Performance for adults ”Choice”

Based on the book “Choice” by Edith Eger
(Alma littera, Vilnius / 2020. Translated from English by Rita Kaminskaitė)

Directed by Gintarė Radvilavičiūtė
Playwright – Virginija Rimkaitė
Choreographer – Sigita Mikalauskaitė
Composer – Rita Mačiliūnaitė
Scenographer, costume designer – Julija Skuratova
Lighting designer – Vilius Vilutis
Puppetry: Virginija Pajarskienė, Gintarė Vaivadaitė, Marius Vaitkus, Justinas Šukaitis
Actors: Sigita Mikalauskaitė, Deivis Sarapinas, Lijana Muštašvili, Indrė Vėlyvytė, Eliza Bondarenko

Duration – 60 min.
Premiere – 29 December 2022

“Memories are often just fragments, brief moments or touches that make up a collage of life. Memory is untouchable ground. But it is full of ghosts.” (Edith Eger, The Choice)

During the Second World War, Edith Eger, together with her mother, her father, her sister and other Jewish families, was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. A ballet dancer and gymnast, she danced for Josef Mengele, known as the angel of death. The belief that everything that was happening was temporary, that she would soon see her beloved and her parents, helped Edith to find the strength to endure not only the incomprehensible horror, cruelty, humiliation, dehumanisation, backbreaking work, hunger, disease, the path of death, but also life afterwards. We were free, but we didn’t know what to do with our freedom.” Both of Edita’s parents died in the gas chamber. Her boyfriend was killed the day before the liberation.
It took Edita years to learn to forgive – not only others, but also herself.
Through her unique experience, she invites all those who suffer to confront their traumas and choose the freedom to break free: “You cannot change what happened, you cannot change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose to live now.”

Inspired by Edith Eger’s book “Choice”, this performance uses movement, dance, fragments of memories and puppets to tell the story of a woman who witnessed with her own eyes the incomprehensible cruelty of humanity, who hid her memories for years and who eventually realised that true freedom, true liberation from prison, would only come when she dared to go back to a place where many had not returned from …
This is the story of us all. The story of people who have had difficult experiences, of people who cannot let go of the ghosts of the past, of people who suffer from the prison of their own thoughts.