Photo by R. Tamošaitis

Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė (b. 1976) is a prose writer and playwright. She studied TV directing and Lithuanian philology. Her debut as a playwright was the play Išlaisvinkite auksinį kumeliuką (Liberate the Golden Foal) in 2000. Her second play, Liučė čiuožia (Liučė Skates), featured in her collection of prose and drama, which was published under the same name in 2003. In the same year, Liučė was staged by Algirdas Latėnas at the State Youth Theatre. In 2004, it was directed by Vladimiras Skvorcovas in Moscow. The play won first prize at the Theatertreffen theatre festival in Berlin.  It was staged by the American director Yana Ross in 2007 in the Oskaras Koršunovas Theatre, while Oskaras Koršunovas revived it for the stage again in 2019, exploring the play from the modern-day perspective with his former students. 

Černiauskaitė’s works offer a particularly sensitive view of people, their relationships and details of everyday life. In the world of theatre, the author is best known precisely for the success of the aforementioned Liučė. However, Černiauskaitė’s two other plays have also been staged in Lithuania – Artumo jausmas (A Feeling of Intimacy) and Blyksnis po vasaros vandeniu (A Glimmer under the Summer Water).

Composed of snippets and fragments, Černiauskaitė’s Liučė čiuožia (Liučė Skates, 2003) is a lyrical, gently humorous exploration of the characters’ relationships. The play revolves around three couples who seem to be skating through life, suffering the trivialities and unfairnesses of everyday existence, sometimes simply feeling bored. The creative work playfully reveals the topics of loneliness, the search for closeness and the relationship between a man and a woman.