Kissing the Ashes

In the organizer's words:

Klaipėda Puppet Theatre [Lithuania]

Multilingual: Lithuanian with German surtitles, suitable for international guests

The puppet show "Kissing the Ashes" was created in collaboration with the French puppeteer and director Renaud Herbin. The theater invited the artist to create a performance about Klaipėda, a city that has repeatedly risen from the ashes, and the dramaturgy of the performance is based on the events of the Second World War. In the fall of 1944, most of the old inhabitants were evacuated to Germany, and when the Red Army arrived in the city, it found only a few people left. Klaipėda has undergone an enormous change, a painful break in its memory.

Renaud Herbin and his creative team decided to give this rupture a poetic dedication and explore what it means to lose memory, how history is told when not everything is remembered or should not be remembered, what happens to the ruptures, which narrator - the actor or the puppet - is more real. Since historical narratives are a very delicate matter, the performance does not attempt to recreate the truth - on the contrary, it makes use of the imagination, which is also a kind of memory, especially the collective imagination. "Kissing the Ashes" is one of a thousand possible stories about what happens when a city loses its memory.

• Direction, design, dramaturgy: Renaud Herbin (France)
• Play: Monika Mikalauskaitė Baužienė, Renata Kutaitė Raudonienė, Vytautas Kairys
• Dramaturgy, assistant director: Lina Laura Švedaitė
• Composer: Arturas Bumšteinas
• Lighting: Vilius Vilutis
• Puppet design: Aušra Bakanaitė, Agnė Jablonskytė, Gintarė Radvilavičiūtė