Maybe you think that babies don’t need theater because they don’t understand anything? B. Banevičiūtė suggests taking a closer look at the possibilities of perception and expression of babies, abandoning stereotypical attitudes, calls for a change in the attitude towards the youngest in society.
– You rarely create in state theaters, more often in independent ones. Have you tamed the Vilnius old theater? I asked the choreographer.
– This is my third time working at the State Theater. Before that, I worked at Šiauliai Drama Theater, Kaunas Puppet Theater, I had to create performances in Germany, Ukraine, Turkey. On the other hand, for some babies, it doesn’t matter whether you work in a public or private sector.
I don’t like to repeat myself, I value creative freedom. I’m always interested in meeting new people, new artists. We create together. Every time I discover and find out something new. We are creating “World Tree” with drama actors. One of the selection criteria is how the actors move.
Creating more comfort in state theaters: you don’t need to run to the market and buy sticks yourself – the materials are bought, the costumes are sewn. There is more time left for creativity, to get used to the stage where the performance will be performed. Non-state theaters, such as Dansema, do not have their own premises and you usually get the stage a day (or even half a day) before the premiere. Until then, we rehearse in the “abstract” hall.
– What stages did you go through while creating the play “World Tree”?
– Andrius Katinas, the dance curator of the Vilnius Old Theater together with the theater manager Audronis Imbras, invited me back in the fall of 2023. I am the playwright and director of “World Tree”. Stage rehearsals have been going on since March.
What the performance will be about is laid out visually and mentally. First I see images, colors, objects. I am glad that I met set designer Medilė Šiaulytytė, who materializes my ideas. I can’t work with actors on the “bare” floor. There is no pre-choreographed text.
Movement comes from interacting with objects and actors. They don’t have experience playing for babies, so there are many questions: how much time to spend on a baby, how to allocate attention to them. We have already rehearsed with the children. When the stage action comes together, the composer gets involved.
– What associations does the name “World Tree” evoke for you? What was the impetus for the original idea of the performance?
– I come up with the names of the plays while rehearsing. I do it very responsibly, as if giving a name to a child. In this case, I first saw the pipes, how balls were rolling through them, “flowing”. While drawing sketches, M. Šiaulytytė saw that a tree had come out: balls – like apples or water drops.
Then I delved into mythology. To me, that tree is like a fir tree, I don’t know what others will see. Babies don’t care what you name that tree. But he holds the whole framework of dramaturgy.
– How do you manage to combine viewers of different age groups, babies and adults. artistic needs?
– First of all, I create for children. Adults create their own meanings. I don’t really think what they will understand. It is important to talk to babies. Parents see the performance through their child, not directly. I have heard it said: “I didn’t see what the actors were doing – I watched my child, his experiences.”
– You created your first play for babies in 2012. How have your creative principles changed?
– Since I worked with children myself, I knew what they are capable of and what they are interested in. In 2009, I created the performance “Bala knows” – it was intended for children aged 3-6. Another work “Creation of the World” was intended for children aged 5-10. “Mozaika” was a new experience for me in 2012: I seated the audience on three sides of the stage, and the children could move under the supervision of their parents and express their emotions through movement.
Watching the audience of performances, I realized that it is not enough for children to be near their parents, they want action. “Colored games” appeared, where children not only observed, but also acted themselves, explored objects.
Then the question arose: why do I create performances, in the name of what? If the episodes last too long or too short, too fast or too slow, the children get upset, start crying. Children up to the age of 3 behave very spontaneously, they do not evaluate the situation from a moral point of view.
In 2017, I created “Lights”, where children could freely move around the stage during the entire performance. I started specifying the age of the audience in months. From 6 to 18 months, children are already sitting, crawling, but not yet running. As the third year approaches, children understand the plot better, begin to morally evaluate the characters, and control their behavior.
So I curbed my ambitions as a choreographer, I was more concerned about talking to the child. I created such a physical and psychological environment that allowed the child to explore, act, taking into account what the actors or performers offer.
– The plays you create for babies are especially popular at international festivals, you tour a lot abroad. What makes Dansema intriguing to foreign audiences?
– We let the children go on stage right away. Everything is safe, we treat them with respect – we do not pressure babies, how to react to them, what to do. We do not use forced interaction – we do not offer parents to roll, crawl, throw, participate in the action together. The right to choose is important. Everything is based on experience, long-term practice. We were one of the first in Lithuania to start designing for babies.
– How did the parents change during that time, their attitude towards such performances?
– At first, parents asked if their child would understand something? They used to tame the children a lot. Now there is also the opposite reaction of parents: why can’t their child go on stage from the beginning of the play? There are also child observers who repeat the movements they see only at home.
There is now more information about early childhood education, and the artistic offerings for the little ones are much more abundant. Parents’ perceptions are also influenced by social media, conversations, discussions, and posts on the Internet. More often, performances are created for children with disabilities.
In infancy, the symptoms of disability are not very obvious. When the developmental disorders are milder, you cannot distinguish such children very well. Advertisements of foreign theaters that create performances for babies usually emphasize inclusiveness, accessibility, that the performance is “sensory friendly”.
And the themes all over the world are very similar: water, sky, gardens, everything that surrounds us. Performances for babies in which dancers perform on an empty black stage are very rare. Objects that children can touch are used. Text, words – very little, movement is integrated into the music.
– Who is a baby for you – a spectator, a participant in an artistic action, a co-author of a performance?
– Spectator. At will, he can also become a co-creator. When we showed the play “The Unseen World” in Denmark two years ago, it was watched by many adults and several girls with disabilities. During the discussion of the performance, one producer said that he felt uncomfortable – the children were looked at as exhibits, like strange animals in a zoo.
I understand that it is really interesting to watch children’s reactions, sometimes more interesting than actors or dancers. Then they automatically become characters. I notice that even in my colleagues’ plays for babies in Lithuania, there are situations when the actors themselves start treating the babies like dancers, trying to somehow involve them in the action so that they move rhythmically, etc.
Such a situation is possible, but I avoid it myself. I always try to check my ideas during rehearsals with the children. At various stages of the creative process, you need to check with the little ones. You can say that at a certain stage they are co-creators, but when we start showing the performance, they are spectators. They are left with the option of logging in if that is their way of watching the show. Some babies watch the performance by observing, others by acting.
Interactive movement performance 6-18 months. for babies “The World Tree” (Director: Birutė Banevičiūtė) will be shown at the Vilnius Old Theater on April 26. 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. and on the 27th 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Duration – 40 min.
Tags: choreographer stage performances offer parents roll crawl
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