In 2020, 264 million people worldwide suffered from depression. Studies show that a pandemic will only increase these numbers. Medicine or "Big Pharma" is trying to fight depression. This term, often used by the media, is a source of outrage for some and a means of salvation for others. For Arturas Bumšteinas, composer and director of the Juozas Miltinis Drama Theatre, this is a ritual. Diving into a complex and multifaceted theme, the composer first of all proposes to look at the ritualistic nature of the use of medicines and the inertia that surrounds it today. The leaflet of instructions for the use of antidepressants becomes the basis and axis of the narrative - it is the texts written on it that are performed on stage by the actors of the drama theatre. "Indeed, this is what happens on stage", the composer usually says, but what does the pharmacists' instructions, which are familiar to many at first sight, reveal? What do the daily memorised and repeated references turn into? How can monotonous instructions become an emotionally affecting instrument?
Arturas Bumšteinas is an interdisciplinary Lithuanian artist whose work is born from the collision of sound, music and visual art. His work should be divided into different branches: experimental music, acoustic sound works, sound installations, theatre works, radio art, etc. Bumšteinas was the first Lithuanian artist to use the internet in his work in the mid-1990s: he put sounds sent by people scattered around the world into a collage-like composition. Since 2000, he has been creating and collaborating with renowned Lithuanian and foreign music and theatre artists, including Vladimir Tarasov, Krystianas Lupa, Žilvinas Kempinas, Gintautas Trimakas, Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė, Anton Lukoszevieze and others. The artist's works have been exhibited in galleries around the country and the world, from the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius to art festivals in Berlin and the USA.
In 2013, his radio art work was awarded the EURORADIO Palma Ars Acustica Prize. In 2021, Bumstein was awarded the Golden Stage Cross for his work at the State Youth Theatre.
In 2022, the vocal performance Big Pharma took part in the Vilnius International Theatre Festival "Sirenos'22".
