This time, the director chose British dramatist Alice Birch’s play “Suicide Anatomy” and invited actresses Elžbieta Latėnaitė, Augustė Pociūtė and Augustė Ona Šimulynaitė for the main roles. The premiere of the play “Anatomy of Suicide” will take place in the New Hall of LNDT on November 28, 29, 30. This is already the fourth premiere of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater’s 85th season.
“Anatomy of Suicide” intertwines the stories of three generations of women of one family: the lives and destinies of a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter are analyzed, recording key, chrestomatous and unique events in a woman’s life. Explores themes related to the formation of family and romantic friendships, generational patterns and mechanisms of relationships, bereavement, societal expectations placed on women, the anatomy of suicide, and the analysis of sin.
“Since I learned that a woman is born with all the eggs that are formed while she is still in the womb, I began to understand the question of generations in a much more physical way. Today it becomes very relevant to me – the experiences of our grandmothers genetically live in us, the historical traumas they experienced and the response to them are alive. Then I wonder: what kind of scars will my generation have, what political and historical signs will be encoded in the children who will live a hundred years from now?” – thinks the director Uršulė Bartoševičiūtė, who often presents feminist performances that explore the identity of a woman and the model of a patriarchal world.
“Macbeth”, created by Uršulė Bartoševičiūtė in the Reykjavík City Theatre, was nominated for the Icelandic Theater Awards “Gríman” in as many as five categories. 2022-2023 she worked as a resident director of the Berliner Emsemble.
Karolina (actor Augustė Pociūtė) in the premiere “Suicide Anatomy” is a woman living in a traditional marriage who, suffering from clinical depression, decides to commit suicide. Her daughter Ana (Actress Augustė Ona Šimulynaitė), trying to escape from her parents’ relationships and life patterns, sinks into addiction, and later retires to a commune, where she reconsiders the principles of community life. After giving birth to her daughter Bona, Ana soon chooses suicide as well.
Photo by D. Matvejev/Rehearsal of “Anatomy of Suicide”.
Bona (actor Elžbieta Latėnaitė), for her part, tries to end the transgenerational trauma of suicide, to break the chain of such choices. She becomes a doctor and, unlike her mother, chooses a rational way to organize and understand the burden of her family history – she seeks medical, scientific answers. It is important for Bona to prevent any possibility that she will continue this lineage and pass on to her offspring what she herself received from her mother and grandmother.
In the play, Karolina, Ana and Bona are portrayed as being of a similar age, all young women in their thirties, and their stories are told to the audience at the same time. Different time zones allow us to look at the life of one family not as a random combination of actions-reactions, but as a transgenerational chain of events.
Vytautas Anužis, Kęstutis Cicėnas, Algirdas Gradauskas, Žygymantė Jakštaitė, Marius Repšys, Aistė Rocevičiūtė, Jūratė Vilūnaitė also play in the play. Agata Skwarczynska is the scenographer and light designer of “Suicide Anatomy”, the costumes are designed by Liucija Kvašytė, the music is by Ieva Parnarauskaitė, the choreographer is Oksana Griaznova.
The author of the play, British playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch, looks at suicide anatomically, as the title suggests, that is, she does not judge, evaluate or justify women’s actions in order to achieve a certain objectivity of the story. The author, claiming that she wrote the work as a score rather than a play, allows the creative team of the play and the audience to look at the plot with the eyes of a detective – to notice and record the invisible symbols, signs and traces that accompany this family, and thus discover what each of us without thinking we repeat, we take it from our parents, we carry it from generation to generation.
Alice Birch’s work is often compared to the plays of the scandalous British playwright Sarah Kane – they share a similar relationship with modern existentialism, depiction of people who often remain on the margins, analysis of borderline and extreme personal experiences – self-destruction, inefficiency of institutions (especially relations with medical workers), overworked , a portrait of a woman surrendering to sexual and psychological abuse. Image of a woman leaving her last words as a testament.
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