News

In 2025, the Kaunas City Chamber Theatre begins the year with a new artistic programme called “Kamerinis plus”, which can be described as a year-long celebration for art connoisseurs. The aim of this programme is not only to delight the hearts of Kaunas residents with professional theatre, but also to bring a breath of fresh air into the city’s cultural life.

The “Kamerinis plus” programme offers the opportunity to include in the repertoire already-created performances from other theatres that have received national or international recognition, and which the Kaunas City Chamber Theatre wishes to present to its audience.

“One of our goals is to nurture the traditions of drama theatre and to encourage the development of theatrical art. We also aim for the Kaunas City Chamber Theatre to become a place of interesting cultural experiences. We operate as an open infrastructure for independent theatre creators seeking opportunities to work and present their performances professionally. ‘Kamerinis plius’ helps to build a bridge – for example, between Vilnius-based theatre artists and the Kaunas audience. We want to encourage theatre makers who use distinctive, highly individual forms of expression in their work or address particularly relevant topics, but whose works are usually only shown in Vilnius,” says Monika Jašinskaitė, curator of the theatre’s artistic programme.

The programme aims to offer up to 10 additional performing arts events per year.

The artistic programme begins with the performance *“Diletantas (susapnavęs Angelą)” (“The Dilettante (*Who Dreamt of an Angel)”).

The first work presented in the “Kamerinis plus” programme is a performance by Kaunas-born director Žilvinas Vingelis – “The Dilettante (*Dreaming of an Angel)”. It offers a cinematic look at the biography and work of the famous French artist Jean Cocteau. The performance, produced by Kosmos Theatre, has already been presented at the international arts festivals “Contempo” and “Sirenos”. It will be shown at the theatre on 22 January 2025.

The playwright Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) is often called a creative chameleon who left a significant mark on 20th-century poetry, theatre, and cinema. Art lovers know J. Cocteau for the film Beauty and the Beast (1946), the plays Orpheus (1925) and The Infernal Machine (1934), as well as numerous works in various other genres. His ability to actualise mythology and bring a dreamy, avant-garde spirit to every medium continues to inspire artists around the world to this day.

“I believe that ‘Diletantas (*susapnavęs Angelą)’ will delight Kaunas residents who enjoy Žilvinas Vingelis’s work (his audiovisual performance Kafka Insomnia has been in the Kaunas City Chamber Theatre’s repertoire for a long time), those who want a break from classical drama productions, and those interested in modern art. It is a playful stage work that stimulates the imagination. The performance features the excellent actress Airida Gintautaitė, who has worked with directors Gintaras Varnas, Oskaras Koršunovas, and Łukasz Twarkowski, and has been awarded the highest Lithuanian theatre prize – the Golden Cross of the Stage – on multiple occasions,” says M. Jašinskaitė.

“The material of the performance is Cocteau himself, understood as an interdisciplinary artist – or even more so, as a montage of different media and disciplines. By dividing these disciplines (cinema, surrealist objects, music, literature, fashion, etc.) and assigning them to each member of the creative team, we sought to break this montage back down into separate media and reassemble it into intermedial pieces that are harder to recognise in their smaller details and easier to recognise in their larger ones. Together with the team, we looked for indirect connections, parallels, and poetic paradoxes that would establish a symbolic kinship between themes, images, and symbols that have nothing in common outside the work. We created this using media art, animation, dramatic acting, mechanised scenography, puppet and object theatre, sound design, and other contemporary theatre tools,” says the director and dramaturg of the performance, Žilvinas Vingelis.

Photos by Alípio Padilha