Actress Janina Gudzinevičiūtė has proposed to more than one director to revive Žanis Gryva's "The Tale of the Tortoise Strakaliukas" on stage. She first presented the idea of the performance in 1976 in the independent works competition organised by the Theatre Union. Gudzinevičiūtė's performance was awarded a diploma, but the performance had to wait until the director and designer Algirdas Mikutis took up the idea.

The premiere, which took place in 1995, has been staged for fifteen years in the small hall of Lėlja and has attracted the attention of more than just children - sometimes it is only adults who come to see The Tale of the Tortoise.

The play's long age is due to the inventive set design (as if we were seeing the world through the eyes of a turtle), the unexpectedly humorous treatment of the characters (e.g. the Bird of Happiness, who is endowed with magical powers but a poor mind) and the improvisations of the cast. Irmantas Jankaitis has been acting in the play since 1998. This was the debut of this popular dramatic actor in puppet theatre, and it was the beginning of his profession as a puppeteer (Irmantas plays more than ten different characters here!). Today, Jankaitis is one of the most prominent creators of "Lėlja", so the duet between him and theatre veteran Janina Gudzinevičiūtė in "The Tale of the Tortoise" should not come as a surprise.