Fri, 13 Dec 2024, 18:00
Translated from the French by Aquila Melkūnaitė
In his play "The Reunion of the Two Koreas", French playwright Joël Pommerat explores the feeling of love, combining the curiosity of a scientist with the passion of an artist. This playful game is taken up by director Artūras Areima, who has returned to the National Kaunas Drama Theatre after a long break. The performance features twenty fragmented stories in which love/lovelessness unfolds in various colours and manifestations. Sometimes it is comic, sometimes melodramatic, banal, ironic, absurd, surreal, or as complicated as the relationship between two hostile states. On the field of love, battles are fought, destinies are shattered, the most delicate nuances of feelings are stirred, and everyone is striving for the impossible - the perfect fulfilment of love. But perfection is hardly possible, because lovelessness, indifference, loss and disappointment are just different stages of the same emotion. This collage of moments and random dialogues wittily lampoons the clichés of relationships taken from literature, cinema and television. "I feel like I'm in a series", says one character. "I feel like I haven't had to suffer", says another. "There is a terrible misunderstanding between us", says a third. And all of them feel at an impasse as they strive for the impossible - the union of two different worlds.
Premiere 19, 20 and 21 April 2024. On the Bolshoi Stage.