VMT spektaklis | MADAGASKARAS

"Madagascar" is a play by the playwright Mariaus Ivaškevičius, which presents Lithuania as a phenomenon, the attitude of Lithuanians towards themselves and the world in an original, self-ironic and intellectual way. The reason for the success of the play is the intriguing plot, clever situations and masterful dialogues, written with the help of an authentic first 20th century. half the language. Dramas about Lithuanian utopias M. Ivaškevičius "discovered" a unique and non-legendary 20th century. the personality of the first half - Kazi Pakšta. This geographer, traveler, geopolitician and public figure has been called a "minister of propaganda without ministerial rank", "a marcher of free Europe", "Ulysses", "patriotic whirlwind", "crier of the nation", "national apostle", compared to J. A. Herbačiauskas, S. Šalkauskiu, A. Lincoln... Sensing the fate of Lithuania, he planned to move it to some African country and create a "reserve" homeland there. If in the first part of Rimos Tumin's play, which makes the audience laugh heartily, the main focus is on Kazimierus Pokštus (actors Tomas Rinkūnas, Ramūnas Cicėnas) and his crazy idea "to gather Lithuanians for mass emigration" to Africa, then the second part belongs more to Sale (actress Indrė Patkauskaitė), who the prototype is the sensitive Salomėja Nėris, to her dramatic fate. The second part of "Madagascar" also echoes the disaster, war, and occupation of "Lituanika".

The idea of ​​relocating Lithuania to Africa came from interwar geopolitician Kazi Pakštas. The idea of ​​transferring this idea to the stage of the theater struck the director of our time, Rimus Tumin. It was suggested to me to put it all on paper. This is how the play "Madagascar" was born.

In the biographies of people who lived through the border between the interwar period and the war, you always involuntarily look for the words: emigrated, deported, collaborated. However, these are other stories depicting another era. "Madagascar" is a story about people who have not yet reached this limit, but we are well aware from the distance of time that this limit will soon be crossed.

How to read "Madagascar"? Like a person in the year 2084 reading a story about us thinking that all the world's nonsense ended fourteen years ago, and we're the first to wade into the straight, bright, never-ending highway. To a reader of 2084, this would be amusing to say the least, saddening to many. Because he will know some future dates that will shatter all our expectations of today. That reader doesn't exist yet, and he's already superior to us.

That's why this play is about people who don't know anything yet. And that's why they try with all their might to live: to love as no one has loved before them, to believe as no one has believed before them, to want as no one has wanted before them, and finally to move what has never been moved before.

There are no anti-Pakistani plays. Although, strangely, today we would probably feel like we were in the Southern Hemisphere, basking in the heat of the tropical sun in a palm grove facing the Indian Ocean. And when the famous black director Rimas Tuminas would have offered me to write this play, I would have named it exotically - "Lithuania". About a distant, little-known land.

So this play can be read as well. It's as if they actually moved us and now, with the help of the theater, they are trying to bring us back.

Marius Ivaškevičius

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