FILOKTETAS. Rež. Cezaris Graužinis

Director: Cezaris Graužinis
Scenography and costume designer: Vytautas Narbutas
Composer: Martynas Bialobžeskis
Choreographer: Edgen Lame
Lighting artist: Alekos Yannaros
Director's assistant: Tauras Čižas
Players: Cezaris Graužinis, Gediminas Storpirštis, Žygymantas Vainauskas, Rūta Jonikaitė, Gintautė Rusteikaitė, Lukas Petrauskas

Sophoklis (born in 497 BC) is one of the most famous tragedians of ancient Greece, who wrote about 120 works, seven of which have survived, including "Oedipus the King", "Antigone" and "Philoctetes". His works are famous for their deep exploration of the human soul, morality and destiny.

In the tenth year of the Trojan War, an oracle prophesied by the gods is heard: Troy will not be defeated unless Achilles' son Neoptolemus and Philoctetes join the Greeks with the magical bow and arrows of Hercules.

Philoctetes is the only one who agreed to fulfill the pain. the wish of the suffering Hercules and light his funeral pyre, receiving in return the most perfect weapon that brings inevitable death. On the way to Troy, due to an incurable leg wound, his companions, persuaded by Odysseus, left him to the will of fate on the remote island of Limnos. The young Neoptolemus, accompanied by the experienced and treacherous Odysseus, arrives at the "end of the world" to persuade the scornful Philoctetes to travel to Troy.

Sophocles moves the events of the tragedy to an uninhabited island, because every time humanity tries to break free from the shell of "outdated values", it again finds itself terrified on the terrifying abyss of nothingness. edge The bow of Philoctetes here symbolizes the moral code and ethical identity of a person - how and in whose name a person chooses to live and how to remain himself in that life.

The director Cezaris Graužinis, who has been living and creating in Greece for the past two decades, returns to the Lithuanian theater with this production of "Philoctetes" - specifically to the State Youth Theater, where in 1989 debuted with his first play "Hunger" (based on Knut Hamsun) and began his creative path.

"The essence of Sophocles' tragedy "Philoctetes" is a fierce moral and political conflict between the strict code of values of the heroes of the older generation (Achilles, Hercules, Philoctetes) and Odysseus, who symbolizes the ideology of the new generation, with nimble pragmatism and ethical scruples unbounded ambitions. It is a cyclical conflict between the "old world", which still has a strong belief in the possibility of utopia, and the "more advanced" world of realpolitik, which values ​​only what is "realistically possible". In the name of progress, Sophocles ironically and provocatively argues, we should reject the categories of honor, justice, compassion as having no practical meaning, so that we can claim that we seek to benefit the community to which we belong and for whose well-being we are all equally responsible.

This tragedy gives us the opportunity to rediscover the beauty of human critical thinking and the power of compassion. Sophocles invites us to realize that the greatest art we are doomed to learn is the art of overcoming the conflict between the individual and the community." - director Cezaris Graužinis.

Premiere: 2026 September 19.

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