Kaunas Spring ’72 is a performance inspired by Romas Kalanta and the events that took place in mid-May 1972 in Kaunas when a young 19-year-old man set himself on fire in the City Garden as a protest against the Soviet regime. This act of self-sacrifice was followed by a wave of youth resistance against the Soviet government and power structures.

However, the creative team of the performance does not go back to the Soviet times; it does not try to reconstruct the events of the past and does not tell the story of Romas Kalanta either. In Kaunas Spring ’72, factual evidence overlaps with ingenuity and a modern look at the events of 1972 in Kaunas. The performance raises the question of how the act of the 19-year-old Romas Kalanta resonates in today’s society. It also aims to build a certain bridge of consciousness between today’s Lithuanian youth with their world perception and the possible feelings of a nineteen-year-old youth of that time, living in the environment formed by oppression, suspicions, and imposed social structure. The performance, based on the principle of co-creativity, analyses the moods, expectations, and tensions of the period called Kaunas Spring, while the story inspired by Kalanta and his supporters becomes a surreal fragment of the collective memory in the big picture of European and worldwide liberation movements.

Performance is part of the Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 programme.