t h e b l i n d
according to Josè Saramago
Premiere 2018 September 21,22th in Juozas Miltinis drama theater
Duration 150 min | audience 16+
Artūras Areima theater &Juozas Miltinis drama theater co-production
director,scenographer : Artūras Areima
dramaturge : Inga Sanakojevaitė
composer : π
light artist : Eugenijus Sabaliauskas
actors : Monika Poderytė, Petras Šimonis, Karolis Legenis, Giedrius Arlauskas, Emilis Pavilionis, Jolita Skukauskaitė, Justina Nemanytė, Donatas Kalkauskas, Vainius Sodeika
video operators Tadas Povilonis, Paulius Jakubėnas
Photographer Laura Vansevičienė
Supported by Lithuania Council for Culture
The play happens in an unknown place. The is an epidemic of blindness rapidly sprending around the town which causes panic. All over the country, there are shelters and support centers being opened for the ones affected by the epidemic. Meanwhile we are exposed to a half empty hospital that gets filled with infected people everyday. Suddenly in this tiny community a structure of excecutioners and victims is formed. A grotesque representation of the miserable and marginalized people becomes a story of humilliation. It is as if the blinded world has lost all its fundamentals, that were rooted in culture, religion and tradition, all its norms and the humanity itself. Blindness is not only a physical disability but rather a metaphor for human decay. It is much easier not to see. This way you are never worried. It is easier to live a life without seeing what you don’t wish to see. In a world like this, can we rescue what remains of the humanity? What are the limits of humilliation? In The Blinds we trying to aswer these questions.
The performance based on writings by M. Maeterlinck and J.Saramago is unraveling the feeling of emptiness and the experience of fiction. “If only I could feel anything” is a phrase that exposes new type of hopelessness that is ubiquitous today. Mental health professionals agree: throughout the recent 25-30 years most of the patients suffered from narcisistic mental health disorders. The symptoms of these narcisistic disorders are rather vague and it often is described as an all over pain like sensation and the feeling of complete emptiness along with the feelings of absurdity and fiction. This might be called as internal blindness. People who are suffering from this condition experience something abstract and irregular, somewhat a feeling of fakeness and uncertanty. The uncertainty is pushing the person further from his senses therefore pushes the world as we know it away from the individual. The person becomes more and more detached. Within this uncertainty a person is in the constant in-between of being and not being.
AWARDS: 2019 Highest Lithuanian award: Golden stage cross nomination for the best light design Eugenijus Sabaliauskas (performance „The Blind“, Artūras Areima theater, Juozas Miltinis drama theater)
REVIEWS:
http://www.bernardinai.lt/straipsnis/2018-09-25-a-areimos-teatro-aklieji
https://jp.lt/j-miltinio-dramos-teatro-premjera-aklieji-ziurovui-atsivers-neiskart/