What is family? Is the classical concept of the family still relevant? Maybe there is a time for a new concept of the family? These are the questions that the director Naubertas Jasinskas seeks to respond while staging the play “The Pelican” by Swedish classical playwright August Strindberg.

In his late selection of “chamber plays”, Strindberg develops the new form of theatre seeking to show the various possibilities and hazards of human communication. As the play “The Pelican” develops, emotions and actions tend to become more refined as we are reminded that there are metaphysical laws which exist beyond the physical limits of drama performance.

The artists, working in this play, question the family concept; they analyse the causes of both physically and psychologically violent behaviour in the family as well as the events which both personally and socially form the characters. The director and his team interprets all of it using the family model created by Strindberg. They raise the urgent contemporary questions, such as: what is family? Does its classical concept still function? Do we need a new concept which could help us to reflect the mutual relationships of contemporary people?

The director Jasinskas, while reflecting the everyday violence in the family, questions the strategy of the common sense thinking.

“I often mistrust my imagination, or really, the impotence to think in multiple levels”, the director says. “The multi-layered thinking is rather the huge coincidence than the strategy of conscious thinking. For example, in order to understand the text that I enounce to you, you have to understand the meaning of separate words which make up this sentence. However, the general meaning does not dwell in the words themselves but is the sum of the separate words and the whole. That raises an elementary question – is there a possibility to change the strategy of thought? Is it possible at all?.”

While creating “The Pelican”, the director was very much influenced by philosophy, namely by Hans Georg Gadamer.

“Accidentally, I learned about Gadamer and his idea of the hermeneutic circle.” Jasinskas says “The latter can be conceptualized as the mechanism of understanding, moving relentlessly back and forth, between the “parts” and “the whole”. It is the contradiction, or really the important supplement four our linear understanding of the world. Imagine the possibility to think not only the present, word by word, image by image – imagine there is a possibility to think multiple structures. For example, to understand the past and the future events together with the present. It would help us all to get rid of the excessive violence and create the possibilities for the mutual contact.”

Naubertas Jasinskas is a young director, the student of Yana Ross. His works are being shown in Lithuanian State Youth Theatre, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Kaunas City Chamber Theatre. The performance “fabrica”, which was shown during the International Theatre Festival “Sirenos”, was nominated for the Golden Cross theatre award.

The producers: OKT/Vilnius City Theatre, partners – Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, hand-shadow theatre „Budrugana Lietuva“. The project is financed by Vilnius City Municipality and Association LATGA.

Set designer
random heroes

Costume designer
Dominykas Levanas

Composer
Gintaras Sodeika

Voices
Kristupas Sabolius and Naubertas Jasinskas

Video designer
Ričard Žigis

Lights designer
Dainius Urbonis

Cameramen
Augtumas Danielius Harner and Simonas Čalka

Cast
Alvydė Pikturnaitė, Aurelijus Pocius, Kipras Mašidlauskas, Matas Sigliukas, Saulius Ambrozaitis

Premiere
2022 March 8