According to Gintarės Masteikaitė, manager of ConTempo and organizer of the program, this year Lithuanian creators will present an extremely wide palette of creative ideas and forms of expression. “All artists are united by the commonality of diving into non-traditional forms and talking about issues relevant to them, such as freedom, community, history, poetry.
We hope that the audience of the “ConTempo” festival will have the opportunity to see not only young artists, but also our creators and their works, already recognized in Lithuania and abroad. We want what is currently the most vibrant and relevant to reach our viewers, and the festival to be a support and partner for its participants in presenting premiere works”.
The Lithuanian “ConTempo” scene will be marked this year by performances that leave theater halls, tame unexpected spaces and accommodate various disciplines.
The festival will be opened by the playful and lively performance “River of Joy” by actor, theater director, interdisciplinary artist Pauliaus Markevičius (“Be Company”). Film lovers know Mr. Markevičius well from his roles in Lithuanian films – “How to Survive the Summer”, “Poetas”, “Pilgrims”, theatergoers – from the performances “Einu pirkti pieno”, “Café existans” and “12 grams to the north”, for which the actor was awarded the Golden Stage Cross.
Performances, plays and installations directed by this creator also received no less attention. At the ConTempo festival, the developer will invite you to an experiential route guided by 2,500 balls rolling on the pavement, streets and squares of the Old Town. Falling away, returning, pushing forward – just like individual characters, reflecting on the relationship between freedom and reality.
Auksė Petrulienė and Darius Petrulis, the well-known but not so often seen founders of the “Psilikon Theater” in Kaunas, will present the musical premiere at the festival. The themes of memory and activism are still the focus of the artists who presented the first projection in Šilainiai yard on the wall of a nine-story residential building ten years ago. The latest play “Hearts and Chimneys” is no exception. After visiting the factories of Luxembourg and Portugal, the show dedicated to industrial spaces will be located in the historical Art and Music Department of the Ėuolynas Library.
Photo by Martynos Norvaiša/River of Joy, ConTempo
The performance was created in cooperation with the community protecting the memory of the Kaunas footwear factory “Lituanicos”, the people who once worked there. Their stories became the basis for the script of the play, and the characters of these stories turned into miniature silicone dolls. The musical concept of the show “Hearts and chimneys” was created and will be performed live by the artist Arkadijus Gotesmanas, who is also well known to Kaunas – one of the brightest and most original percussionists of Lithuanian jazz and improvisational music.
The performance “Brūzgynų vērsi”, which takes place not in the theater hall, but surrounded by nature, will also explore new territories. The experiential performance-trip of “Teatro istoriju” intended for the whole family will invite you to take a walk along the educational trails of the landscapes of Kaunas and the district and the labyrinths of the city. In the performance, you get to know the poetry of Lithuanian creators, and during the stops, miracles inspired by nature and interpreted by the actors are created. “Spontaneity, courage, determination for adventure – all these become parts of the performance. To include the surrounding world is a unique feature of this genre,” says its creator, Kristina Maurusevičiūtė.
Liza Baliasnaya, a choreographer and performer who creates between Germany and Lithuania and presents performances at festivals all over Europe, former dancer of the Kaunas Dance Theater “Aura” is coming to ConTempo. The premiere of her latest work Chiaroscuro will take place at the festival. It is a voice and movement performance that analyzes the expression of fear in the public body. How are the collective archetypes of aggressor, victim, and rescuer interrelated? Artistic questions and answers – in a performance that subtly engages the audience, balances between fear and discomfort, and is designed to overcome public spaces.
Organizers’ photo/Lines of gravel, ConTempo
The life of the French artist, playwright, poet, painter, painter, prose writer, music and boxing manager Jean Cocteau will be presented at Kosmos Theater, founded by director Žilvins Vingelis, laureate of the Golden Cross of the Stage.
The premiere of “Dilettantes” is a performance combining media art, animation, dramatic acting, mechanized scenography, theater of puppets and objects, sound space and other modern theater tools, the center of which is the actress Airida Gintautaitė. “The material of the play becomes Cocteau himself, perceiving him as an interdisciplinary artist, and even more so – as a montage of different media and disciplines,” Ž.Vingelis, the playwright of the play, tells about the idea.
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2024-07-24 08:45:09