L / EAR

Director Greta Štiormer is the winner of the second annual contest “DramaTest”, organized by the State Small Theatre of Vilnius, for this contest she presented an excerpt after Labanauskaite's play “L / EAR”.

L / EAR – a contemporary poetic interpretation of William Shakespeare's King Lear, where the main character is depicted in their adolescent years (18 years old). Although the nuances of the story and plot of W. Shakespeare's tragedies are taken into consideration, the play is an attempt to explore the search for one’s identity nowadays, using unconventional methods – when one focuses more on the appearance and image rather than the internal landmarks and values.

L / EAR is not only an unusual and innovative interpretation of the traditional tragedy as a genre, but also a modern supplement to its content, the newfangled take of the playwright G. Labanauskaitė inviting to explore the adolescent years of King Lear, where one can have a glimpse into the underlying causes of problems which manifest later in the character's life. These emerging problems are depicted through the conflict between different generations and the duality of human personality. The play is distinctively cinematographic, which allows freedom of form and use of different means of media during the performance – it embodies the action through changing forms of media and intertwined genres that are different from the traditional, rather psychological representations in the theatre – one can experience the synthesis of music, audiovisual material, and the art of acting.

The play focuses on the prehistory of King Lear, questioning why he became the way the audience knows him from the original W. Shakespeare's play, and why he is so fixated on the exterior of things more than their inner essence? Perhaps that charge of mistrust has been inherited and has always been there...

There is also a very important detective element in the play; the audience is invited to investigate who the killer is. This is the moment when Lear becomes the Lear we all know from W. Shakespeare's play. In the beginning, the heraldess Merlina foretells the story, which unwittingly begins to come true...

According to the director of the play, there are two significant topics: firstly – toxic masculinity. From an early age Lear is taught about the kind of man he should be, play cowboys and Indians, get married, have children... Lear’s nature, however, is completely different, and he has to overcome a number of challenges in the fight against the search for his identity and place in the kingdom.

The most important topic in the play is self-abandonment and loveless upbringing. "To me, personally, it was important to emphasize that hatred within the family seeps through to the environment, expands like a contagion or poison, hatred grows alongside with the inevitable tragedies," says the director of the play G. Štiormer.

Playwright Gabrielė Labanauskaitė is more interested in how Shakespeare's Lear, who believed in his daughters' words about loving with his ears rather than heart, would act nowadays. Maybe that is the reason why, not only in the play but also in the performance, music and musicality play a significant role in expressing characters’ thoughts, feelings and subtext.

"The title of the play, L / EAR, is a play on words, a mystery; its meaning is revealed in the performance of the play," - claims the playwright Gabrielė smiling.

About the director

Greta Štiormer (b. 1997) is a Vilnius-based theatre director, creator of interdisciplinary art and contemporary opera. Greta Štiormer graduated in classical piano and music theory at the Conservatory of Music. She graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with a Bachelor's degree in Theatre Directing in the course of Eimuntas Nekrošius, and later completed her studies in Sculpture at the Vilnius Academy of Arts with Deimantas Narkevičius as her supervisor. As a theatre director, she has presented her work in such venues and organisations as Operomanija, Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, National Academy of Dramatic Art in Paris, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Meno Fortas Theatre, Kaunas Artists' House, Vilnius State Small Theatre and in various site specific locations She has won competitions such as the Klaipėda Young Theatre Days Festival, as well as the contemporary opera sketch competition "Opera Genome" and DramaTest - winner for the best directed play. As a trainee, she has participated in various workshops in Europe and the USA, including Nowy Teatr in Warsaw and the Atlanticx Cohort in New York, Baltic Current forum in the Baltic States and many more. Her main research focuses on interdisciplinary opera and drama staging, installation and performance through the synthesis of classical opera and contemporary post-dramatic theatre. Research topics include queer culture, feminism, deconstructing the classical text, playing with poetic approaches and questioning social normativity. Greta is also a creative and interdisciplinary writing facilitator working with queer youth. Currently, Greta is a graduate in Beth Morrison's BMP: Producer's Academy as one of the participants of 2023 year's co-hort.

Aistė Šivytė, theatre critic:

The performance puts an emphasis on the form and the audiovisual expression, which mostly convey Lear's emotions, create an additional layer of meaning. <...> The most impressive part is that so many dierent components create a coherent development of the plot. The minimalist scenography of chairs and tables <...> the interspersed mix of computer graphics, rap, opera, 2000s fashion and many other apparently incompatible things look strangely organic and self-explanatory. <...>

L / EAR is rich in intertextuality, it reveals many different angles and points of view when looking into the prehistory of young Lear's fate. It is hardly possible (and perhaps not necessary) to have a single interpretation of Lear's youth. It may be considered a story of destructive love or a representation of the damage of toxic masculinity, a tale of the inevitable Shakespearean fate, or simply an audiovisual experience that is purely based on the text of the play. Maybe it is an analysis of one's inner Sago in each of us, trying to understand why he abandons some?