"Every story has a hero and a villain. In your story, you are both.", - C. Jung.
"ŽANA" is a collective creative physical theater mono-performance that explores the state of a person stuck between two options: to take responsibility for their actions and beliefs or to refuse it. This performance is a synthesis between the genres of classical text and physical theater. The work is a psychological portrait of a young girl, memories and inner the conflict is conveyed using the physical theater genre, where the text is used as a fragment, and the show itself is more like a performance, where the audience becomes witnesses rather than passive observers.
The play is based on fragments from J. Anouilh's play "Vyturys", where the trial of Joan of Arc takes place, which takes the reader to Joan of Arc's childhood, seeing her first visions, then tells her entire transformation from a teenager to a war leader. The creative team of the play analyzed how we are shaped by other people and their opinions about us, how much memories remain in us and make us question our actions and decisions. The performance reveals the words of the five male characters written in J. Anouilh's play stuck in Jeanne's head, how the memories and testimonies of her journey took place.
Analyzing Jean's choices begs the question, if each side of the war sacrifices their lives, does going to war make you a hero or a murderer? When does believing in one's own truth and spreading one's ideas promote positive social transformations, and when does it cross the line and become immoral?
The performance is part of the PRODIUSAI COLAB training program for young producers, which is run by the Kaunas City Chamber Theater together with "Kaunas 2022".
