Having formally accepted the quotas of the European Union and opened its borders for refugees, Lithuania has already lost the majority of them. Unable to find a job in Lithuania, constantly facing the hostility of the society and wishing to reunite with their family members scattered all over Europe these people have been fleeing the country both legally (in rented buses) and illegally (with the help of smugglers).
The performance Dreamland of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre (LNDT) started as a reaction of a young team of artists to this acute problem. In November of 2016, a joint sketch of documentary theatre Arrivals/Departures (Lith. Atvykimai/Išvykimai) by arts agency Artscape and the LNDT was presented in the LNDT Studio. The sketch was based on the information collected during the art research at the Foreigners' Registration Centre in Pabradė, from online Lithuanian and foreign articles as well as speeches of politicians, and video recordings. However, while collecting the material and communicating with the immigrants residing in Lithuania, the creators realised that politics and quotations alone would not be enough for the performance. That is why, real people - the immigrants from the Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan and Russia - rather than characters impersonated by actors once again step on the LNDT stage. Some of them are refugees, to whom the asylum in Lithuania meant freedom and even life, whereas the others are economic, love migrants, and students. Do they have anything in common? Can they be linked in any way?
Concept authors Mantas Jančiauskas (the director), Agnė Matulevičiūtė, Rimantas Ribačiauskas, and Kristina Savickienė lead five immigrants onto the stage, where they retell their real stories next to the active image broadcast screen-cube. Documentary theatre has become this season's hallmark of the LNDT. “Documentary performance Dreamland is like the second part of Green Meadow (Lith. Žalia pievelė) by directors Jonas Tertelis and Kristina Werner (based on the stories told by the employees of Ignalina Power Plant and people of Visaginas town). The way of introducing a certain problem of Lithuania and presenting it to the audience - by talking to people facing it or struggling with it every single day - seems to be identical. And yet this time we encounter a very neat and clean spectacle. The characters of Green Meadow (with the help of set designer Paulė Bocullaitė) became a part of chaotic, crumbling system, whereas man in Dreamland (set designer Lauryna Liepaitė) ends up in a cold and ruthless grip of the system. Nothing is humane here - and yet everything is aesthetic,” critic Milda Brukštutė concludes (15min.lt).
Aušra Kaminskaitė (Kultūros barai) contemplates that, “the creators allowed the audience not only to face the problem of the refugees in Lithuania (perhaps for the first time), but also to check whether they are capable of accepting a different person. /.../ However, eventually I realised that I learned very little about the people on the stage - much less than from some documentary, photography or contemporary art exhibition... I wouldn't be surprised if the initial idea of the team changed completely as the analysis of the topic was based on the shared experience of the people rather than what the creators had intended.”
And yet with their performance and several protests the theatre creators undeniably performed their civil duty - the District Court of Vilnius Region decided that one of the performance participants, Afghan Zabi Ahmadi, who had faced deportation to “safe Afghanistan”, could submit his documents and hope for a temporary residence permit in Lithuania.
