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The play, based on the work of rising French literary talent Édouard Louis, is directed by Antanas Obcarskas, a thirty-year-old director nominated for two Golden Stage Crosses.
As the premiere approaches, it will take place at the Lithuanian Medical Library, and on July 15. It will be broadcast online live, we spoke with the director.
How did “Who Killed My Father” by French writer Édouard Louis come to you? How attractive is the job itself?
This is my third performance at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater. At first I started with the classics – “Voiceko”, then we wrote the play “Alisa” with Laurynas Adomaitis, responding to the experiences of the modern world, and now the idea has arisen that I want to choose something that my generation thinks of all over Europe. .
At the age of thirty, there was a strong desire to look at his image, his face. It is typical, very modeled, to start thinking about our generation, to think about what makes us special. But when you look at your face with strength and attention, you can see the features of our parents in it.
Although I would like to be exceptional, I am not like that. I am the son of my parents. So naturally this search took place and the result was Édouard Louis.
“Who Killed My Father” is an autobiographical work that turned out to be very close to me. The text is now “ready” for the stage, its internal idea corresponds to everything it wants to convey. It’s new text written in 2018, so you don’t even want to fundamentally change anything. The story can be fully understood and experienced without further interpretation.
All of the author’s books are autobiographical stories about the experiences of a young man who grew up in a French province. He grew up in a working-class family that lived near the poverty line in northern France. Many things happened to him and his family: internal conflicts, psychological violence, lack of communication, poor emotional health, alcoholism, anger and dream failure. These are the circumstances and situations that he captures in his narratives.
I read the story “Who Killed My Father” and was struck by the identical experiences of adolescence and youth. The images created by Édouard Louis in the text are images of my life. The emotions you experienced are my emotions.
I couldn’t imagine how that could be. Although we are far from each other, this has raised the question for me: is life in the province in Europe, in the regions of Europe, not identical regardless of latitude or nationality? Being on the border, in a remote region, in a corner, gathers the mentality.
Édouard wrote a story about his father, who conforming to all the norms of masculinity (negative, disgusting, cold, contemptuous). With that manhood, he tortured himself, he traumatized his family and his son, he also traumatized himself.
Édouard Louis’ father belonged to a generation of parents who suddenly went from children to adults. This is the main theme of the performance. What does it mean to be a parent when you are not ready to be? What does it mean to play to maturity when you are a child? It is a study of the forced end of a father’s youth through the eyes of a son.
I feel why Édouard Louis is so close to our experience. Thirty years ago, with the collapse of the Soviet regime, the parents of our generation lost the reality and security that had hitherto been familiar. Freedom has begun. And desperate survival in freedom.
The promise, the dream, the vision of a new liberal and saturated Western world was seen. Like the entire state, it began a second youth for its people. That youth was full of enthusiasm, confidence in the world, but the reality was often very cruel.
Everyone “turns” and we, as children, “turn” afterwards. Some adapted and survived, others were less fortunate, there were more, including our parents.
So suddenly systemic neglect ended, it was necessary to grow overnight, attack learning to survive, which is a painful, insecure process. We, this generation, have been educated by people who sometimes did not know how to live.
Often alone in the courtyards of apartment buildings, this is how most European children grew up in the suburbs of big cities, the neighborhoods of factory workers and the neighborhoods. We have experienced the world on our own. It is a common experience for all.
And the great axis of the work of Édouard Louis. When I see the uneducated, provincial, culturally backward, disadvantaged and non-communicative family of Édouard Louis represented, I also see my own family. I have no doubt that many Lithuanian families still live so harshly.
Collaborators from her previous performances (set designer Lauryna Liepaitė, costume designer Flore Vauvillé, actor Gediminas Rimeika) are involved in the creative process of acting. Does this performance have any other connection to your previous work? What are they?
This performance has perhaps fewer connections with previous works, since the performance is thought as if it were for me, a rethinking of my present. It is a cliché, but it is very difficult for my generation to communicate with their parents.
My parents grew up in a world that no longer exists. The Soviet bloc closed, disappeared. I look at the adults around me and I think they often don’t know what they are doing. Do what you do best because you can no longer learn anything.
Aren’t these still the same teens whose bodies have grown and aged?
The artists who co-create this performance are, first and foremost, my peers. We are on the same wave of thought with them: we think similarly, we speak similarly, similar things excite us.
You are rehearsing with an actor, future work is a mono-performance. You cast actor Gediminas Rimeikas for the main and only role. What are the challenges of experiencing this genre together?
Working with an actor is an intimate challenge, and at the same time a professional laboratory, because I am very close to the person I work with. I know him better and better, I see a growing spectrum of internal voices.
I look for ways to mobilize it and free it from inertia, to see the text in one direction. It is a very fun process. The most important thing is that we are one year old, we are very similar, we come from the same city, our childhood experiences similar, the same fashions that prevailed in our backyards as we grew up.
After all, this formed our communication. I mean we speak the same language.
The most interesting thing is that the entire burden of the performance will fall on your shoulders. You must understand that you are alone on stage and will not wait for your partner to come. The partner is his interior, his face, his emotions, his warmest and coldest voices …
The challenge, I think, is knowing what is weaker in this story and what is stronger when there is only one person on stage with whom we seek the language of this performance.
What character do you see in this piece? What themes does it unlock?
Because those stories are very personal, they come from childhood, adolescence, I see the protagonist already out of that tension, those infernal living conditions, that disgust, that discord, the broken dreams of his parents …
With this environment, it seems that he has already broken his relationship because it counts, he talks about it without any personality. I want the character to see the scenes that he tells about himself, from the side.
After all, there are many childish and adolescent extremes and parental excuses in such behavior. It’s like a children’s fight in a sandbox, only to the extent that those children have long been in adult bodies.
I want it to be impersonal, I want it to be brilliant. Because of the kind of life we have been through, we no longer have to feel guilty or hurt because it has already been lived and therefore it is over.
This text will go straight to the hearts of many, it is an exceptionally universal story. We in our thirties are thinking about how to build our families. How to be a father? Mommy?
But then we become parents, we get engaged. And images of our families accompany us, they are not always pretty.
I think maybe these fears and our current neuroses are the result of dreams killed by our families, parents. I can rarely see and understand everything as clearly as in the palm of my hand while reading something.
I contacted the author, he promised to come to the premiere. It will be interesing. I believe that this text is the key to speak directly and without metaphors about the tectonic fault that separates us from our parents.
The Lithuanian National Drama Theater premiere “Who Killed My Father” on July 14-15. It will take place at the Lithuanian Medical Library (spectators will be welcomed at the Žemaitė sculpture, Žemaitė Square, Gedimino Avenue). After that, the performance will be shown in the newly built LNDT Small Hall. July 15, the performance will be broadcast live online.
