LRT shares news of Lithuanian theater showcases

***

“Found found found” is a performance by director Naubertas Jasinskas, born from a joint time with the creative team spent together exploring the phenomenon of Jonas Mekas, contemplating, reading, watching his works, experiencing it through his friends, his geography, and the philosophy of everyday life. The goal of the creative team is not to represent Mekas’ personality and ideas, but to live in his gaze, try to catch his pulse and create a unique world from this state. The audience is invited to experience the reality of the performance up close – the performance is observed in the very space of the stage.

The name of the performance came from the creators in order to answer the question of where the very essence of the method of Mekas, with which he studied the world, lies. The verb “find” in English means not only a simple “find”, but also a Mekas-like perception of the reality before us that is repeated thousands of times in everyday life. It’s like an effort not to take reality for granted, but to look at it with curiosity, almost with the vision of an archaeologist, and to rediscover every day what the surrounding life consists of. It is no coincidence that the word “found” is repeated three times: this is to emphasize that it is impossible to discover anything to the end, one can only detect something a lot of times and immediately forget again, lose it. Together, the creators of the play flirt with Mekas’s own film “Lost lost lost”: “We do not say that we discovered what Mekas lost in the film. We say that Mekas, who felt a little alien in the world, in all his creative expression really taught people to feel some kind of “found”. I found some feeling that here I am: my home, my man, maybe at least my dog or my river. Something,” says Dovilė Zavedskaitė, the dramaturg of the performance.

The sustainability of the performance is one of the director’s creative goals: “You want to apply sustainability ideas not only in the household, but also to take them to the stage. One of our creative conditions was to use as many items as possible that were no longer needed in the process, to create the foundation of scenography from them.” Therefore, architect Eglė Kliučinskaitė used wood, textiles and objects collected from different cities of Lithuania for the scenography of the performance. Costume designer Dovilė Gudačiauskaitė used old altar covers, curtains, fabrics to create costumes, which bring their memory to the stage.

***

Naubertas Jasinskas is a director of the youngest generation of theatre makers in Lithuania. He has directed productions at the State Youth Theatre, OKT/Vilnius City Theatre, Kaunas Chamber Theatre, National Kaunas Drama Theatre, and Šiauliai State Drama Theatre. His work is characterised by a distinctive, memorable form. The situation of the artist and the creative person in the contemporary world is important to the director as well. In his performances, Jasinskas is also interested in the topics of memory and history, in the creative process using materials that help to reflect on them.