Theatre action at the Museum of Genocide Victims
Aukų street 2A, Vilnius, Lithuania
Aukų street 2A, Vilnius, Lithuania
2013
Museum of Genocide Victims is located in the former KGB headquarters where Soviet crimes had been planned and implemented for 50 years. The former interior details are kept and authentic interior is recreated in some of the rooms. Hundreds of people were cruelly tortured here and thousands suffered from repressions. The theatre action Unlocked Remembrances was a tombstone for these people and their relatives built from beautiful recollections without pathetic or pathos.
The genocide prosecuted in Lithuania by KGB still remains a fragile and painful topic to the people of Lithuania; it usually is expressed in the form of tears and fears. Therefore, while going a theatrical action in the museum of genocide, the main goal of the creators, was to look at this dark period of Lithuanian history through a new perspective, without tears or pathos, and so to encourage the youth to become interested in their history and respect it. In the former KGB prison, where there is a museum at this point, we did not tell storied of torture and suffering, but the stories of people’s lives before they were imprisoned there. We tried to emphasize that people who were imprisoned there were not some abstract creatures, but were real people like you and I. By doing this we tried to engage the youth on this topic and invited them to honor the casualties not because you need to, but because you feel an inner desire to do it.
Creators: Dalia Kiaupaitė and Oskaras Valiullinas with Vilnius University Theater Drama Troupe students
