Director Oskaras Koršunovas: ‘“The Lower Depths” is a laboratory where we are the ones on whom experiments are performed. We started creating it while still working on “Hamlet”. This is our first performance, in which we do not concentrate on the result, but seek to test and discover ourselves, so that the actors not only create their characters, but also retain the reality and remain themselves. Gorky’s text becomes relevant only when the actor is able to grow his or her character in his or her soil, so to speak, basing it on his or her own experience. This is the highest aim of the laboratory. It is an intersection between the actor’s personality and the character he or she is creating, a stranger. Therefore, we have chosen a special space and discarded the storyline and plot.

Moreover, in “The Lower Depths”, the actors are physically very close to the audience. In “Hamlet”, the actors were placed in front of mirrors, in which they no longer saw themselves. The people they saw troubled them and prevented them from lying. Yet, here we have dared to sit so close to the audience or, in other words, seated the audience so close to the actors that neither the actors nor the audience have a chance to avoid the confrontation. The theatrical screens, the lighting, or the magic of the theatre have no effect here. Everything is extremely open.’

What we saw looked like a kind of theatrical miracle coinciding with the general situation of theatre people today. First of all, Oskaras Koršunovas “melted away in the actors” – there was no display of directing through visual-conceptual signs. A metamorphosis of the director, who is so fond of theatrical expression and juggling with cultural symbols. Secondly, the actors’ partnership. (…) Their precise and strong interaction, tuning in and seeing each other. The magic of the effective word and sensitive reaction to one’s partner, and the actors’ organic existence in a chamber space. A well-tuned ensemble and alongside excellently expressed monologues.

Ridas Viskauskas, The Gliding December, Literatūra ir menas, 8 January 2010