"Our circus is small, but it has a big heart," says Lion King, who has aged in the "Arena of Freedom". The beasts gathered here are trying to prove that they can still be useful. Imprisoned for life, they are rushing to freedom to reclaim their hidden nature and open up to each other about who they really are or want to be. Unfortunately, freedom and truth often bring not happiness but disappointment..."
Herkus Kunčius
"Herkus Kunčius's play is multifaceted. On first reading, one can easily slip into the Baroque grotesque, which will remain in Moliere's treatment. However, the play explores the human soul, the play performs a spiritual section of the human being, where the behavioural norms of the individual's subconscious layers are explored, covered by circus characters, which are archetypes in themselves.
The writer's ARENA OF FREEDOM is like Ibsen's Per Giunt, travelling through time, in the circus arena, through our conscience, depravity, depravity and God's affirmation, where He (Jesus Christ) is crucified and raised again for a new crucifixion. It becomes a circus and a tragedy at the same time. The characters of the playwright are merged as if into all the characters of William Shakespeare, their molecular transformations - Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude or Richard III, King Lear.
It was important for me to emphasise these transformations, the events on stage, which are rather shocking, which raise a lot of questions: when are we beasts, when are we human beings, what and where is the moment when a man loses himself and becomes a beast, an animal.
This is what the set design and costumes (by Artūras Šimonis) aim to show, which perfectly unify all the characters, allowing the main idea to breathe: who are we, what do we believe in?...
This is also my music in this performance. Dot and dash".
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
