URBAN SANCTUARY

„ANALYSING THE BEAST“

Author: Paulius Markevičius, Barbora Šulniūtė
Directed by: Paulius Markevičius
Actors: Simonas Dovidauskas, Julija Šatkauskaitė, Marija Petravičiūtė, Greta Grinevičiūtė, Saulius Baltrūnas, Rimvydas Ambrazevičius, Sigita Pikturnaitė, Denisas Kolomyckis, Goda Simonaitytė, Severina Špakovska, Aidas Barkauskas, Povilas Adomaitis, Dovydas Grajauskas, Martynas Vaidotas, Eglė Valadkevičiūtė, Indrė Storpirštienė, Balys Ivanauskas, Augustė Pociūtė ir kt.

For one night the place will become a mystical temple of today. Leave the rushing routines and dive into the timeless space. The mysterious fog will bring you to a modern ritual, where you can wander, discover, trust, ask and answer. Observe or get involved. Maybe there you will meet a beast. Or maybe the one is you? The performative event “Analysing the Beast” is the latest collaboration between two Lithuanian emerging artists, Paulius Markevičius and Barbora Šulniūtė. Performance “Analysing the Beast” was presented in SIRENOS festival 2019, is selected for Lithuanian Showcase programme in festival Theatrium 2020.

The performance was created on the basis of documentary inspirations during the trips made around Lithuania, whilst analysing the beast, its environment and the natural need of the ritual. The creators have visited Lithuanian settlements that have experienced the greatest demographic changes within the last 10 years in the country as well as the National parks. They analysed what sort of “beasts” live in those areas. For creators, it was important to find the “beasts” who live there, how their adaptation features change and whose habitats or the entire species is vanishing. This event is a space between the performance and the installation, when the boundary between the observer and the participant assimilates and disappears, fusing together in the common space of time, as if breaking the usual laws of physics. There is no linear flow of time in the work process. It is a ritual-like sense of being focused on purpose, action, state, and everything else around, like being in the centre of a whirlwind, full of peace, but around – the earth mixes with heaven, objects, things, plants, humans, animals. … The work is intended to draw attention to the natural need of the ritual. Of course, in its specifics the space can provoke quite different feelings, different rituals, for every observer and participant. So we will be happy if such a individual approach and experience will be revealed this event.

What do we call the beast? Is a human a beast? In any case, the human is led by feeling, hunger, desire, crave, thirst – the beast.