Best of 2018 book for children Jurga Vilė and Lina Itagaki's recognized comic book "Siberian Haiku" finds a way to tell children about the atrocities of exile and its everyday life in a sensitive and non-repetitive way. The play, like the book, focuses on children's experiences and a child's view of exile.
The character of the book, Algiukas, dreams of traveling around the world with his goose friend Martyn. Soon it happens, but in a completely different way than he thought. In the early morning of June 1941, a regiment of soldiers forced the boy, his sister Dalia, father Roma and mother Uršula out of bed and ordered them to prepare for the journey - thus Lithuanians left for Siberia in droves against their will. The child is struck by many questions - why are they being deported? What are they doing wrong? Where is Siberia? There, in a distant and foreign land, the family has to survive by eating frozen potatoes, salting the soup with tears and warming their hearts with songs. The choir of exiles "Apples" is born there, wings grow while singing there, and the hope of returning home never leaves.
Jurgas Vilė's book "Siberian Haiku", which inspired the play, finds a unique form to tell children about extremely difficult experiences and experiences of exile through their own perspective on these atrocities. With the performance, we aim to maintain the playfulness of the book, which gives lightness to these stories and makes them more accessible to a young audience. By examining the theme of exile, the play aims not only to shed light on or recount events, but also to help children understand what seems incomprehensible," says director Augustas Gornatkevičius, who is staging a play for children for the first time.
A. Gornatkevičius's theatrical manner is based on the constant combination of humor with serious problems, changing visuality, active physical movement, use of symbols recognizable to the audience, enrichment of dramaturgy classics with contemporary issues. Young generation theater director Augustas Gornatkevičius has successfully proved that he is capable of creating not only for an adult audience, but also for children - for 2021. The director of the play "Emilių Emilis" created in 2008 won the nomination of the Golden Cross of the Stage and the Fortuna Award.
According to the director, his new work "Siberian Haiku" contributes to the preservation of national memory, the formation of moral norms of the young generation, promoting civic awareness, the ability to understand, empathize and inspire life. The themes of death, loss, and injustice seem to be the most difficult to explain to children, but the team of the performance does not run away from them, but seeks to make sense of them through the stories of the main character and his friends.
