"The present time and the ongoing war have presented a radical challenge to the theater - when reality is what it is now, any fiction becomes too little. It is impossible to put on a "normal" performance, but it is also impossible to be silent. To dramatize what is happening by taking the classics, looking for metaphors and analogies, it seems, is simply hopeless. And I don't think there have been contemporary plays that reflect what's going on. Thus, the situation itself provoked the idea of creating a documentary theater performance. It seems that this form is the only one possible today," says Oskars Koršunovas, the director of "Liudijimų".
"Testimonies" is a documentary performance based on the real stories of women in the war. As soon as the war started, LNDT actresses started collecting the stories, who agreed to do it on a voluntary basis. They personally met with the women who fled from Ukraine and listened to them. Each story is an open and shocking confession: from simple life details to the reality of war, which a person who has not been there simply cannot imagine.
In the public space, we hear news about the war non-stop, there is a constant information battle, falsehoods are created, various manipulations occur, therefore, according to the creators, any real testimony is worth its weight in gold. "They really wanted those stories to be made public so that as many people as possible could hear them and the world would learn the truth," say the creators of Testimonies.
Such stories as those presented in "Testimonies" cannot be found in any media, because this is not a matter-of-fact interview by a journalist or a short report from the scene - it is a woman telling another woman, a confession of a Ukrainian woman to a Lithuanian actress who is determined to give a voice to the story, to tell it sensitively, with respect, but without dramatizing it.
"This performance should in no way be related to any propaganda, beautification or pathos - just stories as they are," emphasizes Oskars Koršunovas, who gathered the actresses for the joint project.
In "Testimonies", viewers will hear stories about the loss of homes, forced separations from loved ones, eternal worries about children, crazy journeys from cities under Russian fire, and in other cases - the crazy reality of staying there. These are stories about existential decisions, abused homeland and abused bodies, about inner strength, intuition that comes from nowhere and unexpected coincidences. And paradoxically, there is a lot of hope, even humor and optimism in those stories.
* the composition of the actors in the performances may change.
