"News"

The first stage of the fifth contemporary dramaturgy festival “Dramokratija” has ended – this weekend the workshop with playwright, director and dramatist AnnaLina Hertzberg has taken place.

“Dramokratija” always puts focus on relevant problems and this time it takes on the lack of experiments in current Lithuanian theater. For three days the best friend of the festival. “Kablys”, sheltered workshops which was held by a guest from Sweden and encouraged upcoming playwrights to search for new forms and ways to connect to the audience.

“Every day of the workshop started with writing exercises. They are really great and will be useful after the workshop as well.”, playwright Irena Kunevičiūtė was planning the future. Iveta Volungevičiūtė, who is participating in “Dramokratija” for the second time, enjoyed individual time AnnaLina Hertzberg spend with playwrights. Festival’s first timer Matas Vildžius stressed expedience of the workshop – little of theory and advises how to make plays more interactive from AnnaLina’s own experience.

AnnaLina Hertzberg, the lecturer of the workshops, was tired after three days intensive and happy she had a possibility to know the voices of contemporary Lithuanian playwrights. “I can't wait to see how they will develop the plays we started. If one of two plays will be staged in theater, that will be the best possible award for me, for what I do.”.

Plays which now are being developed by the participants of the workshop, will be available to hear in free of charge readings of the fifth “Dramokratija”. This year the festival will take place on 23^rd-28^th of April in Vilnius.

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When people go to theater, they mostly know what to expect.  They know forms of plays from Antiques, written by Shakespeare, in style of commedia dell’arte or contemporary playwrights perfectly well. By the end of the last century more affecting plays came to be, more theater performances crossed the lines of stage and theater in general, used new technologies to enhance spectators experiences. Now there has come the time to create a Lithuanian form of play – there are more Lithuanian plays on stages of theaters and talks about lack of Lithuanian  playwrights are changed by search for national play form.

Contemporary dramaturgy festival “Dramokratija” comes back for the fifth edition and invites to re-discover writing for stage. This time the festival will encourage upcoming playwrights to break all the rules and experiment with writing for theater by relating to the audience, finding unique structure and language of the play, etc. “Dramokratija” is not only a platform for plays to be heard but it also fosters beginning playwrights to perfect their writing. This time the festival invites applying for free of charge workshop with Swedish playwright, director and dramaturg AnnaLina Hertzberg. The workshop will be housed by festival’s best friend “Kablys”. Ten upcoming writers who by the 5^th of January will email their motivational letter, the idea of the play and the first ten pages of the play to [email protected], will be selected to participate in the workshop.

The works of the lecturer of the workshops, AnnaLina Hertzberg, have been staged in Stockholm city, theater, Royal Dramatic theater of Sweden, in Finland, Georgia and Baltic countries. She is making international workshops and during them a lot of attention is paid to contemporary plays and new form of writing and performances. AnnaLina Hertzberg is one of founders of  “DramALH”, a theater and writers laboratory and the artistic director of children and youth theater “youth / east”.

The fifth contemporary dramaturgy festival “Dramokratija” will take place on 23^rd-28^th of April, 2019. For daily news of the festival, follow its “Facebook” and “Instagram”. 

This spring for the fourth time playreading festival “Dramokratija” will invite audiences to meet contemporary plays of upcoming Lithuanian playwrights and it has opened sign-up registration for actors and directors to join the teams. As usual, proessional and upcoming actors and directors sign-up by choosing the synopsis of the play but without knowing the name of the play’s author. This way festival wants to pursue principles of open castings in Lithuanian theatre community.

This year play reading festival “Dramokratija” invited participants to write about propaganda. It also provided three workshops with lecturers from Germany, Russia and Lithuania where playwrights developed their ideas and worked on writing. The workshops whioch took place in Goethe instutute in Vilnius ended with a virtual get together with participants, lecturers Theresia Walsewr (from Germany), Mikhail Durnenkov (from Russia) and Gabrielė Labanauskaitė (Lithuania) where everyone shared their experiences during the workshops.

Russian playwright Mikhail Durnenkov, who visited Vilnius to teach in play reading festival’s Dramokratija workshop on propaganda, has an exceptionally wide smile. Always in a good mood, the writer inspired upcoming playwrights and shared his experiences. M. Durnenkov has quite a lot things to tell – in early days he used to work as an engineer and a plumber, he was part of Arctic expedition during which he wrote a play („On the edge of the earth“ is the first BBC World play, written in Arctic circle), during a protest against annexation of Crimea he was arrested by police. These and other experiences often turn into plays. And this, theatre and future are what we sat down to talk about.

The second workshop of “Dramokratija” with Russian playwright and screenwriter Mikhail Durnenkov has come to an end. During the workshop which took place in 20 – 24 of October, M. Durnenkov introduced upcoming playwrights with schemes, characters development techniques, documentary theatre and verbatim method.

Play reading festival “Dramokratija” this year invites playwrights to write, talk and discuss propaganda. Also it offers three workshops for the participants and first of them has already taken place. Now participants and organizers are looking forward to meet Russian playwright and scriptwriter Mikhail Durnenkov who will visit Vilnius on 20th-24th of October and will help partcipants of the fourth “Dramokratija” to perfect their plays.

Theresia Walser is named one of the widely staged contemporary German playwrights whose works are popular not only in Germany but also in other European and other countries. In 1998 her play “King Kong’s daughters” brought her not only commercial success and praises of critics but also “Theatre heute” magazine’s award for the best young author. Among her other awards there also are two best play awards from Goethe institute.

The fourth play reading festival “Dramokratija” has started with a week long workshop with playwright from Germany Theresia Walser. Full of ideas and hopes participants are looking forward to meet lecturer from Russia. Sadly, orginizers are very sad to announce that due to political reasons it is going to be not long waited Mikhail Ugarov but another playwright and scripwriter, recommended by M. Ugarov himself, Mikhail Durnenkov.

Registration to the workshops of Dramokratija has been closed and there will be 27 participants of the workshops!

While waiting for the flight back to Manchester and drinking one more cup of black tea, Chris Thorpe was laughing ”It is very British, ain’t it?”. We sat down to talk right after the end of the first ever workshop organized by play reading festival “Dramokratija” which was held by this playwright and actor from United Kingdom.

“I’m lucky, I’m very lucky to come here,” he answered to if it was easy to decide to come to Lithuania. “If the workshop would have started a few days earlier or later I couldn’t have come here. It’s just a lucky accident.” The life of the artist is full of such accidents and he takes them all as an useful experience.