Eglė Švedkauskaitė. FOSSILIA, dir. Eglė ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ

The October 9th performance of FOSSILIA will be subtitled in English. Subtitles are best viewed from rows 1-10.

Director — Eglė ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ

Text authors — Dalia GRINKEVIČIŪTĖ, Eglė ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ, Rasa SAMUOLYTĖ, Darius GUMAUSKAS, Ugnė ŠIAUČIŪNAITĖ, Povilas JATKEVIČIUS, Vitalija MOCKEVIČIŪTĖ

Set designer — Ona JUCIŪTĖ

Costume designer — Dovilė GUDAČIAUSKAITĖ

Composer — Agnė MATULEVIČIŪTĖ

Author of the shell instrument — Elena LAURINAVIČIŪTĖ

Lighting designer — Julius KURŠYS

Video projection artist — Ieva Kotryna SKI

Choreographer — Erika VIZBARAITĖ

Dramaturgy mentor — Anna SMOLAR

Producer — Vidas BIZUNEVIČIUS

Assistant director — Kotryna SIAURUSAITYTĖ

CAST

Museum employee — Rasa SAMUOLYTĖ

Father — Darius GUMAUSKAS

Mother — Vitalija MOCKEVIČIŪTĖ

Son — Povilas JATKEVIČIUS

Daughter — Ugnė ŠIAUČIŪNAITĖ

Inspired by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's work "Lithuanians by the Laptev Sea"

A son studying film abroad is given an assignment to create a documentary sketch and, somewhat hesitantly, chooses his own family—Mom, Dad, and Sister—as his subjects. Upon returning to his native Kaunas, a real treasure awaits him: a museum employee invites the family to examine a manuscript of his father's aunt's memoirs about the Siberian exile, which had just been discovered in the garden of their grandparents' house. The young man begins to slowly explore not only the manuscript that had lain underground for fifty years but also his family's past, realizing how it shapes his family's relationships in the present.

Although E. Švedkauskaitė creates a fictional family for the play, she also relies on real facts: in 1991, in Žaliakalnis, Kaunas, at 60 Perkūno Alley, a jar was accidentally unearthed containing loose pages of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's memoirs about Siberia. The manuscript had been considered lost, as Grinkevičiūtė herself had tried to find it several decades earlier but failed. Dalia Grinkevičiūtė's work is not only one of the most poignant pieces of Lithuanian literature and part of the school curriculum, but it has also been translated into fifteen languages. It is an impressive work of art about preserving humanity in inhumane conditions, or in the author's own words, a "monument to the victims of the North."