The play takes the audience to Moscow of 2109. An electronic alarm clock signals the start of the wakeful cycle of the Second Shift. Three sisters – Nastia, Maya, and Maria – crawl out of their thermoses one after the other, steaming and sleepy. For ten years, they have hibernated in the state of anabiosis and are finding it difficult to orient themselves in space and time; they are moving painfully due to muscular atrophy and still drifting between dreams and reality. It will take some time for them to come to grips with reality.

All this started many years ago, in the 2030s. As global warming and overpopulation of the planet led to a shortage of fresh water and food resources, two World Water Wars followed one another. Discoveries in genetics helped to resolve the problem of overpopulation: half of humanity was sent to a decade-long hibernation and thus the life in shifts began. Every ten years, the shifts change; the wakeful arouse the sleepers and drift into slumber themselves. Unfortunately, the two shifts have radically different values and attitudes towards the governance and the future of the world…

Oskaras Koršunovas

Graduated from the Lithuanian Music Academy (course leader Jonas Vaitkus) in 1993 with a Master’s degree in Theatre Directing. While still a student, the young director stood out for his unusual theatrical language, his performances were referred to as “a separate body”, “a theatre within a theatre”. O. Koršunovas is among those who formed the contemporary Lithuanian theatre language, he was the first to invade traditional theatre with “unpopular” and “incomprehensible” dramaturgy. In 1998 the director, together with a few like-minded artists, founded an independent theatre called Oskaras Koršunovas Theatre (OKT). Koršunovas received numerous awards for his performances: he was granted the Europe Theatre Prize for New Realities in 2006, an honourable title of the Chevalier of the French order of Literature and Arts in 2009, the following year – the main prize of the Annual Meyerhold Assembly. Many of his stage works were awarded with the main Lithuanian theatre prize, the Golden Stage Cross. O. Koršunovas stages performances in other European theatres, he is also a professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

LITHUANIAN NATIONAL DRAMA THEATRE

With a tradition spanning nearly 80 years, the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre has been the home of the most prominent local performing arts work as well as artistic discussion about contemporary world. Over the decades the theatre itself has been, with its iconic sculpture of the “Three Muses” crowning the main entrance, a symbol of the national cultural legacy. Since 2010 LNDT has held its focus on the future of theatre in its openness to new artistic forms, disciplines, and fields. Local as well as guest artists from around the world have been invited to create here, to share their perspectives with audiences, and to engage them in an intense, if sometimes provoking dialogue with the contemporary world. The theatre sees as crucial its role as an agora, a place for gathering and discussing the here and now by delving into burning issues of modernity, an individual, and society. The theatre has recently produced works by Krystian Lupa, Árpád Schilling, Łukasz Twarkowski, Saara Turunen, Anna Smolar, and Jo Strømgren. Its recent touring directions include festivals such as Festival d’Avignon and Festival d’Automne à Paris (France), Wuzhen Theatre Festival (China), Kontakt Festival (Poland), Festival Otoño Madrid (Spain) etc.