BARTO
THEATRE DIRECTOR
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE
Alice Birch
2024 November 28th
PRODUCED BY:
Lithuanian National drama theatre
DIRECTOR
Uršulė Barto
COMPOSER
Ieva Parnarauskaitė
SET AND LIGHT DESIGNER
Agata Skwarczyńska
COSTUME DESIGNER
Liucija Kvašytė
CHOREOGRAPHER
Oksana Griaznova
TRANSLATION
Rita Kosmauskienė
DIRECTOR'S ASSISTANTS
Deivydas Valenta
Gustas Rupšys
PRODUCER
Kamilė Žičkytė
COSTUME ASSISTANT
Izidorius Liaučius
CONSULTANT
Medical doctor and PhD of Genetic science Dr. Gabrielė Žukauskaitė
ACTORS
Vytautas Anužis
Kęstutis Cicėnas
Algirdas Gradauskas
Žygimantė Jakštaitė
Elžbieta Latėnaitė
Augustė Pociūtė
Marius Repšys
Aistė Rocevičiūtė
Augustė Ona Šimulynaitė
Jūratė Vilūnaitė
Reviews (in Lithuanian):
Anatomy of a Suicide as the unveiling of a woman's power
”<...> True feminism has invaded the Lithuanian theatre scene. Without loud slogans, without accusations and without straightforward confrontation of different views. Simply focusing as much as possible on the woman - the depth of her inner world and the contradictions that lie there. <...> Anatomy of a Suicide reveals not only the suffering of the depressed, but also the helplessness of the loved ones and the unwillingness or inability of those around them to understand what the sufferer is going through. The director does not condemn or ridicule those who, in the course of their normal lives, initially try to help but are quickly turned away. There is both humour and play in the scenes reflecting these relationships <...>.
White handkerchief on the Christmas tree
”The subtitles divide the women into time slices: 1970s, 1990s and the present. I missed a bit the look of that time in the costumes and the way of speaking. However, everything is compensated for by the ensemble quality of the actors, which has long been seen on the Lithuanian theatre stage. In general, has it ever been seen before, given the layered, jazzy dialogues, played out in such a way that your ears can't believe how a word caught on the left side of the stage starts a new sentence on the right side. <...> It seems that the theatre, having mastered its old and new stages, has finally shaken off the trauma of construction, hammered in a nail and hung the audience's long-awaited, large-diameter painting on it.
Dissection of the hurtful past
"Birch's contemporary dramaturgy grounds Bartoševičiūtė in the themes of her work. This time her feminist approach and the desire to see women at the centre of the stage takes a less theoretical and more subtle form, directed towards the reflection on the reality of the inner personality. The exploration and subversion of external signs and iconic images of popular culture, which were prominent in the director's previous productions, are replaced in the latest work by the inner anatomy of female characters. <...> Bartoševičiūtė's Anatomy of a Suicide reflects a contemporary, individual and societal tendency to openly dissect traumatic experiences and move towards their awareness."
On Anatomy of a Suicide
”It's not easy to follow the situations, and sometimes the microphones are confusing - the sound comes from the speakers regardless of the actors' location, but this also creates a jazzy acting. Perhaps it is also because of this precision that the actors have to be extremely sensitive to each other and - creating an ensemble that is long overdue. And especially in this theatre, which is made up of very different acting bloodlines. <...> The actresses (first of all!) easily compete with each other not only in acting technique and number of characters, but also in their charisma. <...> With the laconic aesthetics, the breaking of spaces, the unparalleled but tasteful staging and the quality of acting, something fundamentally new has been breathed on our stage. A different DNA.