not necessarily belong to a specific scene. As if a separate plot of ideas was taking place nearby. The viewer, watching the play, will primarily see the plot, but behind it there is always a second line of ideas.
Before I wrote the play, I talked a lot with my psychotherapist friend. Thanks to him, I discovered a lot of useful literature. During the discussions, the realization emerged that the second narrative should be called the archetypal narrative. I don’t want to be a profane who, after reading Jung, announces that he is writing a play about archetypes – those who really know about archetypes may laugh at mine. I try to use these terms modestly.
– What specific archetypes do you drill into when rehearsing the performance?
– I’m not going to answer that question for you on purpose, even though it’s a great one – we’ve asked ourselves countless times during rehearsals. Interestingly, we carry more than one archetype within us. Because of that and about the characters, I don’t want to say that this character represents this one archetype. I don’t want to be misleading by naming archetypes – the viewer, in order to discover them, can begin to attach not archetypes, but labels to the characters. But I think reading them will not be difficult even for those who are not familiar with Jung’s theories. The world is full of archetypes and you don’t need to read about them to encounter them.
– This is your third job in Šiauliai – what keeps you coming back here?
– I really like creating here. I have created more than in Šiauliai only in the Juozas Miltinis drama theater. In Šiauliai, I get great creative freedom and confidence. A great example of this is the play “On the Way”, which is intended for only forty spectators, but which requires all the work of the theater and poses many challenges. I understand that this play is also complicated and not all theaters would like to put in so much effort, invest energy, time and money into the realization of such an idea.
Šiauliai Drama Theater has never said “no” to my ideas – this is very dear to me. I can feel brave and safe here. That’s why I always enjoy coming back here. Šiauliai is like an island of escape for me, like Panevėžys was for Juoz Miltini. Panevėžys is my hometown, I lived or live in Kaunas and Vilnius, and when I find myself in Šiauliai, I am in a foreign city. Here I only have a theater and an apartment next to it, so my life here is very simple. I am fascinated by the opportunity to fully immerse myself in the creative process and do nothing else – just create.
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#Director #Aleksandras #Špilevoj #unhappy #run #Culture
Liai than anywhere else. The cultural environment, the team of actors, and the overall atmosphere of collaboration and creativity motivate me immensely. Šiauliai has a unique energy that inspires my work. Each project brings new challenges and opportunities, and I feel a strong connection to the local community. This bond encourages me to return and continue exploring meaningful stories that resonate with both local and broader audiences.
The collaborative spirit among the artists here is exceptional, fostering an environment where creativity can flourish. Additionally, the audience’s engagement and support fuel my desire to bring more performances to Šiauliai. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the cultural landscape of this city, and I look forward to creating even more impactful work in the future.
