Estonian "Südalinna" Theatre tour: Marius Ivaškevičius "Dawn of the Gods"

Estonian director Elmo Nüganen has staged the play "Dawn of the Gods" by the world-renowned Lithuanian playwright Marius Ivaškevičius at the "Südalinna" Theatre (Tallinn). The play is performed with two casts – featuring Russian and Estonian actors. The premiere of the play took place on May 30, 2025, in the Grand Hall of the "Südalinna" Theatre in Russian.

E. Nüganen's production has received the highest critical acclaim. Incidentally, even before the premiere, M. Ivaškevičius's play about the fate of women and love against the backdrop of war was recognized as one of the best in Europe at the international "EURODRAM" competition, and was also named the best play of 2024 translated into German.

The full-scale war against Ukraine caught Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravičius in East Africa, Uganda. There, he was filming his new feature film, in which his beloved Ana, who is from Ukraine, also acted. Mantas wanted to turn a new page in his life – to quit his current job as a documentary filmmaker in war zones around the world and start a normal life: marry Ana and have children. This was supposed to be their new life, but the war intervened.

When the Russian army approached Mariupol, Mantas realized that he could no longer live as an ordinary person: he knew those people in Mariupol, he was making a film about them. And when the city was surrounded, he went there to finish the film. Ana went with him. He managed to work and film for a few weeks, but later fell into the hands of the Russian army and was killed. Ana did not know this; she searched for her missing husband in the war-torn city, where bullets flew and bombs fell on both sides of the front line, until finally, the place of his death was revealed.

She managed to escape secretly and take all the documentary footage and her husband's body to Lithuania. Later, the film was edited in Paris and titled "Mariupolis 2". After his death, its author was awarded the European Film Award for Best Documentary.

"I didn't have a play I wanted to stage. Marius Ivaškevičius, upon learning this, said he had one. And here we are, working so that society talks about these topics, so that it doesn't forget, so that we don't sweep everything under the rug, so that we don't 'get tired'. What could we possibly be tired of? We live in conditions of peace. It's a different matter for people at the front. And what right do we have to be tired? It seems stupid and arrogant. It's idiocy. I think now is the right time to talk about it." (Elmo Nüganen).

Marius Ivaškevičius is a Lithuanian writer, playwright, director, and documentary filmmaker. His plays are widely staged in theaters around the world. Notable plays: "Malyš", "Close City", "Madagascar", "Expulsion: Chronicle of One Apple", "Mistras", "Kant", "Great Evil", "Sleepers". The play "Russian Romance" was staged in 2019 at the Vilnius Old Theatre (dir. O. Koršunovas), and a sketch of the play "Dawn of the Gods" was staged in 2022 (dir. V. Gurfinkelis). He has written a collection of short stories "Kam vaikų", novels "History from a Cloud", "Greens", "Thomas Moore", "Expulsion: London Needle". He has been awarded the Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore Prize (2005), the Order for Merits to Lithuania (2014), the Golden Stage Cross (2015), the Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė Commemorative Medal (2017), and the Lithuanian National Prize (2018).