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Inspired by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's memoirs "Lithuanians at the Laptev Sea"
The Son, studying cinema outside of his country, has been tasked with making a documentary feature film. With some hesitation, he chooses his family – his mum, dad, and sister – as the main characters. When he returns to his hometown of Kaunas, he finds a real treasure: a museum worker invites the family to see a manuscript of his aunt's memories of the Siberian exile, which has just been discovered in the garden of his grandparents' house. The young man slowly begins to explore not only the manuscript, which has been hidden underground for fifty years but also his family's past and how it shapes his family's relationships in the present.
Even though Eglė Švedkauskaitė creates a fictional family of characters, she also draws on reality facts: in 1991, a jar was accidentally dug up in Žaliakalnis, Kaunas, at 60 Perkūno Avenue, where multiple slips of paper containing Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's memories of Siberia were found. The manuscript was thought to be lost because Grinkevičiūtė herself had tried to look for it several decades ago, but had not found it. Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's piece of writing is not only one of the most influential works of Lithuanian literature, part of the school curriculum, but has also been translated into fifteen languages. It is an impressive work of art about the preservation of humanity under inhuman conditions, in the author's own words, "a monument to the victims of the North".
"I called the production "Fossilia" thinking about everything that is excavated in the context of the play: not only the jar with the manuscript but also the feelings and thoughts of the characters. In this performance, I want to portray the need of a young person to ask his parents about family history and to analyze the experiences of the older generation. The stage action is driven forward by a young creator representing the so-called therapeutic generation, who is very keen to talk and "fix" relationships, to feel the security of knowing. It is probably only natural that we, who have grown up in a world of open sharing, democracy, and technology, ask questions, but those are often questions about the past. The attempt to evaluate it turns into a confrontation. The relationship with parents is very important in this play, and it is also important that young people are interested in the exile, and that they do not look at it as a museum exhibit, but want to understand how they would act in such a situation, whether they would be able to survive," says the production director and the playwright Eglė Švedkauskaitė.
