The 14th of April will be remembered by Lithuanian and Polish students as the day on which their impressive cultural adventure started. On that day they met each other in the capital of Lithuania Vilnius to continue their trip through the regions called Lithuania Minor and Samogitia and finaly reach the unique sand dunes in Curonian Spit. Students have met the representatives of non-professional theatre troupes as well as the independent professional artist, cultural workers and academicians on their way. This gave them a great opportunity to study a structure of non-professional theatre movement in Lithuania and to better understand its function in cultural animation. Beside that students were introduced to different professional artists, who seek for alternative ways of social interaction.
During one week trip students met seven amateur theatre troupes, which work in small towns and villages and visited several local cultural centers. These numerous meetings allowed outlining the main features of non-professional theatre and general cultural activities in province: openness to different social groups, staging of popular, often comic stories of rural life, continuation of ancient barn theatre traditions and of course a heavy emphasis on creating liberal space for social interaction. These and other peculiarities of amateur theatre were clearly summarized by dr. Danutė Vaigauskaitė, the president of North European Amateur Theatre Alliance, who also explained how the Lithuanian and international network of amateur theatres is organized. It’s nice to mention that she was very keen on initiating collaboration with Polish amateur theatres and encouraged them to be more active in the International Amateur Theatre Association.
The whole structure of Lithuanian professional theatre, contemporary theatrical life and attempts to change it were summarized in meeting with representatives of “Arts Printing House”: program coordinator, theatre critic Vaidas Jauniškis and technical manager Viktoras Karpušenkovas.
It should be noted, that new personal cultural experience for each member of the group was just as important as the information collected during the trip. One of the most impressive (and frightening – as some of us would surely say) was the visit to the basement of Soboras (the church in Kaunas), where the installation by famous Lithuanian artist Robertas Antinis is placed. The bravest members of the group could try to go trough some kind of completely dark spaces full of various obstructions and experience what it means to be blind. Blindness and the refreshment of senses other than sight are the most important themes of Antinis’ works which are often realized through collaboration with blind people. Another nice example of integrating blind people into cultural and social life was presented by Kaunas modern dance company “Aura”, which works with disabled and elderly people also. No less impressive was the meeting with alternative theatre artist Benas Šarka in Klaipėda, which turned into some special kind of provocative performance. During his monologue the artist touched upon some hot as well as philosophical topics expressing his radically critical views on traditional theatre art and on (post)modern world in general. Perhaps Šarka was the one who gave the shade of dark romanticism to our trip and made it even more unforgettable.
But the most important thing that made this journey so special was the warm welcome that we received in all the places, that we’ve visited, and of course the great international students’ company. Special thanks to Polish girls for their songs – it still gently ring in our memory!
