Dance, Edita, Dance

Rimantas Kmita was nominated for the Golden Stage Cross (2026) for the dramaturgy of the play “Dance, Edita, Dance.” Have you ever felt as though you suddenly no longer understood the script your life was following, or what genre of story you had found yourself in? Are you the main character, or merely a supporting character in someone else’s film? That is exactly how Edita feels. “Dance, Edita, Dance” is a tragicomedy about Edita, a young woman who works at a video rental shop in the early years of independence and tries to understand her place in the world by watching films. In Edita’s imagination, life is a film—she just doesn’t yet know what genre. Sometimes she is a fighter, sometimes a romantic heroine, and sometimes a lonely teenager lost between Hollywood dreams and the reality of Šiauliai. At the heart of the play is Edita’s obsessive love for a young man who has no idea how she feels. Like the novel “Pietinia kronikas,” Rimantas Kmita’s new play balances comedy with a sensitive, sincere exploration of its subject. With gentle humor, it reveals how a young woman’s identity takes shape when there are no clear models—when American films mingle with post-Soviet reality, and ideas of the free market with old, still-unhealed traumas. Making her theatre debut, acclaimed film director and screenwriter of “Pietinia kronikas” Eglė Vertelytė draws on cinematic techniques: screen projections and filmed scenes merge with live action and choreographer Airida Gudaitė’s interpretations of the film “Dirty Dancing.” The director invites the audience to watch the events on stage as though they were “films” created in Edita’s imagination. The audience finds itself between two worlds—reality and fantasy, everyday traumas and cinematic dreams. Is it possible to live through reality without retreating into fantasy? Is it possible, living among pirated VHS tapes, to make an original film of your own life? The play is like an extension of the novel “Pietinia kronikas” on the theatre stage, but here the story is told from Edita’s perspective. Edita is played by Vaidilė Juozaitytė, one of the most promising young-generation actresses from Šiauliai, who also portrayed Edita in the highly popular film adaptation of the novel. Her stage partner is Valstybinis Šiaulių dramos teatras actor Tautvydas Galkauskas. And, of course, the play is performed in an authentic Šiauliai dialect.

Premiere: June 5 and 6, 2025.

AWARDS: At the 42nd professional theatre festival “Teatro genas,” Vaidilė Juozaitytė won BEST ACTRESS for her role as Edita (Rokiškis, March 2026). At the 17th Dalia Tamulevičiūtė Professional Theatre Festival, playwright Rimantas Kmita received the award for best Lithuanian text for theatre (Varėna, October 2026).

REVIEW:
IN THE PRESS:

General season sponsor:
General performance sponsor:
Funded by: