October 2. Sleepless night. It's the third in a row. I fall asleep quickly, but wake up an hour later as if I stuck my head in a hole that doesn't exist. Since then, I seem to sleep all night until five, but at the same time vivid dreams do not allow me to fall asleep. I formally seem to be sleeping next to myself, and at the same time I have to wrestle with my dreams.” (Diaries. 1910-1923, Franz Kafka)
KAFKA INSOMNIA, a visual live music performance for teenagers and adults, tells the dreamily realistic story of Czech writer Franco Kafka's one sleepless night. Is daydreaming a creative method, a way of life, a consequence of illness, or the main condition of Kafka's genius in the literary world? A dream created by insomnia and breaking into tangible reality makes F. Kafka's work conditional, full of unexpected images, extended sense of time, premature absurdity, manifestations of existentialism or even surrealism, which go hand in hand with the consistent descriptions characteristic of the school of realism.
The initiator of the project, the composer Andrius Šiurys (2020 Young Composer Prize of the Lithuanian Composers' Union) has had the idea of a musical performance based on F. Kafka's work for a long time. "Once, about a year and a half ago, I asked myself the question - which artist's work would I like to create an audiovisual performance against?" Which artist - painter, poet, composer - do I approve of the most? And who are the people I should be doing this with—experimenting, improvising, and diving where I wouldn't dare go alone? At that time, I chose F. Kafka because of his darkness and absurdity. Knowing the director Žilvinas Vingelis's personality and his creative style long ago (I especially appreciate his ability to combine different art forms and surrealistic theatrical language), I had no doubt that we must create this performance together. Žilvinus and I have created several works, we explored the genre of visual theater together practically and theoretically, we dreamed of our own experimental theater. The music of the performance is extremely important to him, and we also have a similar vision, so it's great that "Kafka Insomnia" becomes the first performance of our new theater "Kosmos Theater" on the theater stage thanks to the quarantine.
"The team is very strong and diverse. Although it is not the first time we have worked together, it is the first time with such open material and in such an experimental environment. In F. Kafka's world, everything stands still, no one is destined to move from the current point, and at the same time, there is more life in that point than we are able to cover. This is literature that highlights the need for relative time organization on stage, the importance of image and atmosphere, and offers new ways of editing scenes. In it, humor and horror, action and stagnation, sound and silence flirt ominously. I would have invited Andrii to search for those silences and sounds myself, so it's nice that he was the first to do it. The process is not traditional. We allow ourselves to start with associations rather than text, intuition rather than narrative. I think that this performance will be interesting both for the traditional theater audience and for younger viewers who are no longer fascinated by long monologues and palace intrigues." - says the director of the performance Žilvinas Vingelis.
The production of the play is partially financed by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.
