“Infancy” is a first directorial work of a young theatre artist Karolis Vilkas who has graduated from acting studies at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy this year. In his play Karolis combines and interprets various forms of artistic expression: he borrows the naiveté of the classist realist theatre from traditional theatre; has an inclination for absurd, grotesque as well as heading towards the traditions of the literary avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century all of which comes from his teacher Oskaras Koršunovas. Any other aesthetic or personal influences simply get here from life itself – dreams, nightmares, artistic vocabulary of non-commercial cinema, animation and pop art, various esoteric experiences and symbols of high and popular culture.

The form of the performance-collage naturally derives from its content and becomes an enriching element, it helps to evolve the main theme as well as gives numerous hints to the secondary ones: withdrawal from the mother, moving away from school and tradition, rejection of stereotypes and clichés of (theatrical) thinking.

Director Karolis Vilkas, set designer Romanas Duda, costume designer Ieva Šimukonytė and the rest of the young team think in a theatrical (not literary) manner, they’re bold and creative. It’s not through the linear narrative that they express their relation towards theatre and the world in general. On the contrary, they invoke ways of seeing which is closer to a contemporary man: associative in its nature, representative of their relation towards today’s visual culture, and in doing so they use such logics and dynamics of scenic montage that are relevant to it.

There is death in life, and there is also choice between fear or bravery. Why do babies cry so much? Do they really feel pain in their bellies? Or can they simply sense the approaching death? This is a story of a baby that was extremely afraid of dying, and one day he woke up inside his own dream.

director Karolis Vilkas
Producers – OKT/Vilnius City Theatre, Arts Printing House, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

Set designer
Romanas Duda

Costume designer
Ieva Šimukonytė

Cast
Kūdikėlis – Gediminas Rimeika
Beždžionė – Laurynas Jurgelis
Riteris – Oskar Vygonovski
Geiša – Gailė Butvilaitė
Drakonas – Aurimas Bačinskas
Krūmas – Viktorija Žukauskaitė
Laikrodis – Paulina Taujanskaitė
Šulinys – Greta Petrovskytė
Kiti: Žygimantė Jakštaitė, Lukas Malinauskas, Jonas Braškys, Augustė Pociūtė, Taura Kvietinskaitė, Martynas Ališauskas, Ugnė Šiaučiūnaitė, Kęstutis Cicėnas, Inga Šepetkaitė

Premiere
2016 October 27