Sun & Sea

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė

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The opera performance 'Sun & Sea' opens the 2022 edition of the Alkantara Festival. This performance presents beauty and catastrophe side by side, and the true cost of the pleasures of consumerism - an immersion into stories of a world on the edge of a precipice.

The internationally acclaimed, award-winning opera performance ‘Sun & Sea’ by the Lithuanian artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, has been celebrated for its humorous, powerful, and timely depiction of urgent contemporary issues.

Watching from a scaffolding above the stage, the audience looks down on a sandy beach, sunbathing vacationers, a mosaic of towels, bright bathing suits, children and toys. Their everyday thoughts, seemingly banal, reveal an underlying anxiety around climate breakdown – and puts us in front of our own inability to face it.

In English, with a libretto available in English and Portuguese.

 

Curator: Lucia Pietroiusti


ACESSIBILITY

There are no reserved seats, or chairs. The audience will watch the show from a scaffolding structure with two floors. The first floor is 3 metres high and the second is 5 metres high.

Access is only by stairs. People with reduced mobility can watch the performance from the ground level (which will be the beach level).

The performance is not recommended for people with labyrinthitis or chronic vertigo.


CREDITS

Concept and designer Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė e Lina Lapelytė
Director and set designer Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
Lyrics Vaiva Grainytė
Composer and music director Lina Lapelytė
Curator Lucia Pietroiusti
Tour producer Aušra Simanavičiūtė
Production manager / stage manager Erika Urbelevič
Technical director Lique Van Gerven
Libretto translation (from Lithuanian to English) Rimas Užgiris
Sound engineer Romuald Chaloin Galiauskas
Singing performers To be confirmed
Performers To be confirmed
Visual identity Goda Budvytytė
Produced by Sun&Sea (Lithuania)
Founding Producer Neon Realism (Lithuania)
Co-producers Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Akademie Schloss Solitude Goethe-Institut, Münchner Kammerspiele, National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Staatsschauspiel Dresden and The Momentary in Arkansas.
Sponsor JCDecaux
Funded by the Lithuanian Culture Council
Presented by Alkantara Festival, Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Culturgest, in partnership with Teatro Municipal do Porto.


BIOGRAPHIES

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (1983, based in Vilnius) works as a filmmaker, theatre director and visual artist. In her creative practice, Barzdžiukaitė explores the gap between objective and imagined realities, while challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way. Her recent full-length documentary film-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival among others, was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Lincoln Center in NYC, American Film Institute festival in LA and many other events and venues for cinema and contemporary art. Sun & Sea is her latest collaboration in the medium of performance.

Vaiva Grainytė‘s (b. 1984, based in Lithuania and Canada) text-based practice shifts between genres, interdisciplinary theatre works and publications. As a writer, playwright, and poet she takes action as an observant anthropologist: challenged by Grainyte's poetic interpretation, mundane social issues take on a paradoxical and defamiliarised nature. Her book of essays Beijing Diaries (2012) and the poetry collection Gorilla’s Archives (2019) were nominated for the Book of the Year awards, and included in the top twelve listings of the most creative books in Lithuania. Her oeuvre has been translated into over 10 languages. Her bilingual, cross-genre collage novel, Roses and Potatoes (2022), intellectually and ironically deconstructs the stereotypical concept of happiness embedded in contemporary culture.

Lina Lapelyte’s (1984, works in Vilnius and London) performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia. Her works engage trained and untrained performers often in an act of singing that takes the form of a collective and affective event questioning vulnerability and silencing. Her works were exhibited at 13th Kaunas biennial, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; Tai Kwun, HK; Glasgow International; Riga Biennial - RIBOCA2; Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th. Venice Biennale; Cartier Foundation gallery, Paris; CCA Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Baltic Triennial 13, Tallinn; Moderna Museet, Malmo; FIAC, Paris; Hayward touring show, UK; Serpentine, London; Her upcoming solo shows include Lafayette Anticipation gallery in Paris and Space gallery, London.

Co-funded by

Co-presented by

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.

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