The play "Tinder Dates" by the Vilnius State Small Theater (directors: Gabrielė Tuminaitė and Stas Žyrkov (Ukraine), playwright Gabrielė Labanauskaitė) is a kind of social study, which focuses on the relationship problems and exercises of modern young people - the so-called millennial generation, specifically - to the wildly popular Tinder dating app as a phenomenon. The play features actors of the young generation (ages 24-30) who embody characters of their age. The central theme of the play is, of course, love: how to find it and what we generally call love these days; how and when to love, when we are all so busy, in a hurry, on the run, we devote a lot of time to self-realization, career, work, but we leave our feelings aside, postpone them? Questions are raised: why is finding a loved one more the exception than the rule? Why don't young people who really want and want the same things talk to each other? Why is meeting, being together often prevented by fear? According to the director G. Tuminaitė, basically, the play reveals the intersection of love and great fear. "There is a lot of pursuit of love here - after all, we all want a one-day flirt, we want to be liked, to be in a company that we like - basically, we all want hedonistic things."
"I have had the idea and desire to write a play about the Tinder dating app for a long time, but I realized that my experience alone is not enough, I need to involve more people in this idea. Therefore, I was very happy when director Gabrielė Tuminaitė invited me to create a performance together. It's nice that we managed to realize this idea of ours and such a beautiful laboratory process took place", says playwright Gabrielė Labanauskaitė.
The play was written based on the personal experiences and impressions of the actors, the playwright herself, as well as people who use the Tinder app. "In an effort to uncover the subject, I read many books, articles about this app, as well as listened to and read many real testimonies. I asked my Facebook friends to share their insights, and I received quite a few stories and examples of correspondence. In fact, I see the Tinder app simply as a way to get to know each other. I think that at different times and ways of getting to know each other were different. And that's neither good nor bad. And people, like everywhere in the world, are very diverse: happy, unhappy, single, and not single. By using this app, everyone finds what they are looking for: someone wants to be a savior and finds the one who needs to be saved, and someone may not be ready for a relationship yet, but is already looking for one..." - says the playwright.
The performance is complemented by musical numbers performed live by the actors.
