Versmė 2025
Over the course of the festival’s 19 years, a total of 121 plays have been read at “Versmės,” of which 81 were Lithuanian and 40 were translations. 13 texts have been (or will soon be) adapted into stage productions, and 19 were created specifically for “Versmės” during creative writing workshops and residencies organized by the theater, where 12 mentors shared their professional expertise. We could continue listing statistics: how many translators made foreign authors’ plays speak Lithuanian, how many directors and other artists worked on staged readings, how many actors participated in them, or how many audience members (listeners) attended them. All of these are impressive numbers, but they are, after all, just numbers. Behind them lie people and their ideas; behind them – a wide range of emotions, creative struggles and moments of inspiration, as well as simply encounters and a great deal of time spent together. During that time, many connections were forged.
“About Connection” was also the theme of this year’s European Residents Program. Later, it evolved into this season’s theater slogan, “We Cannot Be Without One Another,” and ultimately resonated powerfully in the cultural community’s protest – it seems to me that all of us who were involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in this civic-minded movement felt that connection. In the residency program competition, we invited participants to explore various forms of connection, to seek ways to forge it, and to help different sides find common ground. Informally speaking, this competition was a huge success this year, and there was more than one winner. I hope that most of their texts (in the broad sense, such as a manifesto, a warning strike, or a month of protest) will be read and heard. On the other hand, the most important thing is that the connection, and the power and strength that arise from it, already exist.
Kristina Steiblytė won the Lithuanian National Drama Theater’s competition to participate in the European Residency Program and explore the theme of connection. Her play “Guard”, written while traveling between Madrid, Brussels, Zagreb, Marseille, and, of course, Vilnius, will be featured in this year’s “Versmės” program and will be staged in Madrid next year. Born on the road, I hope this play will continue its journey. During last year’s European Residency Program, all the plays written by authors from Lithuania, Spain, and Croatia will be staged as productions in their home countries (Karolis Kaupinis’ “Obituaries of Lithuanians: The Story of a Single Play” will premiere this spring), which is perhaps the best possible recognition for these texts. This year’s “Versmės” program is small but strong, and the entire festival will conclude with the play “Shrapnel” by Eglė Elena Murauskaitė and Vaiva Grainytė, created during another theater residency, which will take the audience to the foyer on the festival’s final day and offer its own reflection on the event. The residency format is very flexible and highly beneficial for both sides – it allows the theater to connect with new creators and engage in experimentation, while, I hope, providing the creators themselves with the freedom and conditions to bring their ideas to life, as well as to earn a modest living from it.
This year, Italy took over as the festival’s guest country. The program of three plays was made by Maura Teofili, one of the curators of the “Romaeuropa” festival. The play readings will be directed by an excellent trio: film director and screenwriter Eglė Vertelytė and two interesting and promising fourth-year directing students from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater (LMTA), Gabrielė Tumaitė and Paulius Juška. This year, under the wings of “Versmės,” an exchange also took place – in collaboration with the festival in Rome, a program of Lithuanian plays was presented and garnered significant interest: it featured texts by Birutė Kapustinskaitė, Gabrielė Labanauskaitė, and Virginija Rimkaitė. I hope this exchange will allow Lithuanian and Italian theater artists to get to know one another better and stay in touch.
For the second year in a row, a collective of artists has been creating the visual identity for all “Versmės” events; I invite you to take note of their names and pseudonyms, which appear repeatedly at each reading. The spatial design concept that unites the various texts presented in the festival program becomes, in itself, yet another text, open to different interpretations. For the 20th anniversary of “Versmės,” the festival has also changed its visual identity – coming full circle, it has returned to the motif of S. Kuzma’s sculpture “Versmė,” which artist Lina Bastienė has reimagined.
The plural form of the festival’s name, “Versmės,” is a living element of folklore. I used to correct it, but now I find this linguistic quirk beautiful. And the plural form fits very well. But we have not changed the name. Maybe for the 30th anniversary.
Agnė Pulokaitė
Curator of the “Versmė” Festival and the European Residency Program