Calls to rename the Lithuanian Russian Drama Theatre have grown following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. After setting up a task group to come up with the new name back in April, the Culture Ministry is planning to announce its decision later this month.
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“The theatre community had the opportunity to present their vision and ideas, to express their thoughts, and we did creative work. I would hope that if the name changes, it should have some creative idea, some wings, so that it is not a formality,” Olga Polevikova, director of the Russian Drama Theatre and a member of the task group, tells LRT KLASIKA radio.
Most of the plays on the Vilnius-based theatre’s stage are performed in Russian. However, Marius Ivaškevičius, a playwright and another member of the task group, says that the ‘Russian Drama Theatre’ no longer reflects the full range of its repertoire.
The current name, he says, “is an anchor that draws [the theatre] away from Lithuanian-speaking audiences”.
He believes that the theatre must have a new name before its tour to the Avignon Festival in France. According to Ivaškevičius, showing a play about the war in Ukraine and the death of a Lithuanian filmmaker in Mariupol under the current name feels inappropriate.
He himself has suggested naming the theatre after Adam Mickiewicz, the great romantic Polish-Lithuanian poet. He is considered a national poet in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus and would therefore well capture the trans-national character of the theatre, Ivaškevičius believes.
However, Pavel Lavrinec, head of the Russian Philology Department at Vilnius University and another member of the task group, believes that naming the Russian Drama Theatre after Mickiewicz – or another Polish-Lithuanian author Czesław Miłosz, Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko – would also be limiting and give a wrong impression that it will focus on Polish or Ukrainian plays.
Lavrinec himself has suggested to pay tribute to the early twentieth-century author Jurgis Balturšaitis. “He is a well-known translator and poet who wrote in Lithuanian and Russian,” says Lavrincev. “He translated many plays from Scandinavian literatures that were trendy at the time,” Lavrincev says. “He was a theatre man.”
Meanwhile, Polevikova, the theatre’s director, favours “the Open Russian-speakers’ Theatre of Lithuania” (Lietuvos Atviras Rusakalbių Teatras”), particularly because of its abbreviation, L’Art.
“There’s no stagnation in this name. It is one of the most creative suggestions, it has openness and novelty. The name was proposed by the actors themselves,” says Polevikova.
Whatever the new name is, the theatre’s trade union representative says employees are fearful there might be more changes.
“As a trade union leader, I am concerned about social security issues. There are fears that a change of name could lead to other changes, such as job cuts, reductions in funding,” Vladimir Serov tells LRT KLASIKA.
When it comes to the name, says Serov, who is also on the task group, many proposals fail to capture what the theatre is about. “I hope that we don’t make a mistake. I think we need to wait for a name that really suits our theatre,” he says, adding that among the current proposals he favours L’Art.
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