The world ignores everything. Interview with Antanas Obcarskas

At the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, this autumn has been generous with premieres. Audiences have already seen “Respublika”, “Dialogues” and “Marius Repšys on Stage” with “Alice” is set to premiere on 23 October. This production, which is based on Laurynas Adomaitis’s original play, is directed by Antanas Obcarskas. This is his second work at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre: in 2018, he and Adomaitis produced Woyzeck. With the premiere of “Alice” approaching (in addition to the performances in ‘Menų spaustuvė’ on 24 October, there will be a live broadcast online), Daiva Šabasevičienė talks to the director, Antanas Obcarskas.

 

You take your themes from the reality we inhabit, but you don’t create everything from scratch, referring instead to particular works. After Woyzeck, you have continued this path: you take a classic and try to interpret its ideas. What encourages such a choice?

It’s a shame, but with its unbelievable scenarios that unfold right before your eyes, contemporary reality is approaching fiction. When the theatre showed interest in the proposal to produce “Alice”, I didn’t yet know what the piece would be. And then, in April 2019, Notre Dame de Paris caught fire. It had been burning for about fifteen hours. I remember it only too well; on a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, I watched the never-ending attempts to bring the blaze under control. And, at the time, I was thinking, what is the real situation here? Something catches fire; somebody murders somebody else – what is the connection? Who, simply put, tangles that web of reality, and who looks for the guilty party? Those people are not heroes; they are simply ordinary people in certain unthinkable situations.

I suddenly realised that Alice had to find herself in such an irresolvable situation, because she is so attentive, loving, and courageous. Alice’s central trait is the heroic stance that prevents her from focusing exclusively on her own issues. In the face of a tragedy, we need heroes like that. No matter what happens in Lewis Carroll’s story, Alice passes through everything. She faces situations that override common sense but always moves forward. They remain in the ‘Wonderland’.

Alice is very modern, heroic, and, I would say, controversial. We are often concerned that we are focused on our own feelings, instead of on larger issues, that we concentrate only on our own inner world. And who is bold enough to address global crises? When the fire in Notre Dame de Paris was extinguished, I made up my mind that Alice would be an advocate. I met Laurynas Adomaitis; we talked. We discovered a real story, a real-life court trial, into which we could invite Alice. She is a person of extraordinary qualities, an extraordinary moral code, and an extraordinary system of values.

Could it be that fiction is more concentrated and that we are attracted by a certain surreality it possesses? It spurs us on to look at the world with wide eyes and maybe gasp in amazement with our mouths slightly open: ‘how is it possible that this is happening?’ People move away from one another, the world stops, we stop along with it, all the planes land, nobody buys oil any more, and all the cafes close. Isn’t this also a fictional scenario? I always think of people who find themselves in the cruellest chaos of reality. Who are they? In this production, it’s Alice.

I look back to fiction and see that there exist works (it happened both when working with “Woyzeck” and now, with “Alice”) in which this chaos is reflected very seriously. Lewis Carroll took Alice to a fantasy world in which everything is convoluted and one just can’t ask how we should understand one another. And then I realised that there’s a certain key to understanding. The present is no less convoluted, and I invited a grown-up Alice from Wonderland to socialise and spend some time in the present.

 

Could you give a brief outline of the plot to the future viewer?

Generally speaking, the production rethinks the notion of justice. This is the theme. As for the plot, three worlds intertwine here. It is a real story that took place in 2015–2016 and is related to the terrorist attack at the Bataclan theatre and other locations in Paris, where 130 people were killed. It is the story of the surviving defendant. We are speaking of a court trial, of violated human rights, of how lawyers fought and how they took the case, only to abandon it later… Alice, a young lawyer, took part in this trial.

Another part, the world of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, is the world of our nightmares, of the inner voice that speaks the truth, the voice that feels that something is not OK. It is the world of Alice’s dreams, and at the same time of the dreams of all suffering and traumatised people. It features the White Rabbit, who has his own interests. All the demons that we carry with us, the traumatic experiences that accompany all of our actions – all that is touched upon in Carroll’s books Alice Adventures in the Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

And the third world in this production is the world of the French revolution. It is the infancy of contemporary liberal democratic society and human rights. Robespierre and Mary Antoinette make an appearance in the performance. They give speeches that laid the foundation for a modern Western state. They directly fit the context of the trial. How can justice be restored in the wake of a cruel revolution? And how should it be done in the wake of a terrorist attack? In the former case, the solution was the guillotine. What is it in our time?

 

A fairy-tale becomes reality. Where is the boundary? Where is the crossing point from one state to the other?

My aim is to present a situation that would show the viewer that fanaticism is inherent in any person. It arises only from the environment. It is a story of gradual inner radicalisation, a cross-section. I find this process of radicalisation interesting.

 

The theme of truth and justice is salient in this work. More and more often I observe people, and especially artists, discussing moral, spiritual, and legal issues, but the way they live doesn't reflect the ideas they affirm’? How could this contrast be explained?

 The strongest influences are an unclean conscience and thoughts. It is the unclean conscience that gives a stimulus to think about these issues: justice, truth, unfairness to people. The lynching trial overwhelms your heart if someone commits a crime against your group of people. Law courts and laws protect one against lynching. Lynching does not happen, but certain inner natural principles that remain unsatisfied accumulate poisonous frustration in the soul and people suffer.

Suffering transforms into spasms of all sorts. To suffer from injustice is the strongest contemporary existential suffering, because we have our reality, but due to the completely open flow of information we suffer because somewhere things are better than here, somewhere they are fairer, the weather is better, and the culture more colourful. We don’t often articulate it, but we really suffer.

I keep thinking about truth and justice… I think about them, they’re important to me, but it’s the futile attempts to attain justice that are even more important, and all of that is because the conscience of my thoughts is unclean and I surrender as a human. Maybe I haven’t done anything unforgivable or punishable, but my thoughts are unclean, and the thoughts of all people are unclean. 

 

It is not the first time that you’ve called Laurynas Adomaitis for help. Text is highly important in your productions. What do you pay most attention to, say, when commissioning material from Adomaitis in this case?

 I’ve already known Laurynas for ten years. I think that as a writer and as a thinker, ‘on paper’, he is totally fearless regarding the text. And, I think, one of the most intelligent people of my generation. I trust him completely. Our work together was very close and easy-going because our styles of being in the world coincide and therefore it’s pleasant to convert this into artistic language.

 

Could you introduce the other members of the creative team? How did you choose them?

Very strong and ambitious artists joined Laurynas and me. First of all, there's the constellation of actors of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre: Vytautas Anužis, Giedrius Savickas, Vainius Sodeika, Elzė Gudavičiūtė and others. I am very happy about the intuition, inner culture, and courage of the young actress Aistė Zabotkaitė. She plays the leading role of Alice. It is a formative role that examines a modern, ambitious person. The stage design and the magical atmosphere created by Lauryna Liepaitė raised the conceptuality of the production to a new level. She transformed the stage into a ‘looking-glass kingdom’ in which the picture of the world is suddenly created and equally suddenly crumbles down. It was critical for me to invite the costume designer Flore Vauville, who is French and who recreated perfectly the style we needed. The style is of special importance in “Alice”, as in all of France. Agnė Matulevičiūtė composed and recorded an original soundtrack with a contemporary jazz band. It was unexpected, but Agnė skilfully scored a bull’s eye. The performance sounds to me like a symphony with interlacing jazz, subtle electronics, and the actors’ voices. The videographer Saulė Bliuvaitė is a top-level film creator and scriptwriter. Her vision of the stage as a film director is vital to the whole. Dainius Urbonis and Aistis Byla are masters of lighting solutions and I fully trust them. We couldn’t have had a better team for “Alice” and it will be obvious in the quality of the performance.

 

In your performances, aesthetics plays a significant role. Is that a conscious effort?

Yes. I regard the stage of a performance as a painting. It was important to reconstruct the authentic style typical of elite French lawyers and politicians. Alas, we haven’t got this style in Lithuania yet. I’m talking both of appearance and elocution.

 

Watching your work one can discern your aspiration to get some adrenaline flowing in the viewer. What do you seek to stir in people to make them active?

I want to share pain, because it cleanses. To share a defeat, a loss… Efforts that haven’t yielded any results. I’ve experienced losses and people have experienced them too. They think they can say or offer something to the world, but the world ignores them completely, and that is the scariest thing.  The world ignores everything.

 

Although creative work has always been individual, I’ve noticed that the attempts to level everything out in art, in order to speed up the viewer’s perception, is becoming increasingly common. What do you do to maintain the balance between expression and perception?

During a performance, the viewer can take one side or another. The important thing is that the viewers are given time to decide whose side they are on, or maybe they are only with themselves. In “Alice”, we present two visions of the world, two notions of justice. I think that after the performance, it will take the viewers some time to consider whose side they are on.

 

What are your thoughts on contemporary theatre?

Contemporary theatre is a closed theatre. And encounters with the viewer are rare now. Just imagine how many performances didn’t take place across the world during the lockdown, how much information that had to diffuse on the stage hasn’t diffused. It’s an unprecedented situation that probably hasn’t happened since the times of the Greeks.

 

Still, the majority of intellectuals aren’t missing the theatre.   

In contemporary theatre, I see a way to create comprehensive, eclectic worlds capable of speaking about things that are probably indescribable, about the revolution of consciousness. Theatre has always been inseparable from the intellectual world. In the twentieth century, philosophy was in step with theatre, particularly in France. I see theatre at the spearhead of the intellectual world. Maybe somebody sees it differently, but seeing differently is the prerogative of each thinking individual.

 

Views have been voiced that theatre should make you laugh…

I enjoy laughing in the theatre. Laughter, especially sincere laughter, helps to forget. It’s the most beautiful thing. One should bear in mind, though, that people may go to the theatre in search of one and only one thing, an encounter. In its true sense, theatre is just an encounter, and nobody wants to prove something or offend somebody here, or make you laugh.  It’s a certain way to spend time, the only thing that we’ve got in life, when we share the space, thoughts, words, colours, and emotions. And it shouldn’t separate us one from one another. Laughter is just one of the ways that theatre brings people closer. To me, the vital thing is coming closer to a problem through material, the matter of a performance. If this can be successfully achieved through laughter, that's great. But if laughter lacks matter, it can be banal.

 

We’ve just seen your production based on Saara Turunen’s play The Phantom of Normality. What experience have you gained working with the Fins?

We’ve been free for thirty years and the Fins for seventy, and I was surprised at the extent to which these additional years changed young people’s inner mentality, their outlook on the world, life, and inner freedom. The Phantom of Normality is about Finnish family situations and sores, and Saara Turunen examines these extremely well. This is a sensitive topic for the Fins.

I saw what a bold step in the consolidation of our mentality we made between 1990 and 2020. And now all that is in turmoil. It might be a lack of identity, but then, what future awaits us and what will we be?

 I thank you for the interview and wish you a meaningful performance.