The Production of Eimuntas Nekrošius's "Kvadratas" as a palimpsest of Soviet-era memory

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Eimuntas Nekrošius; Lietuvos teatras; Spektaklis "Kvadratas"; Atmintis; Cenzūra; Sovietmetis; Eimuntas Nekrošius; Lithuanian theater; Play "Kvadratas"; Memory; Soviet era; Censorship.

ENTheater director Nekrošius’s staging of "Kvadratas" (The square) was the most famous play; it was politicized and the most scrutinized by censorship and has become legendary in the annals of Lithuanian theater, a static cultural monument that no one has attempted to decipher by using new interpretative tools. Current technological capabilities "reanimate" the performance and make it accessible to all: there are even several filmed versions that have now been digitized and are available on the internet. This allows us to raise some questions: why was "Kvadratas" so important in the late Soviet Period and during the years of "perestroika"? How is it made, as the formalists Would say? What "generators of meaning" did it trigger in the consciousness of spectators from different countries and of various experiences, that for many it became an event to remember for the rest of their lives? This analysis was driven by the aim to examine the genesis of the play, and the effect of historical time which shaped its multilayered discourse. We attempted to discover whether aside from the political codes there are other configurations of meaning hidden within the performance that might be germane to the study of cultural memory and contemporary mentalities. [Extract, p. 97-98]