According to the director E. Švedkauskaitė, Memoirs of a Young Man is a performance about memory. About the short, tragically ended life of a young person, drowned in expectations and visions. It’s a trip from the other side – from one’s own memory to living memory.

Leonas Ciparis is a person who needed a community, common faith, and common goals. He always wished to talk about it, to argue, but has finally spoken only after his death. His friend and teacher Tomas Kelertas, a man who had no need for a community and who was sufficient for himself, became his listener. In the play, not only a gloomy period of stagnation, the smog of the Soviet government, but also mystical figures of authority, capable of destroying destinies with the snap of a finger, are hanging over the two of them. The creators of this performance are interested in how the memoirs of the past operate today, and what traces of it we can recognize in our time, in our identity, – says E. Švedkauskaitė.

EGLĖ ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ

Completed theatre directing studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2018. While still studying she made her debut on the young stage of the Lithuanian Russian Drama Theatre, where she presented her diploma play Heda Gabler (2017) based on Henrik Ibsen. For her second performance, she chose an ironic critique of society and Dorota Masłowska’s play We’re All Good. In 2018, the director, a fresh graduate, was awarded the first prize at the European Young Theatre competition programme of the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto for her sketch of the play I dreamt that somebody called me darling based on Harold Pinter’s play Ashes to Ashes. In 2020 at the State Youth Theatre, she presented a performance Man Out of Fish based on a play by Asia Vološina as part of the platform for young creators Black Box.

State youth theatre
Founded in Vilnius in 1965 and moved to its present building in 1982. The theatre became world famous thanks to Eimuntas Nekrošius’ early productions directed under the leadership of his first teacher director Dalia Tamulevičiūtė. In 2016, a renewed artistic programme of the Lithuanian State Youth Theatre was launched. Among its collaborators are such prominent Lithuanian and foreign directors as Eimuntas Nekrošius, Gintaras Varnas, Kirsten Dehlholm, Arpad Schilling, Yana Ross, Kristian Smeds, Eric Lacascade, and Krystian Lupa as well as promising young Lithuanian artists.