“I Don’t Remember Anything”. Photo by LauraVansevičienė

Actor and director Kiril Glušajev (b. 1984) studied at the Vilnius Academy of Arts for a year from 2003 but later decided to change his direction and go into theatre, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor’s degree in drama theatre director from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Between 2004-2005, he studied on a student exchange programme at the Dartington College of Arts, Falmouth, UK.

Glušajev has been acting at Vilnius State Small Theatre, improvisation theatre Kitas kampas (Amother Angle), Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, OKT/Vilnius City Theatre and Anželika Cholina Dance Theatre and has embodied several roles in cinema. He also works as a simultaneous translator in Lithuanian, Russian and English, conducts improvisation master classes and seminars, teaches at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and heads the improvisation theatre Kitas kampas.

The list of Glušajev’s directing works contains ten performances. The list is dominated by productions of classical form and structure and the director does not shy away from theatricality but he creates it with minimalist means. Glušajev adheres to a minimal intervention strategy, relying on authors and actors.

One of the latest performances directed by Glušajev is I Don’t Remember Anything, 2019 based on a play by Arthur Miller at the Vilnius State Small Theatre. It is a story about the closeness and loneliness of two elderly people. They meet every night: he lives in his memories, while she doesn’t remember anything, he takes great joy in life’s achievements, while she regrets a meaningless life not able to remember anything else, he has quit drinking, while she has been emptying his alcohol supply with no memory of it. The director allows himself the luxury of giving time to the actors, their characters and the audience, offering them a pauses to simply be, ponder, get lost in their thoughts and then come back.

glushajev@yahoo.com