Kafka insomnia

Director: Žilvinas VINGELIS Music: Andrius ŠIURYS Scenography: Paulina SIMUTYTĖ Lighting design: Aistis LANSBERGAS Video projections: Kornelijus JAROŠEVIČIUS Live music: saxophonist Danielius PANCEROVAS/Kazimieras JUŠINSKAS and guitarist Justinas ŽILYS/Deimantas BALYS Cast: Gytis LASKOVAS, Balys IVANAUSKAS and Paulina SIMUTYTĖ Photos: Donatas STANKEVIČIUS Visual live music performance for teenagers and adults "October 2. Sleepless night. The third one in a row. I fall asleep quickly, but after an hour I wake up as if I had stuck my head into a non-existent hole. From then on, I sleep until five, as it were, but at the same time, vivid dreams prevent me from falling asleep. I am formally sleeping next to myself, while at the same time I have to struggle with dreams." (Diaries. 1910–1923, Franz Kafka)

"KAFKA INSOMNIA" tells the dreamily realistic story of one sleepless night of the Czech writer Franz Kafka. Is dreaming while awake a creative method, a lifestyle, a consequence of illness, or the main condition for the genius of Kafka's literary world? The dream created by insomnia and invading tangible reality turns F. Kafka's work into a conditional one, full of unexpected images, a sense of extended time, early manifestations of the absurd, existentialism, or even surrealism, going hand in hand with consistent descriptions characteristic of the school of realism. "In F. Kafka's world, everything stands still, nothing is destined to move from its current point, and at the same time, there is more life at that point than we can grasp. This is literature that raises the need for the organization of relative time on stage, the importance of image and atmosphere, and suggests new ways of scene montage. In it, humor and horror, action and stagnation, sound and silence flirt menacingly. I would have invited Andrius to look for those silences and sounds myself, without a doubt, so it is nice that he did it first. The process is not traditional. We allow ourselves to start from associations, not text, from intuition, not narrative. I think this performance will be interesting both to the traditional theater audience and to younger viewers who are no longer fascinated by long monologues and palace intrigues," says the director of the performance, Žilvinas Vingelis. REVIEWS "Kafka Insomnia" is a mysterious, dark performance that does not succumb to logic and rules. The suggestive Kafkaesque atmosphere – somewhat neurotic and bleak – simultaneously poses many challenges to the imagination. It invites you to see a different, enchanting, and thought-provoking theater, and at the same time encourages you to pick up Kafka's books again and immerse yourself in his world of magical realism. - theater critic Aistė Verpečinskaitė. Life in a dream or rather a nightmare. This is how one could describe the main idea of the performance "Kafka Insomnia". How would Kafka fare in today's society? Would he be prescribed a bunch of diagnoses and locked in a psychiatric ward for a long time... who knows. The performance itself tries to hypnotize from the very first minutes, even before everyone has entered the hall, an actress in a red dress sings, or perhaps chants like an Ancient Greek siren, thus drawing you into a Kafkaesque dream. In my opinion, theater should fundamentally follow the "think out of the box" principle, and here it is raised to the cube, the mystical boundaries drawn for the creators are crossed without even looking back, - review by viewer Eduardas. AWARDS: 2020 "Fortūnos" diploma for composer Andrius Šiurys for the music for the performance. Composer Andrius Šiurys nominated for the 2021 "Golden Stage Cross" for best music. 2022 "Lithuanian Theater Spring" prize for the creative team of the performance "Kafka Insomnia" (dir. Ž. Vingelis) for the audiovisual interpretation of writer Kafka's work. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The creation of the performance was partially funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. A co-production of the visual experimental theater Kosmos Theatre and Kaunas City Chamber Theater.