Director, puppet designer – Gintarė Radvilavičiūtė
Dramaturg – Virginija Rimkaitė
Set and costume designer – Julija Skuratova
Choreographer – Sigita Mikalauskaitė
Composer – Rita Mačiliūnaitė
Lighting designer – Vilius Vilutis
Lighting director – Simonas Racevičius
Sound director – Vitaras Aškelavičius

Performed by: Sigita Mikalauskaitė, Deivis Sarapinas, Lijana Muštašvili, Indrė Vėlyvytė, Eliza Bondarenko

Set, puppets, props and costumes: Virginija Pajarskienė, Gintarė Vaivadaitė, Marius Vaitkus, Justinas Šukaitis
Technical assistance: Justina Jukonytė, Liljana Janavičienė, Vidas Ginevičius, Arūnas
Prokurenko, Sigitas Budrys, Karolis Buinauskas

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.

‘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.
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.

Vilnius Theatre Lėlė was established in 1958 by a puppeteer, actor and director Balys Lukosius. Lėlė performances have been awarded at many international puppet theatre festivals. Although most tours are held in Lithuania, the theatre has also toured a number of foreign countries such as China, Algeria, Ethiopia, USA, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, England, Austria, India, Kazakhstan, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine. The team of Vilnius Theatre Lėlė does their best to keep the theatre open to not only the best traditions of children’s puppet theatre but also to valuable trends of modern theatre. Nevertheless, the primary aim is to retain the interest and attention of both the youngest audience and the adults.

Reviews:
“Even though the play is based on a novel, the director Radvilavičiūtė does not seek to retell the biography of Edita or the therapeutic effect, but creates a unique and extraordinary onstage world, bringing out the inner landscape of a struggling person’s way towards freedom – mysterious, frightening, ambiguous, although elegant and promising. Merging of corporeal with the intangible (spiritual) and turning of one into another in the dance and puppet performance The Choice creates a mystical, enigmatic beauty, determining the efficacy of this work”. / Ieva Tumanovičiūtė, 7md.lt, 2023-01-20

“It appears to me that every participant was creative and resourceful to the fullest extent, that’s why this performance, woven of subtle movements, sounds of music, lights and compositions of bodies and objects in a space of the stage, leaves the impression of a well-thought-out, meticulously executed, clean and aesthetically pleasing work”. / Audronė Girdzijauskaitė, Šiaurės Atėnai 2023 01 13