Director Ignas Jonynas made his debut at the Youth Theatre three decades ago. But then he turned to cinematography and became one of the most interesting contemporary Lithuanian filmmakers. In between making his new film, Jonynas returned to the Youth Theatre. For the new production he chose the play "Son" by the contemporary French playwright Florian Zeller. It is the last part of the dramatic trilogy made famous by Florian Zeller (the other two are "Father" and "Mother"). This playwright, who has conquered the world stage, delves into themes that are sensitive and topical for many, rooted in the everyday life of a common family. They concern the psychological and spiritual traumas of modern man, which are hidden because they do not conform to the standards set by society.
The play "The Son" was inspired by Zeller's personal experience. He has two sons and dedicated the play to one of them, who suffered from mental illness. "I am familiar with these emotions and I am not alien to some situations. As a father, I felt helpless - it seemed like you were all alone. "In Son, I share my emotions, I try to help those who are going through them and to fight against the shame they feel." - Says Zeller. For him, it was important to talk about mental disability, breaking the taboo: "we should talk about it openly, feeling that we are not alone on this journey and that there is no shame in asking for help in a crisis. So many people are in pain now. We seem to be going through a major health crisis after covido, and many people don't know how to deal with it, not least because they feel guilt and shame."
Unlike in The Father, Zeller's aim in The Son was to have a clear linear action leading to a predictable finale. In this way, he tried to bring the action of the play closer to that of a classical tragedy in which the established line cannot be changed. Through it, the playwright raises an obvious question for the characters in the play, above all the teenager Nicolai's divorced parents, which cannot be avoided in any way. And he doesn't explain anything: "the young man is in pain and we don't know why. The play does not answer this question. I think it is the right way to go, because it reflects life. Sometimes there are no explanations and it's hard to accept the mystery, like a black hole, because you're always looking for answers, for explanations, and when you don't find them, you start to think, 'What have I done, as a father, to make this happen to my son?"
According to director I. Jonynas, "the main character of the play Son is not the teenager Nikolia, around whom the whole plot revolves, but his father Pierre. It is he who faces the greatest challenge of his life when he starts a new family after divorcing his son's mother. Completely unaware of his son's mental state, or perhaps subconsciously unwilling to acknowledge it, the father tries his last to save him, until he finds himself confused by his own life. The love of the divorced parents for their son, without being able to understand him, leads to a tragic outcome. According to Jonynas, "in life, like the play's protagonist Pierre, we often claim that 'everything will be fine', 'everything will work out'. What will work out? Our genetic code? Life? Everyday life? Our crumbling relationships? The future? All these questions hang fatally over the characters of the play, and that is when the essential thematic axis of the play emerges - how we make our neighbours, and thus ourselves, unhappy by wanting to be happy. To get out of this impasse and the schematic solutions of rescue(s), one should perhaps look for a radically different relationship to one's own ego, an effort to re-conceive life as the fundamental value of human existence, and, if it is still possible, to try to discover a paradox that would leave us with the hope of the existence of a humanistic world, of a world in which one would like to stay rather than to leave..."
