PREMIERE. Naubertas Jasinskas. THE DEVIL'S BRIDE, dir. Naubertas Jasinskas

Karolis KASPERAVIČIUS

Gediminas RIMEIKA

Lukas MALINAUSKAS

Šarūnas Rapolas MELIEŠIUS

Augustė Ona ŠIMULYNAITĖ

"The Devil's Bride" is a musical drama about eternity, passion, youth, and the fear of losing everything. Inspired by Arūnas Žebriūnas's film, the life trajectory of actress Vaiva Mainelytė, the intimate cinematic language of John Cassavetes, and Kazys Boruta's novella "Baltaragis' Mill," the performance creates a narrative about the influence of collective myths on our identities.

The creators of the performance raise questions: do we want to stop time to experience it, or to maintain control? The story is constructed through the perspective of the main character – a young actress, Jurga, portrayed by Alvydė Pikturnaitė. She no longer understands if she is truly in love or just performing the role of love. The world that Jurga once longed to conquer becomes empty, and pleasure can no longer fill this void.

Playwright and director Naubertas Jasinskas: "We are creating a completely new interpretation of 'The Devil's Bride' – this will not be a new staging of Boruta's work or a dramatization of the film with young actors. This performance poses the question: is reconstruction a love for the past, or an inability to create and exist in the present? The work is relevant today because we live in a culture obsessed with reconstructions, thus fostering a dangerous relationship with memory. The desire to restore, recreate, and return becomes a safe zone where one can avoid real questions about the present."

Inspired by various sources, the performance "The Devil's Bride" consists of two parts. In the first part, the viewer is immersed in the memory of the legendary film "The Devil's Bride" – here, it becomes not only a scenic act of reconstruction but also the inner memory, longing, and dream of an aging actress. From the point of the past, from a romanticized story about love and eternity, we transition into the second part – the present. Here, we see the meeting of the same characters – a man and a woman – today: their connection has dissolved, the love has ended, and the promises have faded. We see not the fulfillment promised by the cultural myth, but a collapse. It is precisely this break that allows for the deconstruction of the myth – that love solves everything. The second part of the performance shows that the long-awaited "they lived happily ever after" never arrived. This is a contemporary reflection on the power of time, the discrepancy between memory and reality, and the painful necessity of looking at a myth without romanticized longing.

The performance is a co-production of LNDT and MMLAB theaters.