Name: THE CHOICE (with EN surtitles) || Movement and puppets performance
Start: 2025-04-16T18:30:00+03:00
End: 2025-04-16T19:30:00+03:00
Location: Vilniaus teatras "Lėlė"

THE CHOICE (with EN surtitles) || Movement and puppets performance

𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗲𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗘𝗴𝗲𝗿
“Memories are often fragments, brief moments or encounters, which together form the scrapbook of our life. <…> Memory is sacred ground. But it’s haunted too.” (Edith Eger, “The Choice”).
During the Second World War, Edith Eger, her mother, father, sister and other Jewish families were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. A ballet dancer and gymnast, she danced for Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death. The belief that everything that was happening was only temporary, that soon she would be able to see her beloved one and parents, helped Edith to find strength and endure not only incomprehensible horror, cruelty, humiliation, dehumanization, exhausting work, hunger, diseases, the Road of Death, but also life afterwards: “When they liberated us, I was so weak I could not even speak, I could not move and only was lying in a pile of corpses. We became free, but we did not know what to do with that freedom of ours.” Edith’s parents were killed in a gas chamber. Her boyfriend was killed a day before the liberation.
It took several years for Edita to learn to forgive – not only others, but also herself.
With this unique experience, she encourages all sufferers to face trauma and choose the freedom to escape from it: “You cannot change what happened, you cannot change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose to live in the present.”
In the performance inspired by Edith Eger’s book “The Choice”, through movement, dance, fragments of memories, puppets, it is sought is to tell the story of a woman who saw the unfathomable cruelty of humanity with her own eyes, who hid the memories for many years and eventually realized that true freedom and true liberation from prison occurs only when she dares to return to the place from which so many have never returned...
This is the story of all of us. A story of people who have gone through difficult experiences, people who cannot let go of the ghosts of the past, people who suffer from the prisons of their own thoughts.

ᨒ Director, puppet artist: Gintarė Radvilavičiūtė
ᨒ Playwright: Virginija Rimkaitė
ᨒ Choreographer: Sigita Mikalauskaitė
ᨒ Composer: Rita Mačiliūnaitė
ᨒ Scenographer, costume designer: Julija Skuratova
ᨒ Lighting designer: Vilius Vilutis
ᨒ Actors: Sigita Mikalauskaitė, Deivis Sarapinas, Lijana Muštašvili, Indrė Vėlyvytė, Eliza Bondarenko
ᨒ Age: 14+
ᨒ Duration: 1 hour
ᨒ Language: Lithuanian with Lithuanian/English surtitles
ᨒ Venue: Vilnius Theater LĖLĖ (Arklių str. 5, Vilnius)
ᨒ Tickets are distributed at the theatre box office and Bilietai.lt
📍On the day of the performance, be sure to check www.teatraslele.lt for any cancellations or postponements.