VŠDT

Genre: Dramedy Age rating: N-14 Duration: 1:40

Playwright Rimantas Kmita

Director Eglė Vertelytė

Choreographer Airida Gudaitė

Set designer Grėtė Rimgailė Kiliulytė-Vaitmonė

Composer Paulius Trijonis

Costume designer Agnė Biskytė

Video artist Vytautas Plukas

Cast: Vaidilė Juozaitytė, Tautvydas Galkauskas

Have you ever felt as if you suddenly no longer understand the script your life is following, or what genre of story you have ended up in? Are you the main protagonist, or just a supporting character in someone else's movie? That is exactly how Edita feels.

"Dance, Edita, Dance" is a tragicomic story about a young girl named Edita, who works at a video rental store at the dawn of Independence and tries to understand her place in the world by watching movies. In Edita's imagination, life is a motion picture, she just doesn't know the genre yet. Sometimes she is a fighter, sometimes a romantic heroine, sometimes a lonely teenager lost between Hollywood dreams and the reality of Šiauliai.

At the center of the play is Edita's obsessive love for a boy who has no idea about her feelings. Like the novel "Pietinia kronikas", Rimantas Kmita's new play balances between comedy and a sensitive, sincere exploration of the theme. With gentle humor, it reveals how a young woman's identity is formed when there are no clear models – when American films mix with post-Soviet reality, and free-market ideas mix with old, unhealed traumas.

Renowned film director and screenwriter of the film "Pietinia kronikas", Eglė Vertelytė, who is debuting on the theater stage, did not shy away from cinematic elements; thus, screen projections and filmed episodes merge with live action and interpretations of the film "Dirty Dancing" introduced by choreographer Airida Gudaitė.

The director suggests observing the stage events as if they were "reels" created in Edita's imagination. The viewer finds themselves between two worlds – reality and fantasy, everyday traumas and cinematic dreams. Is it possible to survive in reality without immersing oneself in fantasies? Is it possible, while living among pirated VHS tapes, to create an original film of one's own life?

The play is like an extension of the novel "Pietinia kronikas" on the theater stage, only here it tells the version of Edita's story. The role of Edita in the play is created by one of the most promising young-generation actresses from Šiaulių, Vaidilė Juozaitytė, who also embodied Edita in the highly popular screen adaptation of the novel. On the theater stage, her partner is VŠDT actor Tautvydas Galkauskas. And, of course, the play is performed in the authentic Šiauliai dialect.