Joël Pommerat ‘THE REUNIFICATION OF THE TWO KOREAS’ (dir. Monika Klimaitė)

Joël Pommerat (born 1963) is a playwright and director, and one of the most prominent figures in French theatre in recent years. Critics often describe him as an artist who has found an original theatrical language; he is also memorably called a theatre alchemist who makes text, stage space, plot and image interact in new ways. In 1990, J. Pommerat brought together his theatre company, which he named ‘Compagnie Louis Brouillard’ (Louis Brouillard is a non-existent character, a mask J. Pommerat invented to ‘confuse the audience a little’). The company has no stage of its own, tours extensively and has become one of the best-known French companies working with contemporary drama.

Written in 2013, J. Pommerat’s play ‘The Reunification of the Two Koreas’ is constructed from twenty scenes, twenty separate fictional dramas, in which the playwright unfolds a dramatic panorama of romantic relationships. In J. Pommerat’s own words: ‘Love relationships, because of their intensity, lead to blindness.’ Essentially, the play is not even about love itself, but about the impossibility of love.

‘For me, this play is a look at love in the broadest sense, at how it works and at the movement of the particles that make it up. As I read it, I thought that love is not only being together, but also not being together. It is not only what connects us, but probably also what separates us and draws us apart. I like that an active stance toward love dominates in the play, and that it is illustrated by statements such as “the effort to understand”, “to work things out”, “to feel”, “to hear”.’ (Monika Klimaitė)

This production is part of the theatre laboratory ‘We – France’, which took place from June 1–11. ‘We – France’ is an attempt to look at French drama in a new way, to make it relevant and to read it anew. The sketches created in the laboratory, based on selected plays by French authors, were presented on June 9–11.

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Monika Klimaitė is a director of the younger generation. In 2013, she graduated in theatre directing from the Faculty of Arts at Klaipėda University; in 2011–2012, she studied theatre and performance practice at the University of Plymouth in Great Britain. In 2014, she earned a master’s degree in Performance Practice as Research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Since 2009, she has been an ambassador for Lithuanian youth amateur theatre at NEATA (‘Northern European Amateur Theatre Association’). From 2020 until March 2023: Panevėžys Theatre ‘Menas’. She is currently a doctoral student in theatre directing at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

Monika Klimaitė’s most important theatre works include: Henrik Ibsen, ‘When We Dead Awaken’ (National Kaunas Drama Theatre); Marius von Mayenburg, ‘Perplex’ (Youth Theatre); Mark Ravenhill, ‘Pool (no water)’ (Juozas Miltinis Drama Theatre); Ivan Vyrypaev, ‘Oxygen’ (Klaipėda Culture Factory); and the movement performance ‘Persona’ (Klaipėda Culture Factory), etc.

Premiere – 2023, October 19 and 20.