Sun & Sea
The international music theatre hit and award-winning opera performance
Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė & Lina Lapelytė (LT)
Imagine a beach – you on it, or better still, watching from above – the burning sun, sunscreen and sweaty palms and legs. Watching from scaffolding above the stage, the audience looks down on a sandy beach, sunbathing vacationers, a mosaic of towels, bright bathing suits, children and toys. Their everyday thoughts, seemingly banal, reveal an underlying anxiety around climate breakdown – reminding us of our own inability to face it.
The internationally acclaimed award-winning opera performance Sun & Sea, by the Lithuanian artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, has been celebrated for its humorous, powerful, and timely depiction of urgent contemporary issues.
Download Sun & Sea – Libretto
“People were queueing up in New York and a great many other cities. Visual art critics sang the performance’s praises into the sky. O. discovered the three makers a good while ago. The festival introduced them to the public with the successful supermarket opera Have A Good Day in 2017.” – Joost Heijthuijsen (dramaturg O.)
Concept and development: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė
Director and set designer: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
Lyrics: Vaiva Grainytė
Composer and music director: Lina Lapelytė
Curator: Lucia Pietroiusti
Tour producer: Aušra Simanavičiūtė
Production manager / stage manager: Erika Urbelevič
Technical director: Lique Van Gerven
Libretto translation (from Lithuanian into English): Rimas Užgiris
Sound engineer: Romuald Chaloin Galiauskas
Singing performers: Elena Alymova, Milda Andrijauskaitė-Bakanauskienė, Teresė Andrijauskaitė, Marco Cisco, Svetlana Bagdonaitė, Nabila Dandara, Daniel Monteagudo Garcia, Claudia Graziadei, Artūras Miknaitis, Vytautas Pastarnokas, Eglė Paškevičienė, Lucas Lopes Pereira, Salomėja Petronytė
Performers: Raminta Barzdžiukienė, Vincentas Korba, Jonas Statkevičius, and others
Visual identity: Goda Budvytytė
Produced by Sun&Sea (Lithuania)
Founding Producer: Neon Realism (Lithuania)
Coproducers: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Goethe-Institut, Münchner Kammerspiele, National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, The Momentary, Arkansas
Sponsor: JCDecaux
Commissioner (Sun & Sea (Marina), Venice, 2019): Rasa Antanavičiūtė
Founding Patrons (Sun & Sea (Marina), Venice, 2019): Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Laurenz Foundation in Basel, Vilnius City Municipality
The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture