„Austerlitz” at the 28th Festival

Last night on the Small Stage of Powszechny Theatre we presented video projection of „Austerlitz” directed by Krystian Lupa, based on the novel by W.G. Sebald.  The spectacle was produced by State Youth Theatre in Vilnius. Thank you for being with us that night.

„Austerlitz” by W.G. Sebald has been described as the „epic meditation of the Holocaust, the greatest trauma of the 20th century, and its consequences for the present day”. It is the first time that Krystian Lupa has reached for the prose of Sebald, one of the most outstanding and original European writers of the second half of the 20th century. The director builds a shocking picture of a journey inside a man who is hit by a trauma he is not entirely aware of but succeeds in wiping it out, at least partially. The frame story covers six decades, from 1939 till the end of the century, and it is a monumental work about isolation and the fight with oblivion where events experienced by milions of people which easily escape our collective memory return to us with redoubled force.

On the brink of war a mother sends her 5-year-old son Jacques Austerlitz from Prague to London where he is adopted by a Welsh protestant family. He grows up not knowing his real name nor the country he comes from. After many years he starts his long journey in which he goes to the very bottom of his soul and fights trauma but at the same time believes that there is a key to understand his own identity at the end of the jorney.

„Austerlitz”
based on a novel by  W.G. Sebald „Austerlitz”
Direction and stage design: Krystian Lupa
Costumes: Piotr Skiba
Music: Arturas Bumšteinas
Video: Mikas Žukauskas
Assistant to the director: Tauras Čižas
Cast: Sergejus Ivanovas, Valentinas Masalskis, Viktorija Kuodyte, Jovita Jankelaityte, Matas Dirginčius, Danute Kuodyte, Auguste Šimulynaite, Girius Liuga.

Photographs: Katarzyna Bąba