Dorian is a premiere by world-recognised director Robert Wilson in the National Kaunas Drama Theatre; it has been created together with the D’haus Theatre (Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus) in Germany, Düsseldorf. Robert Wilson is one of the most significant theatre creators of our times, who has changed the audience’s comprehension of the process taking place on the stage. His creations combine elements from dance, performance, architecture, painting, music, and drama.
The storytelling of the performance is combined of motifs from the lives of Oscar Wilde, his character Dorian Grey, and English painter Francis Bacon. All of them valued beauty, youth, and life pleasures, sought external perfection and led egocentric lives. Oscar Wilde was beloved by London society until he was sent to jail for an ‘indecent relationship’ with his lover Alfred Douglas. Francis Bacon suggested for the burglar, who broke into his studio, George Dyer, to become a model instead of calling the police. The beautiful Dorian Grey dreamed that his portrait would get old instead of him and he himself would stay forever young and dashing. These three more or less made-up stories tell us about the link between life and art. American writer Darryl Pinckney connected them into associative threads of narrative in which memories, experiences, thoughts, and feelings are intertwined. The direction, movement architecture, and light magic of Robert Wilson create a perfect view engulfing with its precision and mastery.
Performance is part of the Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 programme.
