“Orpheus” is a production based on the play by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), one of the most prominent figures in French cultural life in the first half of the 20th century. Written nearly a century ago, the play touches on themes that remain just as relevant and significant today. According to the play’s director, Žilvinas Vingelis, it is a kind of fairy tale for adults, one that explores dreams and reality, relationships and family, and the careerism that often overshadows them. “Cocteau acts like a cautious juggler here, creating a world where there is no single truth, and where dreams once again become real.”
“Orpheus” (1925) was not only Cocteau’s first major theatrical work but also the artist’s first attempt to explore the theme of the Greek mythical singer Orpheus. This theme followed him throughout his artistic career, including his later well-known film trilogy: “The Blood of a Poet” (1930), “Orpheus” (1950), and “Testament of Orpheus” (1960), all written and directed by Cocteau himself.
The play’s action unfolds in the home of Orpheus and Eurydice, a young couple living in Thrace, which unmistakably reflects the Paris of the 1920s. The audience is transported into an elegant, mystical Art Deco space, where the soundscape of the performance is created by composer Andrius Šiurys using objects found on stage. Orpheus is a surrealist poet, created through a stream-of-consciousness technique. He strives to write a masterpiece for a mass poetry competition. His creative method – interrogating a horse that has taken up residence in his home, hoping to reinvent poetry itself. Meanwhile, neglected and rejected, Eurydice seeks solace in the company of Ertebiz, a glazier. However, it soon becomes clear that neither Ertebiz nor the horse are quite what they seem…
The plot fuses elements of classical theatre, surrealism, dadaism, and the visual arts. As director Vingelis notes, in this play, reality blends with a dream, while the main themes of life and death, creative ambition and the opposition of personal happiness emerge. While the artistic and cultural significance of the play is undeniable, its staging in Lithuanian theatre history has been minimal. Notably, a revised and updated translation of the play, no longer affected by Soviet censorship, is finally being made available to the Lithuanian public.
Today, Jean Cocteau could probably be called an interdisciplinary artist. According to The National Observer, “Among the generation of artists whose boldness shaped all of 20th-century art, Cocteau was the closest to a true Renaissance man.” Indeed, he experimented with numerous professions, such as a writer, poet, playwright, painter, screenwriter, filmmaker, graphic designer, pianist, interior and fashion designer, sculptor, creator of surrealist objects, music producer, and even boxing promoter.
The performance features an ensemble of actors from three generations, intermedial stage solutions, as well as surgeons high-clambers, the Guardian Angel working as a glazier, mirrors that serve as doors to death, and other surrealist images that have become part of the world Cocteau and the creative team have created.
It is worth noting that Cocteau’s play “Orpheus” was staged in Paris in 1926 by the Armenian-born French theatre director Georges Pitoëff and his wife Ludmilla Pitoëff. The set of the premiere was designed by Victor Hugo’s great-grandchild Jean Hugo, and the costumes were designed by the French designer, the world’s fashion icon Coco Chanel, founder of “Chanel”. Cocteau also collaborated with other prominent artists of this time: the composer Eric Satie, the painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, and others.
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