Agnius Jankevičius, "The most important thing for me is to be useful to others" 1

Interview by Deimantė Dementavičiūtė-Stankuvienė
www.kamane.lt, 2016-10-07

In brief: Interview with director Agnius Jankevičius about his recent works, DreamWorks premiere - based on the play by Ivan Vyrypayev - staged at the Kaunas Chamber Theatre, about the topics that unify this and other works that are so important to the artist.

Observing the director's plays, as different as they might be, it seems that he likes to rebel. I wanted to know what the word revolt really means to him.

Angius Jankevičius' explains, "Revolt is a more general term and a statement that a revolt took place. But if one had to think about its occurrence, speaking specifically about me, it comes from the fact that something irritates or surprises me. Plays Revolt and DreamWorks are related by the fact that both explore the phenomenon of manipulation. In DreamWorks the revolt occurs in the general sense - as an egocentric manipulation stemming from the desire to have and from the inability to face the fact that you don't have something. The Revolt is different. We wanted to create something for the younger audience, not for children, but for young people. Something that would have the moments of interaction and would be different."

During the play, the plates with inscription “American dream” are hanging on the stage. I was wondering if the director could suggest how we should decipher them.

"This is the American dream: to live in a white house with a family, although everyone is fighting and everyone has some something wrong with them. It becomes a World War II disaster that ends either with killing, or profit, or deceit and etc. The play takes place in America. The characters are reasonably well off, having good, white-collar jobs, but they suffer from a great emptiness. Therefore they are hiring some kind of charlatans, Buddhists, who would occupy them because cocaine or alcohol is not enough," Angius Jankevičius says.

The play largely deals with emptiness. I was wondering how much of it Agnius Jankevičius experienced himself. The director answers, "I don't know how to measure it to determine whether it was a lot or little. But of course I experience it. I am hooked to that little manipulation mechanism…Sometimes I am told, "Oh, you're such a nihilist...why do you live? What do you care about?" I would think then that one thing for me is really important - to be useful to others. That is why I live. It is not some gods or abstractions that are important, but what is around us, someone is hungry, someone is thirsty, someone wants to have fun or remain sad..."


Read comments
Write your comment
*
*