MEDIATHEK

Mark Ravenhill: SHOPPING AND FUCKING The play “Shopping and Fucking” is urgent for us today both in the political and social respect: it exposes the most shameful trait of today’s life, culture and society – everything is bought and sold, even our morals are a commodity. The characters of the play, young people, are also made to sell their only value – their youth, they sell it in order to survive. In this respect Ravenhill wrote a cruel play, but also very human at the same time. Human, because it provokes the audience to look differently at the most indecent or deplorable human acts and their causes. For me it was extremely difficult to direct this play. What it represents is indeed terrible. Of course, one can say that its characters are fringe dwellers, homosexuals, drug addicts, and their problems do not concern us. I don’t claim that I’m particularly interested in this. But the play reveals extreme life situations and raises quite general problems: we can see that today commercial relations have already spread over the spiritual realm. After the restoration of independence Lithuanian theatre ceased to be in resistance and lost touch with urgent problems and real – changing! – life. The social system and human relations changed. People underwent all kinds of psychological and spiritual cataclysms… In the meantime, theatre as if closed up in itself and became a kind of culinary art for connoisseurs. Ravenhill’s play offers a possibility to speak about the problems of contemporary society, dependence of one person on another, slavery… I would like to set the realistic theatre against the “abstract” theatre prevailing in Lithuania. To my mind, the purpose and privilege of theatre is to give sense to what is happening with us now… “The play “Shopping and Fucking” is up-to-date in both the political and social sense: it uncovers the most shameful traits of today’s life, culture and society – everything is for sale, even moral identity become the item of merchandise. The characters of the play are the young people, being made to sell their only value – their youth, and they are selling it wanting to survive. From that point of view M. Ravenhill wrote a cruel play, but it is very human at the same time. Human, because it provokes the spectator to evaluate in a different way the most indecent or even blameworthy actions and their reasons”. (Oskaras Korsunovas) Set designer: Juratė Paulekaitė Composer: Gintaras Sodeika Cast: BRIAN - Vaidotas Martinaitis, Vidas Petkevicius GARY - Darius Gumauskas LULU - Airida Gintautaite, Rasa Samuolyte MARK - Arunas Sakalauskas ROBBIE - Dainius Gavenonis Premiere 1999 September 9 [msb]