Aistė Ptakauskė et cetera

CalArts faculty and students share their impressions of working with Aiste Ptakauske on Rudkovsky’s play:

Inflation of Feelings: Part 2

See on WONC TV:

Everything Just As You Wanted: Part 1

Nikolay Rudkovsky

EVERYTHING JUST AS YOU WANTED

(INFLATION OF FEELINGS)

translated and directed by Aiste Ptakauske

Friday, February 19th, 8 PM
Saturday, February 20th, 4:30 PM
At the Irene Studio, California Institute of the Arts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, California 91355-2397

CAST

Old lady – Allison Caldicott-Levitt

Olya – Sophia Wang

Tolya – Brendan McGowen

Waitress at the night club – Brittany Woodford

Vadim Petrovich – Taylor Beia

Karina – Janice Pak

Stripper – Justin Montalvo

OLYA’S MUM – Heather Alpert

TOLYA’S MUM – Jenny Curtis

Producer of the band – Shawn Allen

Stage Manager – Rebecca L. Trotter

Nikolay Rudkovsky is a Minsk based playwright who studied mathematics in high school, modern languages at Belarus State University, and theater directing at Belarus University of Arts and Culture (BUAC). He wrote his first play A Blind Star for his class mates at BUAC more than ten years ago, but it was his second play, Women of Bergman, that brought him fame outside the premises of the campus. The play was showcased and awarded in many East European theatre festivals. It was also a “visiting card” of the Theatre of Belarusian Drama for many seasons. Rudkovsky, in the meantime, worked as an actor at the Maxim Gorky National Academic Drama Theater and Russian television shows, wrote copies for TV commercials, and produced a show at a Belarusian-German radio station. Recently, he decided to take up theater directing. He directed his Women of Bergman and A Blind Star at the Belarus State University Theater On the Balcony.

The showcase of the play has been made possible through the sponsorship and support of the CEC ArtsLink (www.cecartslink.org).

My trip to Vilkaviškis was interesting in many respects. First, it helped me contextualize myself as a Lithuanian writer (a startled stork must have dropped me onto this land by accident - I just don’t have the obligatory romantic gene). Second, it gave me a very rare opportunity to listen to another person read my work aloud (I really admire the courage of the good librarian who prepared one of the most explicit, open, and awkward scenes of sexual harassment in the book). Third, it took me to birthplaces of canonical authors of the Lithuanian literature (they wrote about what they saw as an old saying has it). But one of the most touching experiences was the presentation of an art teacher’s project where she asked half of her students to read excerpts from my books and the other half to paint what they though they heard and understood. I’d really like to share these paintings with you.

This one is done by a young man who saw my novels as an intersection of different perspectives and a fluctuation between light and darkness.

This one portrays the narrator who is stepping into a scary and unknown world surrounded by darkness but believing in light.

This one is self-explanatory. It could easily go on the cover of the next re-print.

I know, the rumors have been going around for quite a while. Some say I’m already in States. Some say I’m about to leave and never come back. Some say it’s good for me. The absolute majority of them all have no clue what I’m going to do there.

Well, it’s all official now. On a very early morning of June 29th I’ll be boarding a plane to Stockholm, change there into a flight to Chicago and eventually end up in Syracuse, State of New York.

I’ve been awarded a Fulbright grant and a Liu Multicultural Communication Fellowship. In July I’ll start my graduate studies in Television-Radio-Film at S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, New York. Newhouse is among top five schools of film and video in the country, and I am very proud and humbled to have been given an opportunity to study there. So, please, don’t shed any tears - it IS good for me.

I’ve spent half of this day packing. The biggest part of my stuff is already gone. Next week is for packing the suitcase, sorting the clothes and returning things that I once borrowed and completely forgot about it.

I’ve already got a new postal address and business e-mail. It’ll take me a couple of weeks to get a new phone number. So reaching me may be a bit tricky, but, if you’re interested, keep an eye on this blog and you’ll be fully briefed about all important developments in my life.

Yesterday I saw a stork for the first time this year. It was flying. According to the Lithuanian folklore, it is a sign of a much better and more successful year than the previous one. So: it’s been a sheer pleasure knowing you, thanks for everything, but it’s time to move on.

Take care - seriously - it’s very important!

Right… Maybe that’s not the most successful paraphrase in the history of puns (it refers to Leningrad Cowboys Go America, if I completely lost you here), but I was so excited to have come up with it that I couldn’t resist using it anyway. So that’s ticked then.

Now back to business. My last meeting with readers in Lithuania before I set off to the other side of the Atlantic, a public good-bye of sorts:

Date: June 17th, 2009

Time: 12 pm

Location: Vilkaviškis

Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė and I will be a part of a town festival devoted for the Year of Reading. A very important initiative, I think - one of the kind that I always try to support.

I know, these mass events may seem but a formal show-off for a cynical onlooker. But believe it or not, whenever I take part in them, I clearly feel that for someone in the crowd on a very personal and intimate level I may have made a difference. The best feeling ever.

Lithuanian weekly Literatūra ir menas (Literature and Art) has just published Lithuanian American author Laima Vincė’s review of my novels:

http://www.culture.lt/lmenas/?leid_id=3239&kas=straipsnis&st_id=14847

Here I am posting its complete unedited version in English. A longish read, but very illuminating. Enjoy!

LAIMA VINCĖ

A Cautionary Tale for Lithuanian Teenage Girls: A Review of Aistė Ptakauskė’s Two Young Adult Novels, Nerealios atostogos and (Ne)saugus žaidimas

The young debut writer, Aistė Ptakauskė’s, two young adult novels, Nerealios atostogos and (Ne)saugus žaidimas (part of Alma Littera’s “Mergaičių lyga” series) ought to be read as cautionary tales for Lithuanian (and in general all East European and Russian) teenage girls entering into the particular social constructs of the post-Soviet adult world. The books address rape, loss of virginity, the underground world of sexual tourism, and repressed (due to cultural intolerance) homosexuality, without the usual taint of didacticism, heavy-handedness, condescension or voyeurism such subject matter is want to elicit.

Narrated from a first person point of view in a voice that is punchy, ripe with a balance of contemporary slang and folk wisdom, literary metaphor and street talk, a voice that is smart, honest, and never tedious, the books tell the coming of age story of four Lithuanian teens. The backbone of the two novels is the developing and deepening friendship between Ainė, a home-body, who is shy and pragmatic and is secretly writing a novel; Giedra, a flighty budding artist who has a very hard time reigning in her emotions and anger, especially in public; Rasa, Giedra’s elder sister, who is responsible and terse; and Ugnė, always meticulously made-up and coiffed, and hopelessly in love with hopelessly unfaithful, Martynas.

On a literary and folkloric level the names of the four girls represent the four elements: Rasa (Dew in Lithuanian) is water; Ainė (Ancestor spirits) is the earth; Ugnė (Fire in Lithuanian) is fire; and Giedra (Brightness in Lithuanian) is the sky. On an emotional level each girl must face her own challenges and fears and find her own way. The girls vow to support each other in their endeavors, promising never to leave a friend in need. As with treaties between nations, this promise is often tested and the results are sometimes disastrous, sometimes hilarious, sometimes puzzling. Though, no matter how difficult the situation, the girls manage to learn something and grow as people. Character growth and development is a definite strength in this work for young readers. At the end of the first book, Nerealios atostogos, the narrator, Ainė, who is essentially a home body, learns that experience and relationships are a part of her creative growth and her personal growth, and not something to be avoided at all costs. She decides to begin writing her novel in earnest, based on her life experience. At the end of the second book, (Ne)saugus žaidimas, Ainė learns to be honest with herself and others, both as a human being and as a writer.

The men in the book also represent the likely types of men most women deal with in contemporary Lithuanian society. Martynas is blond, athletic, handsome, and openly unfaithful to Ugnė. He uses her for sex and disrespects her and he gets away with it time and again. Ugnė’s tolerance is cultural. She makes up excuses for Martynas and without him, she feels worthless. Her girlfriends realize that it is hopeless to try to change her and patiently assist her in her desperate relationship, until finally, at the end of the second book Ugnė herself takes a stand and leaves Martynas.

Žydrūnas, the one positive male character in the book, still is dubious. He is a police officer who uses his power as a highway cop to pull over the lovely Rasa and to write his telephone number and a map on the inside of her elbow. Žydrūnas’s side-kick, the “iguana,” Denisas, is a Lithuanian-Russian who is built like a refrigerator, but speaks in a falsetto. He rapes one of the girls left in his protection and is about to rape Ainė when she narrowly escapes. Then, there are the two Mutants—the thugs from Klaipėda who harass the girls, beat up Martynas, yet do not succeed in raping the girls, only because the girls outsmart them and are able to narrowly escape.

Then, there is the middle-aged publisher, Jonas Kerpė, who holds the key to the publishing world for young writers and is not at all vague about the price young women are expected to pay to get their work published. The publisher’s nephew, Kęstutis, lives with him as a dependent and therefore assumes a servant-like role. That is, until the girls arrive on the scene and he is put into the position of standing up for them and discovers his own manhood. The character Kęstutis is perhaps the closest the reader gets to a male hero, but with a caveat. He is a gentle artist type, though not a slouch when Ainė finds herself in a precarious position and in the isolated village cottage in the middle of the night and nowhere to go but his bed.

The writing and structure of these books is refreshingly Western. Ptakauskė does away with the usual self-indulgence and self-absorption we see in the work of young Lithuanian writers, and tells the story. The reader immediately is drawn in by the books’ strong storyteller’s voice, the contemporary and relevant dialogue, the familiar and recognizable settings, a healthy balance between scene, action and reflection, and a solid plot structure. There is a definite polish and professionalism to Ptakauskė’s work.

At the same time, Ptakauskė consciously embraces a clear American-style approach to writing for young adults, while retaining uniquely Lithuanian, even folkloric, elements that nonetheless ground these books in Lithuanian tradition. Giedra plays at being a witch, using her own unique versions of traditional Lithuanian verbal healing charms to curse, heal, and conjure. The middle-aged pervert/publisher who abuses his power over Ainė in an attempt to force her into having sex with him, is described as a “lašininis,” the mythological fat-man who battles “kanapinis,” the hemp-man, during the Lithuanian carnival festivities that precede the Lenten season. Ugnė’s Lithuanian-American Great Aunt turns out to be a back-to-the-lander of sorts with her pet grass snake Kasparas that protects her home and hearth and her bizarre homeopathic methods that hearken back to earlier agrarian traditions.

As an American woman and writer, obviously my reading of Ptakauskė’s books differ from a local reading. An outsider tends to view a foreign society more closely, perhaps even more critically, though not out of a sense of cultural snobbism, but rather as a survival skill. An outsider arrives on foreign soil and must watch all the cultural road signs carefully, so as not to misstep, not to get lost, not to end up in a dangerous situation. I can negotiate any street in New York City at three in the morning and not feel fearful, but my heart races walking through Vilnius’s senamiestis (Old Town) at dusk. A foreigner tends to watch the shadows more closely.

Similarly, teenage girls entering the adult world must learn to read the signs of danger, and that is what Ainė, Ugnė, Giedra, and Rasa are up against in these two books. Take note, I write “teenage girls entering the adult world” because these books were written specifically to address girls as part of a series designed by Alma Littera. And, for good reason. In urban contemporary Lithuania girls face some very real dangers, which, let’s say, teenage girls in Western Europe, America, Japan, or Hong Kong, or other industrialized nations do not face in quite the same way. Like it or not, let’s be honest with ourselves, independent Lithuania has succeeded in creating a cultural construct for teenage girls and young women that is highly sexualized, and dangerously so. The sexualization of young women in Lithuania has undermined girls’ self-esteem, sense of self-worth, and confidence in themselves as bread-winners and future professionals.

In Lithuania the Soviet cultural inheritance left a patriarchal blueprint on an already agrarian patriarchal society. This, combined with a headlong rush into an outsider’s interpretation of what the West is, coupled with a skewed understanding of the practical meaning of freedom and democracy (essentially, now I am free to do as I wish, rather than now I am free to take responsibility for myself and my country) brings us to a place that is a dark and dangerous jungle for a teenage girl “coming out” into adult life.

Then, there are the economic conditions that limit Lithuanian women: unequal pay practices for men and women and insufficient pay in relationship to cost of living almost immediately place Lithuanian young women in a position of dependence on family, and on men. This sense of dependence is deeply internalized and carries with it a cultural roadmap that girls learn to follow in early adolescence.

Both books involve adventure. Nerealios atostogos is a roadtrip novel in the tradition of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Although the four girls vow that their trip to Klaipėda is a girls’ vacation and they even draft for themselves a set of guidelines and rules that are innocent and positive enough for a gaggle of teenage girls on wheels and hot for adventure, everywhere they go the girls are viewed as sexual objects, though they resist that viewpoint. Their struggle, whether they are consciously aware of it or not, is to maintain their dignity, individuality, and sense of self as a whole human being.

In (Ne)saugus žaidimas all four girls, within a three-day long November All Souls’ Day vacation, experience sexual aggression at the hands of men. Whereas these actions would have involved bringing in the law, the social workers, the psychiatrists, outraged parents and relatives if they were to occur in America, in this novel, which, sadly all too honestly reflects today’s Lithuanian society, are dismissed as commonplace, a learning experience, an opportunity for the girls to grow and mature as women. And, guess what, all four girls move on, evolving into strong, patiently suffering Lithuanian women, accepting of their men’s failings, cowardice, and abuse of male privilege. And they do it on their own, without the help of grown-ups.

At the beginning of (Ne)saugus žaidimas, Ugnė initiates a “girl vacation” by pouting and crying over Martynas spending the All Soul’s Day holidays in his construction worker’s dorm in Panevėžys. She wheedles her girlfriends into agreeing to find a way to transport her to Panevėžys to spend a romantic weekend in Martynas’s dorm room. Rasa appeals to her boyfriend, Žydrūnas Šunskis, a cop who won Rasa’s heart after pulling her over in Nerealios atostogos, to concoct a plan. Žydrūnas sends his partner, Denisas, a hulk of a man who speaks in falsetto, to pick up Ainė, Giedra, and Ugnė in Vilnius. Ugnė is deposited on the side of the road on the outskirts of Panevėžys, where she reunites with Martynas. Ainė and Giedra are brought to Žydrūnas’s uncle’s cottage in a village outside of Panevėžys. There they are met by a tipsy Rasa (drunk on the uncle’s red wine) and Žydrūnas, who introduce them to their eager host, the uncle, an obese man, presumably in his fifties because of his gray hair and gray chest hairs, who greets Ainė by shoving his tongue between her teeth when she bends forward to accept a polite greeting kiss. Later, after coming back drenched from a long walk in the rain to the village bus station (Žydrūnas leaves the scene unexpectedly for a party and Rasa and Giedra set out after him, suspecting him of going to meet another woman), Ainė asks the uncle if she may take a hot shower. He points her in the direction of the bathroom, but when she returns to her bed after her shower, clutching a small towel to her body, she finds the uncle, naked, spread-eagle in her bed, “warming the sheets.”

Ainė reacts like a well-brought up Lithuanian girl, taught to acquiesce to male privilege, in this case the privilege of a middle-aged host, to whom she has submitted her manuscript for publication. She says nothing, but runs upstairs to the man’s nephew’s Kęstustis’s room. She knocks politely on the door and expresses an interest in his art portfolio. After viewing the portfolio shivering under a wet towel, she politely asks if she may sleep in his room because she saw a mouse downstairs in hers and is afraid of mice.

The internalization of culturally specific rules in this situation and Aine’s accommodation of the uncle and the nephew speak to a greater societal problem, one in which Ainė clearly knows her place as a woman. It never occurs to her that violence has been done to her. It never occurs to her to resist. Ptakauskė is a sly writer in that she is able to say so much both to young adult readers and their parents while at the same time presenting a hilarious and completely believable scene.

While Ainė is dealing with her delicate situation, Giedra too is left in a vulnerable position when Rasa catches up to Žydrūnas, finds him “partying” with the two mutants (actually doing undercover police work) and starts a fight between Žydrūnas and the two mutants. The police are called in to stop the fight and Žydrūnas and Rasa are arrested and brought to police headquarters. Denisas is told to watch out for Giedra and to take her back to the cottage. Instead, Denisas locks Giedra inside a private room in the nightclub. He fondles her breasts and proceeds to take her virginity. It does not occur to Giedra to resist him because she is tormented by her own homosexuality, which she considers to be not normal. She thinks that maybe if she allows him to “thrust his way into her skin, like a needle under the skin, he’ll destroy all the viruses there. And then I won’t have any more abnormal thoughts (page 143).”

After the rape, Giedra bleeds and bleeds. But no one comforts her. She asks Denisas to driver her back to the cottage. She feels extremely ashamed, but worse, her

thoughts about breasts do not dissipate out of her head. She realizes that she is doomed to be a lesbian. She makes a sexual appeal to Ainė and is rejected. The horrified Ainė storms out of the house and makes her escape, but ends up stranded in Panevėžys without money or any way of getting home to Vilnius. Believing she has no one to turn to, she answers a text message from Denisas. They decide to meet at the same nightclub, only for coffee, since it’s morning. Ainė arrives at the empty night club and Denisas locks the door behind her. He shows her the stage where the fashion show is scheduled to take place that night. It dawns on Ainė that she has made a mistake. That this meeting is not as innocent as it would seem. She tells Denisas that she needs to leave, but he will not let her go. She cannot get out on her own because the door is locked. Just before the worst happens, Rasa and Žydrūnas show up, innocently stopping by the club. Denisas metamorphoses back into the “good cop” the others believe him to be and his actions are never addresses. Alls well that ends well.

It could seem to a western reader that all these unresolved situations and loose ends are indicative of an inexperienced writer. But this is not the case. The stage here is Lithuania and in Lithuania it is more wise to keep your mouth shut regarding the illicit activities of a cop than to make a stink about it. Here the writer’s realistic understanding of her world and her moment in time comes through. Ainė does not tell. Neither does Giedra. They don’t even need to be threatened by Denisas not to tell. They know.

Later, it turns out that Giedra set up the meeting, knowing it would lead to her friend’s rape and “deflowering.” She admits to Ainė that she set up the “date” with Denisas to get the satisfaction of revenge for being rebuffed. Again, the writer displays a subtle physiological situation, but does so seemingly innocently, never departing from the flow of the confessional scene between Giedra and Aine. The moment illustrates the psychology of the oppressed: the oppressed does not take revenge on the oppressor, but on her own peers instead.

I could go on and on, illustrating scene after scene in which the writer reveals a cultural psychology that is deeply intuitive and illuminating. But the truly masterful aspect of Ptakauskė’s writing, is that she does so with humor. Humor keeps the reader laughing and turning pages. Humor allows the reader to absorb the bitter lessons of these books without falling either into a rage or a hopeless depression. We’ve all met the people in these books and we can all recognize ourselves in them. We see our own mistakes and our own triumphs. These books are an important read for young Lithuanian girls. Most importantly, for middle class girls, the types whose parents believe their girls will never have to deal with these types of social situations. None of the girls in the books smoke or use drugs or alcohol. The closest they come to light intoxication is when they share of bottle of fermented cider and Ainė grows light-headed. Indeed, all four girls come from nice homes and are good students in school: The type parents don’t think they have to watch closely.

Aistė Ptakauskė is a talented young writer whose talents have already been recognized in an international context. Ptakauskė has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar’s grant to study in the graduate program in Television, Radio, and Film at the S. I. Newhouse School for Public Communications at Syracuse University in New York. The Fulbright is a highly selective program that gives grants to study in the United States. These grants are decided by a committee of scholars and are offered only to the very best talents a nation has to offer. It is no surprise to me, having read her work, that Aistė Ptakauskė is joining the proud Fulbright tradition.

© Laima Vincė Sruoginis, 2009

This article was first published by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN PERFORMANCE, Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 2008

NEW TIMES ASK FOR NEW VOICES: A SHORT HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIAN PLAYWRITING

Aistė Ptakauskė

The political nature of theatre is most apparent during times of political uncertainty and social disintegration. For the past few years, none of the major theatre festivals in Western Europe or North America was considered complete if it did not include in its programs a show or play that in one way or another reacted to contemporary political realities—from the war in Iraq to censorship in Belarus. However, the political nature of theatre was never more evident than it was in the countries of the Soviet Block during Soviet rule. It is common knowledge that the rise of highly metaphorical, semantically multilayered, and limitlessly inventive Eastern European theatre was primarily determined by fierce Soviet censorship, which recklessly punished anything that questioned the ideology of the state. It was, however, quite blind to subtle irony and symbolism generated by the sharp and rebellious artist’s imagination.

The Lithuanian theatre was no exception in this respect. Directors who refused to stage Socialist Realism had no choice but to turn long dead geniuses of Western drama into their contemporaries by overlooking the literal meaning of their words and making costumes, lights, and bodies of actors speak figuratively. Theatre eventually became a substitute for religion for many citizens of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania as well as the country’s most successful cultural product for export. However, the ascendancy of this kind of director caused a significant shift of roles within the theatre itself, turning the stage into a playground for the director’s imagination, diminishing the roles of actors into functions of the narrative and making playwrights generally redundant. Paradoxically, the kind of theatre that started as a way of tricking the authoritarian regime eventually became a manifestation of a peculiar kind of director’s dictatorship.

It is important to note that the often authoritative tendencies of Lithuanian directing do not undermine the artistic quality of Lithuanian theatre. Lithuanian directors receive the most prestigious international theatre awards; they are invited to direct in major theatres of Russia, France, Finland, and Scandinavia; and their productions are annually included in the programs of the largest international theatre festivals in Moscow, Dublin, and Avignon. However, over-exercising one muscle leads to degeneration of others in the body, which becomes especially evident when the body is finally forced to change its habitual position.

The Restoration of Independence resulted in an extreme make-over for the whole Lithuanian nation in general as well as the Lithuanian theatre in particular. The new era in the nation’s history asked for new stories to ponder what had happened. This time of reassessment of values revealed many gaps in the Lithuanian political, economical, social, and cultural systems. For instance, it suddenly became very clear that in the contemporary theatre of independent Lithuania there were neither actively working playwrights nor colleges or universities that could professionally train them. Moreover, at the outset of independence, there were only a couple of productions of any kind of contemporary plays in the repertories of Lithuanian state or national theatres.

In this situation, resorting to contemporary plays from Western Europe—which had suddenly become a model in many respects for several newly liberated Eastern European countries—was immediately seen as the most obvious and accessible way to fill the gap. Consequently, in 1999 the Lithuanian Theatre and Cinema Information and Education Centre (TCIEC) launched a formerly undreamt of project, the New Drama Action—a few days of rehearsed readings and shows of contemporary plays from Latvia, Estonia, and the United Kingdom. The novelty of the event attracted enormous public attention and clearly demonstrated the Lithuanian audience’s thirst for innovative ways of telling original stories in a new kind of theatre. Although the New Drama Action soon became a very popular annual phenomenon that would significantly contribute to the repertories of many Lithuanian theatres, its attempts to invite Lithuanian writers into its otherwise welcoming embrace were still extremely cautious. Nevertheless, the seed was sown.

Typically, the first public initiatives to encourage Lithuanian writers to write for the theatre sprang not from the national or state theatres but from the fringe festivals. In 2001, the Lithuanian Association of University Theatres (LAUT) organized an international youth theatres festival. The association stated it was “Looking for Authors and Heroes.” Its goals were to collect as many scripts as possible from young Lithuanian playwrights, select the ones with the most potential, and distribute them to university or youth theatres that consisted of young people interested in acting and directing. Although the establishment had many reservations about the initiative, the festival attracted a lot of attention from audiences as well as the press. A few literary managers of the Lithuanian state theatres began to look through the submitted scripts as well as to see a few festival productions. They made contacts with selected playwrights. Some of these writers were encouraged to work in the field of playwriting, some of the larger having their work produced on bigger stages. The scale of the public interest evoked by the festival proved that the LAUT’s initiative was not a complete waste of time and should be further developed by state theatres and national festivals.

The majority of forums and festivals committed to the development of Lithuanian playwriting shared a similar structure. First, they would announce a call for submissions. Second, from the submitted material, they would select the scripts with the most potential. Then they would contact the authors of the selected scripts and invite them to participate in workshops or master classes run by invited and more experienced tutors from abroad. Finally, products of the workshops would be publicly presented in the form of rehearsed readings with the participation of professional Lithuanian actors and directors. Although the process of such events was most often hectic and uncoordinated, and the readings of the plays rarely resulted in anything other than an avalanche of fierce criticism directed at their authors, it gradually built a certain awareness of the pulsating necessity for new voices in the Lithuanian theatre and inspired confidence in newly emerging Lithuanian playwrights.

The loud and passionate discussions around the newborn phenomenon of Lithuanian playwriting drew the attention of the international theatre community. International interest in Lithuanian playwrights was considerably strengthened by a few unexpected successes of Lithuanian plays at international festivals, the most outstanding of which was the first prize for Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė‘s play Lucy Skates at the Berlin Play Market in 2004.[1] Consequently, the play was staged at a few theatres in Germany and Russia, and Lithuanian playwrights started to receive invitations to international conferences, festivals, and networks. For instance, my play Persona F.”[2] was translated into Russian and included in the program of the international festival Young Drama 2004 (also known as Liubimovka) in Moscow where I was recognized by the founding members of The Fence, a network of pan-European playwrights, translators, and dramaturgs. I consequently became an active member of the group.

International praise for Lithuanian playwrights in recognition of their unique voices and original perspective on theatre culture made the Lithuanian theatre establishment reassess its prejudices. Lithuanian state theatres little by little started to allow into their repertoires plays by more or less internationally acknowledged Lithuanian playwrights. A couple of those productions were highly successful. For example, Marius Ivaškevičius’s play Madagascar, about a well-known Lithuanian thinker’s naïve plan to move the entire Lithuanian nation to the island of Madagascar to avoid the fatal attrocities of World War II, is still one of the hits of the repertory of the State Small Theatre of Vilnius. It is the winner of numerous international as well as national awards. However, most Lithuanian plays were still considered to be of “insufficient artistic quality” and were looked down upon by the establishment of the Lithuanian theatre.

A productive action needed to be taken to open communication between the playwrights and the broader Lithuanian theatre community. In response to this, in 2005, I formed an informal playwrights club, D5, whose main goal was to exchange useful practices and information through public discussions and performances, giving voice to emerging Lithuanian playwrights. The formation of the club was partially inspired by Erik Ehn, the current Dean of the School of Theatre of the California Institute of the Arts. Ehn ran a week of workshops in Vilnius before the Lithuanian premiere of his Saints’ Plays at the State Youth Theatre of Lithuania. He emphasized the importance of networking to the existence of the arts in general and playwriting in particular. The main activity of D5 was to discuss its members’ work, improve their writing skills, and present the products of the workshops to an audience. Although D5’s performances and happenings usually took place in spaces that had little to do with the theatre, they attracted a lot of young audiences. D5 was soon recognized as a very strong and distinct voice in the context of the Lithuanian theatre. Three club members’ plays were included in the Panorama of Contemporary Lithuanian Drama, one of the biggest festivals of Lithuanian playwriting organized by one of the major Lithuanian state theatres. Lithuanian regional theatres were finally happy to be able to access young authors who did not fence themselves off from the world and willingly worked with different communities. The Southwark Playhouse in London invited two of the club’s members to develop their plays with British director Svetlana Dimcovic and present them at the British celebrations of Lithuanian art and culture that took place in London from January 7 to 26, 2008. In the spring of 2007, I was invited to Istanbul by the organizers of Oyun Yaz, a recently established festival of new Turkish drama, to run a workshop for emerging Turkish playwrights. In the same year I received a six-week CEC ArtsLink residency at the Centre Theatre Group of Los Angeles and the California Institute of the Arts where I continued artistic collaboration with Erik Ehn. Most importantly, the very existence of D5 proved to other Lithuanian playwrights that their voices could be heard. It inspired them to seek a more active involvement in the Lithuanian theatre community.

The gradually growing hubbub around the issue of the development of contemporary Lithuanian drama finally touched the National Drama Theatre of Lithuania when in 2005 it launched its own festival of contemporary Lithuanian plays: The Sources. Although during the three years of the festival’s existence, only one play has traveled from the festival’s program to the theatre’s repertory, the fact such a festival was organized by the National Drama Theatre of Lithuania demonstrates that the Lithuanian theatre establishment has finally recognized new Lithuanian playwrights and is willing to enter into a dialogue with them.

During the past couple of years, more and more Lithuanian state and regional theatres have started to express a serious interest in staging works by contemporary Lithuanian playwrights. Moreover, Lithuanian directors have little by little begun to collaborate with Lithuanian playwrights on more or less equal terms. The TCIEC in cooperation with a few Lithuanian publishers have started to publish a series of contemporary Lithuanian plays and launched a database of the works at www.theatre.lt Nevertheless, the situation of the playwright in the Lithuanian theatre is still best described by Audronis Liuga, the head of TCIEC and artistic director of the New Drama Action, in his introduction to Kolme kerettiläistä: Liettualaista nykydraamaa, a volume of Finnish translations of three contemporary Lithuanian plays:

Being a playwright in the Lithuanian theatre means becoming a heretic and proclaiming faith in the word in a kingdom of visual imagery. Only a few succeed in this heresy, and only the exceptions are able to inspire a new theatre culture through their words. To achieve this, a writer’s talent is not enough. One also needs to have a profound and elaborate knowledge of the stage where an auto-da-fé is being executed by the director’s imagination. Since the auto-da-fé of the Lithuanian theatre is renowned for its exceptional cruelty, it is not hard to imagine what kind of ingenuity and patience is required from a playwright. Although in Lithuania national playwriting is promoted in all possible ways, the director’s inquisition is watchfully guarding its faith.[3]

Although at the beginning of his introduction, Audronis Liuga is not optimistic about new playwrights in Lithuania, in further paragraphs he expresses a hope that the example of the three authors who have just been translated and published in Finnish will be an inspiration for their younger successors.[4] The accomplishments of several Lithuanian playwrights internationally and nationally indicate that such expectations may not be completely unjustified.

Oh, it turns out that Literatūra ir menas have a website where they post all the articles they publish. So my piece The Shutout: Strategy of Popular Literature is also there. Here is the link in case anyone is interested:

http://www.culture.lt/lmenas/?leid_id=3236&kas=straipsnis&st_id=14712

The article is classified as a book review, but it is not entirely true. I intended this piece as an analytical perspective on the phenomenon of popular literature through a closer look at one random example, Alfredo Abarca’s novel Confidential File. There are a few cuts and minor mistakes to the original draft, too. For example, the novel in question was translated into Lithuanian from Spanish, not from English. But in general, I think, the published piece gives you a pretty good idea of my hypothesis on the secret of popliterature’s popularity.

This publication wouldn’t have been possible without professor Wolfgang Iser who wrote a very inspiring study The Fictive and the Imaginative and the academic advisor of my MA thesis who suggested I should think about the applicability of Iser’s theory to actual literary analysis. I may not have put this idea to its best use at the time, but it stuck with me through all these years. This fact only, I think, is a sufficient proof that the idea is worth pursuing. Maybe in a next paper…

Ouch, could it be that I’m getting hooked on research again?

Wow, was that a blunder or was that a blunder yesterday at the match between Barcelona and Chelsea?! And I’m not saying it because I’m someone who simply cannot take defeats. I can. I just think Chelsea’s drop-out yesterday was SO UNFAIR!

Well, there’s not much I can do here, is there? But every little helps. So I decided to dedicate the title of my most recent article to every robbed party in every game in the history of football — The Shutout: Pragmatic Strategy of Popular Literature. Of course, the article is not about a football game (what do I know about it?). It is about games that popular literature plays with readers’ expectations to make as much cash as possible. However, if I have to talk in terms of game-playing, let it be the terms of football!

P.S. The article is coming out tomorrow in Literatūra ir menas (Lithuanian weekly Literature and Art).