SC: On your website, there's a quote: "No matter what the play
is, every one of his productions has the same structure, peculiar to the dream
and paradoxical thinking, which suggests a special combination of the abstract
and verbal levels." (Rasa Vasinauskaite, http://www.okt.lt)
Is it true? Is the structure the same for all your work, no matter what the
script is?
OK: The structure and the performances are different, but of course,
there are certain things that unify them. I was always interested in the kind
of theatre in which one is able to tell more than only words can tell. I'm talking
about a certain inconstancy between what is said in words and what's happening
on stage - between the verbal text and the stage action. This paradoxical inconsistency
produces a third dimension - and this third dimension is what theatre really
is.
SC: Your work is based visually. Do many audiences find it difficult?
OK: The visual itself is not really such a complicated thing for an audience.
On the other hand, it depends on what kind of visual. I always try to avoid
the kind of visual that only illustrates. If you use visual things only as an
illustration of something, it means death to the theatre. Real theatre is not
really created in those ten or twenty square meters of stage - real theatre
is produced in the audience's imagination. You always must aim at the audience's
consciousness - and help it create images in their minds. If we try to achieve
a very spectacular visual character on the stage, instead of focusing on the
audience's imagination, than we loose a very central part of what real theatre
is. You must put on stage only those things that tickle the audience's imagination.
Strange as it may seem, the most visual performance that I've produced was A
Midsummer Night's Dream. In this production, there were only actors who
had wooden boards with them - and no other details on the stage. But the performance
created many associative links. That's why the audience finds it most visual.
SC: The audience has to be very sophisticated. Are they confused by,
for example, the visual elements of The Road to
Damascus?
OK: Of course, the audience is quite sophisticated here. In Lithuania,
we have a very strong tradition of director's theatre, which is a kind of theatre
that philosophizes. In the Soviet period, theatre in Lithuania was a place of
resistance, and it evaded censorship, so theatre was very ambiguous. It spoke
of things that were officially allowed, but there was always another layer.
The audience had to read between the lines. In this way the tradition of this
metaphorical theatre was formed.
The audience is always interested in what is a bit strange or extraordinary.
They're curious to find in the theatre some experiences that might not always
be so pleasant - but still they are quite curious. We've been touring a lot
with our shows in many countries of the worlds, and we've discovered that the
audience's response is more or less the same.
Speaking of The Road to Damascus, maybe it's not the visual character
that's so difficult for the audience, but the content of the performance. This
content is really very difficult. The visual character was born referring to
the content.
SC: You mentioned theatre in the Soviet era. Since then, does theatre
address social issues more directly, more openly?
OK: Theatre tries to address social issues, but by addressing them openly
and directly, it does not become suggestive. Theatre has to be metaphysically
social. Theatre always must be ahead of its time - it must address those issues
that just germinating. If theatre is only about the hot issues of the day -
issues that you can read about in the press, or that people generally talk about
- then it becomes boring, because that's not really what the object is. Theatre
must address hidden things, things that are not named. It has to give the audience
forbidden fruit.
Let's take Fireface, for example. On the
one hand, the production talks about a criminal case. But it makes the audience
think that the real danger comes not from outside but from the inside - inside
an institution that's supposed to be the safest one, the family. It makes the
audience think that maybe this institution is really not so safe. Maybe it's
here that the downfall of civilization will come.
SC: As I understand it, you're interested in theatre as confrontation.
What response do you want?
OK: In a certain sense, I try to provoke the audience. Real theatre should
provoke a certain conflict within the spectator - some kind of inner conflict.
Particularly in this post-Soviet space, where theatre for a long time replaced
church - it served as church. Maybe the audience expects that theatre will continue
to confirm its beliefs and all those stable things that they believed in for
a long, long time. Real theatre shouldn't be like this. It should ripple the
water and put all those long-established dogmas and values under doubt, and
in this way create inner conflict.
Actors should speak about things that are not officially sanctioned or officially
established. Only in this way can theatre produce this conflict. The essential
thing is that some kind of conspiracy take place between the actors and audience.
If this conspiracy really takes place, then theatre happens.
SC: My last question - when will we see your work in New York?
OK: When someone invites us!
SC: I hope it's soon!