Although the topic of the performance is disability, in the end it faded away before the eyes of both the creative team and the audience. They see only the most empowered and free people who celebrate their own existence, their birth, their very life, – director K. Gudmonaitė recounts on the “Feast”, the performance which has been created together with the disabled people.

The disability still hides in the shadows of the social sphere. To understand it, it has to be brought closer to both the theatre and the audience, and efforts should be put in to analyse it and to hear what the disabled themselves think about the phenomenon of disability. The performers seek to lay bare the concept of normality and to question the diversity of human existence, human sensations and experiences.

KAMILĖ GUDMONAITĖ

Theatre director, song-writer and vocalist of a musical duo Kamanių šilelis. In 2018 she graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with an MA in theatre directing; she is currently studying PhD there. Her debut performance A Dream Play was awarded with the grand prix at the festival-competition European Young Theatre in Spoleto, Italy. The jury of the same festival has noticed and awarded her other performance God Is A DJ. The play also received a prize for the best directing and an audience award at the Encounter Festival in Brno, Czech Republic. With her performances Four and Trans Trans Trance she has toured the festivals in Rome, Milan, Berlin, London, and Dresden.

OKT / VILNIUS CITY THEATRE

In 1998, the director, together with a few like-minded fellows, founded an independent theatre, called Oskaras Koršunovas Theatre, shortened to just OKT. Koršunovas, assisted by guest directors, has built a solid repertoire, which encompasses both contemporary drama and classic stagings. The director’s credo to stage classics as contemporary plays, recognizing what is relevant to the present time, and contemporary plays – as the classics, conveying what is universal and timeless, became paradigmatic in that creative period. In the director’s opinion, contemporary theatre must reflect the present day and sometimes even be ahead of the time, predict the future and act as a warning. The latest productions of Oskaras Koršunovas are staged in OKT Studio with the youngest generation of OKT actors. The tours in international festivals, performances and projects in foreign theatres encompass the United States, South Korea, Australia, Argentina, and the territory in between. Each year, the OKT theatre appears on more than ten different stages in different parts of the world. Hence, the motto of the OKT theatre: only being “there” can we stay “here.”