Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in his movie 'In Bruges' leaves spectators to decide what happens to his movie characters. The chess game, Carnival, pastiche – these are the top issues describing the creative work of the playwright.
The Pillowman play has been stage
d in many countries: three years ago this play was staged in Lithuania as well by a famous Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Vaitkus. In the play Pillowman actor Sergey Ivanov plays a writer Katurian Katurian.
"We tried to embody the characters as vividly, convincingly, and truly as possible, so that the play is watched like a football match and spectators eventually start supporting one or another team."
One of the questions to be asked is whether the author who writes about these gruesome things for the plays is responsible in case these things happen in real life.
"There are so many things discussed, such as responsibility of an artist, the effect of the artistic content on society, individual interpretation of works and the ways spectators see and hear things presented on the stage. I myself am depicting a personality who is fanatically fond of writing. I can't imagine what thoughts should be in the person's head so that he dares to write about fratricide in order to become a world-known person.
To my mind, this is a fanatic personality. Actually people do not usually think about the effects that their actions may cause on other people."
Hardly such heroes as Sergey Ivanov can live a month without some gruesome stories being played to order of a theatre director. The contemporary stage in Lithuania is a rather cruel place in which blood and screams is not an unusual thing. Literature is calmer than the stage.
Asked whether they see much violence in the contemporary literature, librarians reply Lithuanian writers do not enjoy scenes of violence, like foreign authors do.
Meanwhile, TV screens are full of screams, which are being followed by publications on cruel topics. A resident of Panevėžys, Ms Danutė, says that she is watching only a couple of soap operas, news, and TV programmes about the life of people on TV.
"Sometimes you just wish to close your eyes in order not to see these atrocities on TV."
On and on can we discuss what effect imaginary violence may have on us. Is it a way of teaching us how to behave in real world or a way of blowing off steam in virtual world and avoiding violence in reality? The only problem is that the impact of virtual violence on children has not been proved yet. Children do not feel the limits between virtual and real worlds as sane adults do. The limit is more evident to adults.
A forty-three year old Japanese woman who used to play a popular virtual fight game with beasts, in virtual world killed her imaginary husband. Even though no physical harm was done to any real person, the woman had to face the court for the virtual murder and was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in a real prison.
The sentence wrote "for illegal acquisition and use of other people's data".
The US anti-games attorney Jack Thompson is also known for working with numerous cases which deal with things that happened in virtual world. But he works for real not imaginary courts. The man is seeking to prove a direct link between virtual violence in computer games and murders in real world.
It might be that we will end up by having virtual prisons in which violent criminals will be punished for doing harm for their imaginary heroes, so, authors, creators of computer games or playwrights will have to bear responsibility for gruesome happenings in the stories that they have written, irrespective of their talents or wisdom.
Guantanamo prison that already exists in virtual world can be used for that purpose. This prison gives no opportunity to enjoy one's rights.
Actor Sergey Ivanov who constantly plays roles in which he depicts violence described by authors says that art has no other way as only to simulate violence in real world and in this way, wake up spectators, just the way the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh does in his play the Pillowman, according to which the Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Vaitkus staged it in the 'Jaunimo Teatras' ('Youth Theatre).
"There are so many things discussed in the play, especially with regard to violence against children. Let us raise a curtain, see what's happening behind the window, turn the TVs on, read papers and be aware of the abundance of violence shown there. We must speak about that. Even though people choose theater as some kind of an entertainment, on the stage we must show them a reflection of the real world.
I support the idea that theatre must be a field where there is a battle for what is happening behind the doors, outside, or even in the person's inner world. Theatre must be the place where these things would be spoken about. I think in general, people are afraid of speaking about those bad and gruesome things; they don't want to bother themselves, saying they already have enough problems of their own.
Theatre's mission is to raise painful issues and show them with even more emphasis and energy so that they teach something and let people think about certain things that they probably are unable to notice in their everyday lives. On seeing them people have to be shocked," says actor at the 'Youth Theatre' Sergey Ivanov.