Vytautas V. Landsbergis is a poet, playwright, bard, film and theatre director. He obtained a degree in Lithuanian language and literature from Vilnius University. He also studied film directing at Shota Rustaveli Theater Institute in Tbilisi and perfected his skills with Jonas Mekas at Anthology Film Archives in New York as well as with Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Zanussi in Poland. He made his debut as a playwright in 1988 at the Šėpos Theatre of Political Parodies, established by the director Gintaras Varnas. Landsbergis is one of the most prominent children’s writers in Lithuania. He has received awards for achievements in children’s literature and been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. 

V. Landsbergis’s works, including Pelytė Zita (Zita the Mouse), Rudnosiuko istorijos (The Stories of Little Brown-Nosed Bear), Obuolių pasakos (The Apple Stories), Angelų pasakos (The Angel Stories), Briedis Eugenijus (Eugene the Moose), Gediminas ir keturi seneliai (Gediminas and Four Old Men), Bunkeris (The Bunker), Vilis, and Daktaras ir Mangaryta (Doctor and Mangaryta) have been staged in Lithuanian theatres, and translated into Swedish and Russian. Landsbergis’s plays combine folklore and documentary stories, poetry and politics. The style of the plays contains an exceptional harmony of the lyrical and the comical, the humorous and the wise.

The mono-drama Visiškas Rudnosiukas (The Complete Brown-Noser), staged at the Keistuolių Theatre in 2015 (Diagnosis: The Complete Brown-Noser), was inspired by V. V. Landsbergis’s favourite childhood book, a verse fairy tale Meškiukas Rudnosiukas (Little Brown-Nosed Bear) by Vytė Nemunėlis (Bernardas Brazdžionis), published back in 1939. The children’s book character developed into a protagonist of literature for both children and adults, featuring in Landsbergis’s poems, fairy tales and a book of anecdotes, The Stories of Little Brown-Nosed Bear (1994), as well as in the mono-drama The Complete Brown-Noser. The mono-drama revolves around the protagonist’s journey through different epochs – starting from the “prehistoric” times of Vytė Nemunėlis, the Little Brown-Nosed Bear travels the Soviet period, occupations and exiles right through to modern times. According to V. V. Landsbergis, the Little Brown-Nosed Bear is neither human nor an animal but a diagnosis. Therefore, the main aim of the play is to find out the protagonist’s qualities and discover him in each of us.