Photo by Monika Dombrauskaitė

The theatre critic, playwright and writer Dovilė Zavedskaitė (b. 1988) learned the basics of theatre dramaturgy while participating in various theatre workshops. She spent half a year working with one of Israel’s most renowned representatives of fringe theatre, the director and playwright Naomi Yoeli. Zavedskaitė’s dramatic works have been published in Lithuanian (Nemunas, Lietuva skaito, Teatro žurnalas and others) as well as Latvian (Kroders, http://www.kroders.lv/lasa/1343) publications. The author immediately emerged as an interesting, promising playwright. The first adaptation of her play, Aštuonios minutės (Eight Minutes, 2016, directed by Sigita Pikturnaitė at Menų spaustuvė – the Arts Printing House), is a game with empathy, a collective attempt to discover oneself in the skin of another person. The author’s creative work is exceptionally open (she speaks of things which many don’t dare to discuss), specific humour, irony, impeccably polished characters, and prosaic attention to detail. Zavedskaitė tends to playfully employ theatrical forms in her plays: she is always on the lookout for an honest, intimate relationship with the audience. 

The play Dramblys (The Elephant) (2018) is a family portrait, talking openly of loss, suicide and depression. Despite its dark themes, the play is full of humour (which is rather dark itself), while the grim existence is balanced out by the slightly lighter, more comical everyday life. The play’s atmosphere is predominantly dream-like and grotesque, reminiscent of the presence of death as the decaying body meets eternity. The main characters are the father, son and daughter who don’t know each other very well and have trouble communicating with each other. In the background, other characters are to be found, such as colleagues trying to tell a depressed person from a dead person… The play won the second prize at the Talking About Borders international drama contest organised by the Nuremberg State Theatre in 2018.