"When I was asked to perform this act I said, okay, I'll do it, but you know, it's going to be dark here. They said it's very good, people like the dark. I said, don’t they? I said, yeah. I said, well, let's go."
For the first time, the theatre stage will host a stand-up comedy – a genre that, through laughter, purifies not only the storyteller but also the listener. Making another person laugh is not an easy task. An even more difficult task, which is the concern of theatre using humor as a form of communication, is to touch upon the painful themes of mourning, loss, and suicide, which are relevant to us all. To stir something unexpected in a person, to help you laugh at yourself, to look at painful experiences from the aside so that you can come to terms with them.
Playwright Birutė Kapustinskaitė and director Eglė Švedkauskaitė, who are working for the first time together, invite the audience to travel along into new theatrical forms and explore family bereavement in a stand-up comedy production.
The play's characters – Mom, who is a famous TV show presenter, and Son, a successful stand-up performer – are normally not stuck with a response, but when faced with the loss of the Father, it becomes difficult for them to communicate with each other. This is a story about letting go of anger, shame, and guilt and finding a way to open up to vulnerability and each other.
"A Stand-up for Meaning and Meaninglessness” is a comic play about the protagonists' attempts to get along after the loss of husband and father. Black humor, self-irony, and narrative humor (stand-up) are combined here with drama, weaving a loss story, about the relationship between mother and son and the societal attitude towards mourning and the resulting need to adapt," says the author of the play Birutė Kapustinskaitė.
"I believe that theatre, as a public communication tool with a wide audience, must not only talk about heroic death and sacrifice but also basic, un-mystified mental health. It must keep track of what is going on in society here and now, it must develop empathy for people dealing with depression and other mental illnesses. This play is a way to talk about hope and the will to live, even when you don't seem to know how to do it", says director Eglė Švedkauskaitė.
