Dalios Mataitienės kostiumų paroda Lietuvos nacionaliniame muziejuje : Mataičių teatras tautos istorijos ir kultūros keliuose

ENAt the dawn of Lithuanian national revival, the Lithuanian Folklore Theatre spread the ideas of national identity, traditions and continuation of Lithuania’s statehood, which encouraged people to turn to their folk art, culture and history. Established on 1968 as the Lithuanian Ethnographic Ensemble of the State Youth Theatre, it was renamed as the Folk Music Theatre Company of the Open Air Museum of Lithuania in 1974 and, in 1987, it became the Lithuanian Folklore Theatre. The founder of the theatre, its programme and production director, author of compositions and folklore researcher, was Povilas Mataitis, while Dalia Mataitienė was the costume and set designer. That is why the theatre was most often simply called the Mataitis Theatre. Dalia Mataitienė was the first professional artist to bring the traditional 17th–20th c. costume to the theatre stage at the time when stylised national costumes made at art production factories after artist designs prevailed. Referring to authentic examples of folk clothes found in museums, historical and ethnographic sources, memoirs of contemporaries that she had written down herself, and photographs, she created stage costumes that reflected patterns, colour combinations and decoration details from different periods and various ethnographic regions. Another collection – unique costumes of the 17th c. residents of Lithuania Minor – she created according to written and iconographic sources. In 1993, the National Museum of Lithuania received a collection of 68 costumes. [From the publication]