Performance based on the novel by Thomas Bernhard

  • Marszałkowska 8
  • Spektakl w ramach Baltic Transfer* Festival

Urbantschitsch Method (Urbančičiaus metodas) – performance and meeting

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  • Director

    Arturas Bumšteinas

  • Production

    Jaunimo Teatras, Vilnius (Lithuania)

  • Premiere

    October 18, 2020

  • Duration

     1 h 30 min.

  • Tickets

    regular 50 zł
    concessionary 30 zł

  • Language

    LT, with PL subtitules

Meeting with creators

After the performance there will be a meeting with the Jaunimo Teatras team and the show’s director, Arturas Bumšteinas, at the Kawałyk sztuki cafe around 9:30 pm.

Free entrance.

Cast

Jonė
Dambrauskaitė

Mantas
Zemleckas

Justina
Mykolaitytė

Viktorija
Damerell

Creators

director: Arturas Bumšteinas
scenographer: Viktorija Damerell
binaural heads: Vytenis Gadliauskas
costume designer: Viktorija Damerell
composer: Arturas Bumšteinas
assistant director: Justina Mykolaitytė

About performance

Composer Arturas Bumšteinas, who is making his debut as a theater director, is presenting one of Thomas Bernhard’s most famous novels, Das Kalkwerk (The Lime Works), known in Poland from Krystian Lupa’s staging. Using excerpts from the novel, the director tells a story about insanity and deafness, together with professional and amateur actors, who talk, sing and play bass guitars. Viktor Urbantschitsch was an Austrian doctor who lived in Vienna at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and worked in rehabilitation of deaf people. He was convinced that absolute deafness was rare, and with regular practice of certain hearing exercises, it was possible to discover sound-sensitive zones in the deafness spectrum and develop them with the help of methodical sound exercises. Konrad, the protagonist of Bernhard’s novel The Lime Works, applies the so-called extended Urbantschitsch Method to his wife for decades until his experiments kill her. The actors’ actions in the performance intertwine with their recorded voices reading and singing Bernhard’s texts. In the extracts of the novel used in the performance, the theme of hearing is obsessively repeated, which forms different listening habits of the viewer-listener.

Arturas Bumšteinas – an artist working with sound. He is interested in listening/hearing problems and authentic methods of creation. Arturas works at the intersections of music, exhibition art, performance art, theater and radio art disciplines. His work has been presented by such institutions as Holland Festival, Unsound, Ultraschall, Cricoteka, Operomanija, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, CAC, Vartai Gallery, Berghain Kantine, etc. In 2014, Arturas was awarded the Palma Ars Acustica Prize for his radio art, in 2017 he was a resident of the Berlin artist program DAAD, and in 2019 was awarded the Earring of Borisas Dauguvietis for the integration of sound experiments into the contexts of Lithuanian theater. Arturas is also Artistic Director of the Festival Jauna Muzika (Young Music) in Vilnius, which brings together sound art, performativity, visual art and experimental practices of new music. His CDs can be found in the catalog of Polish publishing houses Bôłt Records and Sangoplasmo Records.



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