Director: Kamilė Gudmonaitė
Set and costume designer: Barbora Šulniūtė
Actors: Mantas Zemleckas, Gytis Laskovas, Danas Kamarauskas, Vaidas Maršalka.
Translation from Russian by Rimantas Vanagas
“For it is the thoughts that lead one to redemption or drive one
to ruin – after all, redemption and ruin are only thoughts.”
Victor Pelevin. BUDDHA’S LITTLE FINGER
In his surreal anarchist narrative worlds, Russian cult author Victor Pelevin describes a piece of post-Soviet reality in the mid-1990s. In the context of violent conflicts, his characters sometimes surprise with philosophical conversations, as in the eighth chapter of CAPAEV I PUSTOTA (eng. BUDDHA’S LITTLE FINGER), which Kamilė Gudmonaitė uses in her production KETURI (eng. FOUR). Three young men – the typical drug dealers of post-communist Eastern European suburbs – try to understand the new world order on their way to their next hallucinogenic trip. Knowing that those who want to keep their heads above water have to reach the top of the food chain, they speculate about who or what holds the system together at its core. Are they the new predators or the prey, outsiders or cunning foxes? Between thoughts, it dawns on the three of them that something has always been playing with them.
With a sideways glance at Lithuanian society, Kamilė Gudmonaitė tells a story of men in which the armed suburban boys are both identification figures and a horror scenario. The question of who or what to wait for here turns out to be the crucial question – for both sides of the proscenium.
