„TOLI TOLI“

„Toli toli“ An immersive performance Premiere – 5, 6 April 2025 The performance is in Lithuanian and Russian Creative team: Director – Mantas Jančiauskas Dramaturge – Lina Laura Švedaitė Composer – Mantvydas Leonas Pranulis Set designer – Ona Juciūtė Video artist – Kristijonas Dirsė Lighting designer – Julius Kuršys Programmer – Robertas Dumpis Director's assistant – Andrius Darela Production manager – Matas Makauskas /// „Toli toli“ is an experiential journey through the Old Theatre of Vilnius, an invitation to an intimate encounter with the theatre's history and atmosphere. A fragmentary dramaturgy, woven from recordings of theatre staff's stories, archival material and music, fills the special, usually inaccessible spaces of the theatre and leads further than the naked eye can see. It lets you experience the theatre – both the geography of the building and the different layers of historical and personal memory absorbed within it. Rising on a hill on Jonas Basanavičius Street, the theatre is like a slumbering mammoth or a centaur, wandering through the labyrinth of time's upheavals, regimes and history. The building will awaken, will speak, will testify to you, about you. You will be able to witness it all. There is no doubt – you will be amazed. The performance will engage all 5 human senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste receptors. You will become the theatre, the history, the centaur, and they will become you. The building of the Old Theatre of Vilnius rose in 1912–1914 on what was then Pohulianka Street, on the initiative of Hipolit Korwin-Milewski, Countess Klementina Tiškevičienė, the printer and intellectual Feliks Zawadski, and Mieczysław Bogdanowicz, from funds donated by the city's residents. It is true that similar theatres were abundant in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, yet in the Lithuanian context this theatre is exceptional – one of the oldest, and this year it already counts 111 years. In the context of historical transformations, the creative work of Polish, Lithuanian and Russian artists met and crossed paths in this theatre; its walls have probably heard all the languages that have ever echoed in the streets of Vilnius. This theatre is a cell in the history of Lithuania and Vilnius, its DNA. The dramaturgy of the performance is composed of documentary material – fragments of testimony, sentences, from which a poetic collage is glued together, voices as if conversing among themselves. The musical concept is based on the principle of reworking field recordings: from sound recordings of old performances (texts, music) and interview recordings with theatre staff, a new, contemporary soundscape is formed, also drawing on contemporary electronic and live music instruments. The set design is the very interior of the building, the objects within it, elements of old performances, decommissioned costumes, artefacts of scenery and archival material – a table, a photograph, a lamp... „I want to invite the viewer into a certain meditation on memory. At the same time, to ask why we become attached to a certain past, what is our relationship with the past? Every historical period inscribed its trace, its voice, into this space. But whose memory dominates here? Who chooses, and how, what to remember and what to forget? How did a building in which different theatres existed become not only a centre of cultural life, but also a battlefield for memory?“ (Mantas Jančiauskas) Each viewer will journey through the theatre individually, wandering through the spaces all alone. A virtual guide, headphones and technology will help with this. You will not get lost. In this case, there really is a way out at the end of the labyrinth. /// Mantas Jančiauskas (b. 1992) is an artist of the younger generation; in 2018 he graduated in theatre directing from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (course supervisor – Gintaras Varnas) and has acted in film. He experiments with different art forms, searches for new ways to convey stage reality, and pays particular attention to documentary work, the site-specific theatre format and the integration of technology, which allows him to expand the experience and the boundaries of perception of traditional theatre. In his work he sensitively explores social themes and stands out for his innovative approach to theatrical reality. M. Jančiauskas's previous works ( Dreamland , Glaistas , Vaidina Marius Repšys , Portalas , Ekskursija , Drebėjimai , Vedami ) have won recognition and become theatrical events.

Adresas: Vilniaus senasis teatras