Madagascar

Much loved by audiences, “Madagascar” has been performed on the stage of the State Small Theatre of Vilnius for two decades. The play’s success is due above all to its intriguing plot, inventive situations and masterful dialogue, written in the authentic language of the first half of the 20th century. The production is based on a play by Marius Ivaškevičius, now a widely known Lithuanian playwright, which presents Lithuania as a phenomenon in an original, self-ironic and intellectual way, revealing an authentic Lithuanian view of itself and the world.

For this work about Lithuanian utopias, the author “found” a unique, non-legendary figure from the first half of the 20th century: geographer, traveller, geopolitician and public figure Kazys Pakštas, called “a propaganda minister without ministerial rank”, “a marcher for a free Europe”, “Ulysses”, “a patriotic whirlwind”, “the nation’s herald” and “the nation’s apostle”. He was compared with public and cultural figure J. A. Herbačiauskas, philosopher S. Šalkauskis and even US President A. Lincoln. Sensing Lithuania’s fate, he envisaged moving it to an African country and creating a “reserve” homeland there.

In the first part of director Rimas Tuminas’s production, which has audiences laughing wholeheartedly, the focus is mainly on Kazimieras Pokštas (actors Tomas Rinkūnas and Ramūnas Cicėnas) and his mad idea of “bringing Lithuanians together for mass emigration” to Africa. The second part belongs more to Salė (actress Indrė Patkauskaitė) and her dramatic fate; her prototype is the sensitive poet Salomėja Nėris. “Madagascar” seems to recast the myth of S. Nėris, making Salė the equal of the utopian K. Pakštas. The second part also echoes the crash of “Lituanica”, piloted by S. Darius and S. Girėnas, as well as war and occupation.

Other historical figures are mentioned in the production, including Emilija Kvedaraitė, a student of writer V. Mykolaitis-Putinas and a friend of S. Nėris, and the renowned French writer and diplomat of Lithuanian origin O. Milašius (Oscar Milosz), cousin of Nobel Prize-winning writer Č. Milošas. According to the production’s director, R. Tuminas, what matters most in creating theatre is inventiveness—not coming up with how to stage this or that scene, but inventiveness itself. It allows theatre to be born anywhere. In the theatre, the audience should feel as though they are at a celebration and enjoy the layering of meanings, while also sensing that the celebration is not eternal and will come to an end.