Escaped alone

“When the world came to an end, four women were left alone. Where they are is unclear. It could be purgatory. It could be a theatre. It could be the world left behind in the wake of a catastrophe. A place somewhere between life and death. Or perhaps it is not a place we can recognise at all. What matters is not the answer, but the fact that they are here. They do not know exactly what happened. They do not know whether anything exists beyond themselves. They remember their lives before, but it is impossible to tell how much of those memories are real and how much is born of imagination, distorted experience, or an attempt to preserve a world that may no longer exist. And yet they behave as though that world were still intact. They talk. They wait. They argue. They remember. They laugh. They invent rules. They repeat themselves. They perform various actions. From what remains, they try to impose some kind of order. Again and again, they reconstruct the world so that they do not have to acknowledge its absence. This is not a performance about catastrophe. It is a performance about people living in its aftermath, who still want to go on living as though it had never happened.

A sense of collective anxiety, of society and civilization falling apart. The performance explores not the catastrophe itself, but the human capacity to adapt to it. How do we go on living in a world that is burning, seemingly without noticing? How do we laugh, talk and argue over the trivialities of everyday life while, deep down, sensing just how fragile the system we inhabit really is? How does catastrophe become part of everyday life? And how long can we go on pretending that nothing is happening? The four women repeatedly piece together a world from whatever remains. Yet it may not be a world we recognise. It may be fragmented, distorted, absurd. Objects can become things they have never been before. The body can become a space. The performance becomes a radical act: a theatre not of productivity, but of survival. Not the telling of a story, but an attempt by human beings to keep from going mad. Not the restoration of the world, but an effort to convince themselves that the world still exists. The four women construct their own reality from the remnants of their former lives,” says director and scenographer Artūras Areima.

Escaped Alone (2016), a play by Caryl Churchill (b. 1938), one of the most significant contemporary playwrights, unfolds through a conversation between four women about the world today and the threats it faces, whether real or imagined. Although written ten years ago, Churchill’s play feels particularly relevant today, engaging with fears that define our present: the climate crisis, social isolation, and political and psychological instability. The British playwright, renowned for works that examine abuses of power and women’s struggles to assert themselves within male-dominated systems, turns her attention in this play to human helplessness.

Areima chooses to approach difficult subjects through humour, inviting audiences to step back and look at themselves from a distance. At a time of profound uncertainty for Lithuania and the world at large — marked by war and geopolitical tensions, environmental threats posed by global warming and pollution, and the dangers of the digital world — the performance invites audiences to reflect on how they respond to crises: by ignoring them, making jokes, talking about them, or taking action.

In an era of political instability and social upheaval, this work offers a powerful and timely reflection on contemporary life.

Project partners – The State Small Theatre of Vilnius and Artūras Areima Theatre

The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture