Lithuanian theater's very own black prince

  • 2006-04-05
  • By Anne Gallien

PRODIGY: Oskaras Korsunovas' career has mirrored Lithuania's post-Soviet evolution.

VILNIUS - On March 12, Oskaras Korsunovas, 37, the great prodigy of the Lithuanian stage, was given the New Theatre Reality award by the Union des Theatres de l'Europe in Turin, Italy. It was a fitting honor for the man who exploded onto Lithuania's theater scene just as the Soviets were leaving in the early '90s and has staged some 20 plays abroad since.

In 1990, Korsunovas, under the guidance of the Lithuanian film director Jonas Vaitkus, directed his first play, "There to be Here," a Dadaist response to the contemporary changes in Lithuania. Based on works by dissident writers Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vedensky, the play had its premiere at what may have been the absolute best time a play could have a premiere: 10 days after Lithuania's official independence on March 11.
The Edinburgh international theater festival, "Fringe Firsts," gave him an award for the play. It was his first trip to Western Europe. "I consider it my best performance ever."
A new generation of theater directors was being born in Lithuania. "Suddenly, we were allowed to do what we couldn't do before," he says.

Theater Reality

"A talent is not an attribute," says Korsunovas. "It's a destiny. Theater is similar to the games of children. I visualize my performance as a playground."
When he was growing up, Korsunovas didn't like toys. He staged plays instead. "Theater was an entertainment. Now its an outlet to express inner repression."
"Childhood is a period of strong emotions," he says. "It is hard to survive. Your main refuge is your imagination, I had a vivid one. Even my parents were worried" 's he laughs 's "you need games to keep up the sadness which is beyond the surface."
He was an avid reader of the classics. And today, he mentions some of his great influences as being Dostoevsky and Hemingway. He loves the Austrian author Stefan Zwieg the mad Norwegian Knut Hamsun, Kafka and Strindberg.
For Korsunovas, the main purpose of theater is "to offer a possibility to express what we can't with words. It is also a medium to speak about the problems of contemporary society and to give sense to what is happening with us now… It talks about all the information we can't get from TV or media."

In the '90s, as Korsunovas' career was beginning at the Lithuanian Academic Theater, many of his plays earned the ire of critics and censors.
When he staged the British writer Mark Ravenhill's "Shopping and Fucking," many were disturbed by the depictions of sex and drug use. Works by Lithuanian playwrights, Sigitas Parulskis' "P.S. Byla O.K." and Bernard Marie Koltes' "Robert Zucco," which asked troubling questions about morality and the culture of celebrity, led to some high-tempered discussions.
The Lithuanian Theater Union ended up censoring the black humor and absurdity of Korsunovas' work.

In 1998, he established the Oskaras Korsunovas Theatre (OKT) as a way of creating a new theatrical language and finding a connection between contemporary and classic works. "Shopping and Fucking," he points out isn't all that different from "Oedipus Rex." Both are about the most arousing of taboos: incest and patricide.
Korsunovas ended up touring internationally. He has staged productions of "Romeo and Juliet" in modern day pizza parlors, as well as a take on the famous Russian modern novel, "The Master and Margarita."
With a permanent troupe of 15 actors, the company has its own character and OKT hopes to remain a free, independent non-profit organization. In April 2004, the establishment may have caught up with Korsunovas, when the Lithuanian Culture Institute honored him with the best presentation of Lithuanian culture abroad.

Future plans

After seeing the world and enjoying honors from strange corners of the globe, Korsunovas is back home in Vilnius. He wants to cultivate a new generation of Lithuanian theater directors with his Sirens festival, which aims to celebrate contemporary theater and find ways to connect Lithuanian artists with their counterparts abroad. This fall will mark the third time it will be held.
Elona Bajoriniene, who organized the festival with Korsunovas in 2004 and has served as its artistic director for the past three years, says that this year's festival will focus on spaces.

"We want to break through and to focus on theater interventions into daily street life or other spheres of art," she says. "We are interested in theater's interactions with city spaces, with music, video, texts…Artists can gather an unbelievable amount of ingredients…to transform the chaotic into a stunning contemporary picture of everyday life."
Things keep changing. Korsunovas is looking to return to Turin to do something based on Mozart's operas with the Italian author Alessandro Barrico. He also wants to move out and stage something in Klaipeda.

Korsunovas is always looking for new ways to reinvent the classics. He may be an atheist, but his favorite book is the Bible. At the moment he's planning an interpretation of the Book of Job, an odd choice for a man who seems to have shaken off whatever afflictions he has met and achieved an enormous amount of success.