“The experience will be interesting and unusual”

The premiere of the show “Café existans” will take place on May 29 and 31. in the “Opera Social House” cafe. How unexpected are his rehearsals, what do the actors think when creating their roles, how did they feel when the first screening took place without even rehearsing the scenes? Jolanta Dapkūnaitė, the actress of the play “Café existans”, talks openly and honestly about the multifaceted process of creating an experiential play.

– The experiential performance “Café existans” created by the director Paulius Markevičius is not a traditional theater performance. Not only is it being created in the Opera Social House cafe, the story line of this performance will be created by the audience. What does it mean to you to act outside of the theater stage, this time in a cafe? How different do you feel? What is special about this experience?

– Before I met Paulius, I already had the idea of ​​a performance in my head, the action of which also takes place in a cafe. So it is obvious that ideas are constantly levitating in space. It’s nice that one of them is coming true. I hope mine will take shape, substance and form as well.

However, acting in such a play is a challenge. You will have to try to breathe on the back of the audience or counter their comments. It is already clear that it is not easy to control so many components: space, text, characters, attention to the onlookers. The experience will be interesting and unusual. The goal of “acting without acting” is not always successful. And creating a character when the audience will be so close to us, the actors, seems too vivid. For now, I’m still thinking about it and I’m trying different options during rehearsals.

– Tell us more about the creative process of the play: how are the rehearsals, what do you go through while creating your role in the play “Café existans”?

– The director of the play, Paulius Markevičius, is a very interesting, extremely organic actor, whose roles in cinema and theater I highly appreciate. His direction is also very unexpected. At the beginning of the play’s rehearsals, we talked for a long time about things completely unrelated to the play, we remembered our poor knowledge of existentialism, its representatives, philosophers, and other related details.

What fascinates me is that as soon as I come to the rehearsal, the music is already playing, every time it’s different. I like how Paul creates the atmosphere, changes the space little by little. He also prepares the desired coffee for everyone, allows the actors to chat about nothing. It’s very charming.

From the very beginning, Paul advised against studying the text. I have to admit that this is very rare. Not only that, he arranged the first screening before we even rehearsed the scenes! Thus, during such a non-standard creative process, after a month many excellent scenes rehearsed by colleagues appeared as if out of nowhere. While creating my role in this performance, I think, analyze, observe, check.

– What new or what insights do you take away from the creative process of this play?

– It’s a great pleasure to meet actors and directors with whom you haven’t worked, just to communicate with nice people. Once again, I am convinced that the younger generation of our theater creators differs in their human and value positions. The director is no longer omniscient, telling us what to do and how to do it.

– Your character Salome is a woman whose character is inspired by one historical figure – Simone de Beauvoir. Salome is a gender equality activist who strives to win more than just equal rights in a patriarchal society. This is a woman who wants to realize herself, does not adapt to the expectations placed on her as a woman. You can really relate to this character. What makes it close to you, interesting?

– When creating the character of Salome, I was impressed by the range of activities of Simone de Beauvoir: writer, philosopher, creator of modern feminism, one of the few women who had a degree from Sorbonne University in the late 1930s. Her courage is fascinating and frightening. The dominance of female nature is surprising – her greatest achievement in life was her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. Of course, intellectual collaboration was high on the list. They both lived in an open union, worked, wrote together.

– How did you manage to tame the world of Salome you are creating? What challenges have you faced? And maybe there were some unexpected fun discoveries?

– Since the director’s idea is not to create exact copies of historical figures, I set the task for myself. I want to create the simplicity of Salome’s speech, the economy of gestures. However, the texts of some scenes written by Paulius (P. Markevičius is also the author of the script of the play “Café existans” – editor’s note) require colors, emotions, and life. So I can’t be constrained and just copy an imaginary personality from the surviving video recordings. And when reading the play, “déj?” vu’ moments are always there. We all have similar lives.

– Maybe you are taking something from Salome into your personal life?

– No, I don’t take over. I think about her life, her fate. I try to imagine her world. We all have different colors to lend: actor to character, character to actor.

– How do you like to create the characters of your characters? How is it going this time? Are your own intuition, discoveries during rehearsals or the tone set by the director more important to you? Why?

– You guessed it – intuition. I try to guess the person I’m facing. It matters where he is vulnerable, where he is insensitive, what he is aiming for. Sometimes a scene works right away. But it happens that you don’t drive on the wrong tracks.

It’s nice that Paulius, being an actor himself, understands this “kitchen” and is not in a hurry to give advice. It allows all the actors to figure out for themselves the ingredients that make up the whole of the role.

– What kind of audience do you think the premiere of this play is intended for? What can he discover in the play “Café existans”?

– Even at the beginning of the rehearsals, without understanding the whole, we thought about what we were talking about in the play with these texts. And the director answered very simply: “about love”. It is very unexpected that Paulius wants to talk about it without being afraid of sentiments. I think it is very beautiful. Scary. But nice. Love has no age limit, so there are no filters for the audience of the performance. The most fun will probably be choosing which room and atmosphere to be in, which characters’ stories to follow. I wish not to run away, to hang out, to wander with the actors, maybe even create together. We look forward to seeing you!

The premiere of the show “Café existans” will take place on May 29 and 31. in the “Opera Social House” cafe (Lelevelio str. 4).

The director and playwright of “Café existans” is Paulius Markevičius, actors: Jolanta Dapkūnaitė, Indrė Patkauskaitė, Vytautas Kaniušonis, Vygandas Vadeiša, Aistė Lasytė, Karolis Norvilas, Viktorija Žukauskaitė, Šarūnas Datenis. Set designer – Sigita Šimkūnaitė, costumes – Fausta Naujalė, music – Jonas Narbutas, lights – Julius Kuršys, movement – Greta Grinevičiūtė, director’s assistant – Justina Biekšaitė, dramaturgy consultant – Marija Kavtaradze.