This year’s program features five different performances, opening up very diverse themes: the painful story of a young person, the complex life choices of the controversially viewed poet Salomėja Nėris, a bright outlook on life, a meeting with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” and a true family survival story during the Holocaust.
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The different works are united by the human being – their choices, memory, responsibility, ability to survive, and search for answers to questions that are sometimes difficult to ask oneself.
“November 20” – what happens when a young person is left alone with their despair?
The festival will open on September 7 at 6 p.m. with director Loreta Vaskova’s one-person play “November 20,” starring Šarūnas Januškevičius. The play is based on the last work of one of Sweden’s most famous contemporary playwrights, Lars Norén, the documentary play “November 20.”
The play is created based on a real event on November 20, 2008, when an eighteen-year-old young man brought weapons to a school in a small German town. Translated into many languages, the play is being staged in Lithuania for the first time.
The performance explores themes of bullying, violence, and suicide, attempting to look into the inner world of a young person and the environment where despair, anger, and isolation accumulate. At the same time, complex questions are raised about human choices and the reasons why societal boundaries are crossed.
The play, intended for young people aged 14 and up, does not end when the stage curtain falls. Afterward, the audience is invited to a discussion prepared by psychologist Ivona Suchodolska to jointly discuss the questions raised in the play.
“Life as a Beautiful Journey” – about the courage to live more beautifully
The author and actress Virginija Kochanskytė will invite the audience on September 14 at 6 p.m. to the performance “Life as a Beautiful Journey.”
This is a theatrical, playful, romantic, witty, and lyrical program where the meeting between the actress and the audience becomes a journey through different human experiences. Romantic and ironic, cheerful and sensitive stories invite not only following the life adventures of the character created on stage but also reflecting on one’s own experiences, remembering dreams and things that we perhaps always postpone for later.
The performance is full of laughter, tears, life wisdom, and sharp observations. According to V. Kochanskytė, it is important to her that this meeting encourages the viewer to look at their life differently, remember dreams, and dare to do what has long been postponed.
“The Poet” – Salomėja Nėris between accusation and attempt to understand
On September 21 at 6 p.m., the festival program features Birutė Mar’s one-person play “The Poet,” created based on the diaries and poems of Salomėja Nėris (1904–1945). The scriptwriter and performer is Birutė Mar, director Regina Garuolytė.
The life of one of the most prominent Lithuanian poets of the 20th century still sparks discussions due to her political choices, work, and relationship with a complex historical period. However, the play aims not to deliver a definitive verdict but to look at the person behind the historical and literary myth.
The play adopts the form of a documentary “Poet’s Trial”: from the audience come texts accusing and defending S. Nėris, while her diaries and poems become material allowing the search for answers to questions about the artist’s choices and responsibility.
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Is it possible to separate the creator from their work? How to evaluate an artist whose life included controversial decisions? Does society have the right to judge them? The play, created more than two decades ago, allows these questions to be heard anew today.
“Meeting with The Little Prince” – confrontation with your inner child
Actor Algirdas Dainavičius and composer Marius Salynas will invite you on September 28 at 6 p.m. to the theatrical and musical “Meeting with The Little Prince.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s allegorical tale has proven many times that “The Little Prince” is not just a story for children. Algirdas Dainavičius embodies the Rose, the King, the Vain Man, the Lamplighter, the Fox, and other well-known characters from the work on stage, while the narration is complemented by live performances of songs by Marius Salynas based on texts by poet Rimvydas Stankevičius.
The meeting with The Little Prince here becomes a meeting with oneself – with one’s dreams and that inner child for whom there is often no time in the daily life of an adult.
“My Father” – a Holocaust story preserved in family memory
The festival will culminate on October 5 at 6 p.m. with Aleksandras Rubinovas’s play “My Father,” whose scriptwriter, director, and actor is A. Rubinovas himself. The play tells the personal story of his father Stanislovas Rubinovas’s (1930–2013) childhood and survival during the Holocaust.
In early July 1941, Stanislovas’s father was killed in Paneriai. At that time, he and his mother disobeyed the order to move to the ghetto and hid in the forests of Western Belarus until 1944. Living in a dugout, they were constantly tormented by hunger, cold, and fear, and death was often just one step away.
The personal story of one family on stage becomes a universal tale about the bond between mother and son, human strength, survival, and the ability to not lose hope even in the most difficult circumstances.
The play features compositions by Faustas Latėnas and Jewish folk music.
Five evenings – five different perspectives on the human being
The third MANO/MONO festival once again invites you to immerse yourself in a special, intimate form of theater where the actor on stage is face to face with the audience. There is nowhere to hide behind a large ensemble or a multitude of stage actions – the story is created by the human voice, body, memory, and direct connection with the audience.
This year’s program brings together different themes and theatrical languages, but at the center of all five evenings is the human being: the despair of a young person leading to tragedy, a woman’s ability to not lose the joy of life, the complex choices of a poetess in the face of historical upheavals, The Little Prince’s reminder of what we forget when grown up, and a son’s story of his father’s survival.
All festival performances will take place at the Lithuanian Theatre Union hall, Teatro g. 8, Vilnius.
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Events are free of charge.
