A year ago, director Oskaras Koršunovas presented the first act of Kant at the State Small Theatre of Vilnius. The sketch was quickly met with interest and audience sympathy. The playwright continues the theme of historical personalities in the play "Kant" at the Vilnius Maly Theatre. Together with the enduringly popular plays Madagascar and The Master, the work will become a trilogy of sorts. With an ensemble of talented actors well known to the public, the play is being staged for the first time at the Vilnius Maly Theatre by the well-known director Oskaras Koršunovas, who has created many great works together with Marius Ivaškevičius.
The play takes us to 1784 in Königsberg. It is November in Prussia. There is a sense that society is about to undergo significant social change. The Great French Revolution is at the back of the mind. The philosopher sits down for lunch, following his usual ritual of eating a longer lunch in male company. This time, however, his meal is more than ever disturbed by the disturbing time in which and with which he lives. The men's disturbance is compounded by the intrusion of Fobi, the niece of an old friend of Kant. She arrives from foggy Scotland and wants the philosopher to sign her Critique of Pure Reason.
The play focuses on the milieu of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who astonished us not only with his thinking, but also with his way of living. With his most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher had set himself the almost impossible mission of exploring the limits of reason and establishing a solid foundation for the science of metaphysics, which was considered necessary and inevitable in the world of his time. By exploring the possibilities of reason, the philosopher produces one of the most impressive works in the history of human thought. Unlike Kant's complex and intricate thought, the play presents the Kantian world in an engaging and witty way, and even continues the philosopher's own project by "exploring" the dramatic form itself through dramatic means.
