Alessandro Baricco "JŪRA VANDENYNAS" (Rež. Jokūbas Brazys)

Alessandro Baricco

Ocean Sea

Performed in Lithuanian with Russian subtitles

Premiere: 4 October 2025

Creative team:

Director – Jokūbas Brazys

Author of stage adaptation – Jokūbas Brazys

Scenographer, Costume Designer – Karolina Fiodorovaitė

Composer – Mantas Mockus

Lighting Designer – Karolis Zajauskas

Assistant Scenographer – Augustė Smaliukaitė

Stage Director’s Assistant – Eglė Kuzienė

Production Manager – Aleksandra Šalkinė

Oceano mare translated from Italian by Inga Tuliševskaitė

Cast:

Adams – Džiugas Grinys

Elisewin – Alvydė Pikturnaitė

Ann Deverià – Liuda Gnatenko

Plasson – Artūras Aleksejevas

Baron Carewall/The Old Man – Dmitrij Denisiuk

Professor Bartleboom – Artur Svorobovič

Dira – Makarova Jekaterina

Dol – Maksim Tuchvatulin

Father Pluche – Igoris Abramovičius

Dood – Gustas Vičkačka

In Ocean Sea (Italian: Oceano mare) by Alessandro Baricco, a group of strangers find themselves in a secluded seaside hotel, the Almayer Inn. Each arrives with a different world inside them, each living through their own personal drama. A kind of collective solitude session unfolds on the seashore. Spending time together by the sea entwines and transforms the lives of these people. For each newcomer, the relationship with the sea is intimate. Some have come here for healing, others hoping to escape their problems, illusions or misfortunes. An artist longs all his life to paint the sea, yet doesn’t know where to begin. A scientist devotes his life to mapping the sea’s boundaries. A woman is sent here by her husband to ‘recover’ from betrayal. A mysterious girl of extraordinary beauty seeks a cure for her fear of living. And perhaps none of them arrive by chance. The ‘hosts’ of the inn are three children – guides of sorts for the bewildered adults. Mystery abounds here.

In a sense, each is searching for something in the sea. Themselves? Answers? A cure? Salvation? Hope? Oblivion? Ocean Sea is a tale of love and vengeance, with the restless sea ever-present – its waves gnashing at the shore, gnawing at the soul and fragile edges of human unease.

“[...] there are three kinds of people: those who live by the sea, those who are drawn to it, and those who know how to return alive.” (Alessandro Baricco)

“The seaside inn becomes a purgatory. Here, time and space lose their meaning. The sea is an inevitability, the place where all begins and to which all must return. The sea becomes intangible; only its idea remains. In Ocean Sea, each character confronts a single essential question – how to unravel the secret of these waters. In doing so they might also unlock a fragment of their own enigma. I myself grew up on the seashore. Trying to unravel its mystery for much of my life, I sought answers to my own deepest questions. The inspiration for the stage version of Ocean Sea came precisely from observing this watery expanse.” (Jokūbas Brazys)

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Alessandro Baricco (b. 1958) is a phenomenon of Italian literature, the author of 14 novels. He studied philosophy and musicology, working for many years as a music critic at la Repubblica daily. His 1996 novel Silk brought him worldwide fame. Baricco himself has said that for him the way a story is told often matters more than the plot. His works are frequently staged in theatres across the globe. Following the publication of Ocean Sea in 1993, his fragmented narrative style led critics to call him a literary cubist.

Jokūbas Brazys (b. 1995) is a theatre director, a student of Oskaras Koršunovas and Eimuntas Nekrošius He graduated in directing from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2021. He has staged performances based on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Peter Shaffer's Equus, Agota Kristof's The Notebook, Albert Camus' Caligula, and Georges Bataille's The History of the Eye. He has released two plays in Ukraine – The Unburied Dead and Prometheus Imprisoned.