“Marti”. Photo by LauraVansevičienė

During the first decade of her career, the young generation director Gabrielė Tuminaitė (b. 1983), who regularly works at the State Small Theatre of Vilnius, has already created twelve performances, in addition to embodying roles in theatre and cinema.

From 2001, Tuminaitė studied cultural history and anthropology at Vilnius University, but she discontinued her studies in 2004 enrolling instead on directing studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in directing in 2008, followed by a Master’s degree in 2010. In 2008, together with her coursemates, Tuminaitė organised the first edition of the theatre debut festival Tylos! (Silence!), which she then led for eight years.

The director likes to work with forgotten or undiscovered texts, so her repertoire includes both classics of Western and Lithuanian literature and contemporary works by Lithuanian authors. Tuminaitė has directed performances at Klaipėda Drama Theatre, the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre and Sovremennik Theatre in Moscow (Russia). She has also created five performances at the State Small Theatre of Vilnius.

In 2009, Tuminaitė won the youth magazine Pravda award for the best directorial debut. In 2012, the director became the laureate of the contemporary drama festival Versmė, and in 2013, she won the award for directing at the first international Rimas Tuminas theatre festival Vasara in Druskininkai.

Tuminaitė’s latest performance is Daughter-in-Law (Marti, 2018) based on the short story by the Lithuanian literary classic Žemaitė (Julija Beniuševičiūtė-Žymantienė). It is an attempt to understand and interpret the 19th-century Lithuanian rural values and life in the 21st-century city. This director’s work attempts to read and understand one of the core literary pieces of the school curriculum in the context of today, to look at the concepts of marriage, family, love and happiness from the point of view of modern emancipated women. teatras@vmt.lt www.vmt.lt