Events

Is there still earth beneath this asphalt? 🌱

The Lietuva Ensemble presents the premiere of its new musical production, Homo Asfaltus. Featuring intriguing new imagery, contemporary experiences, and a format highly unusual for the ensemble, the production is set to surprise both long-time admirers and those just discovering the ensemble’s creative experiments.

Homo Asfaltus is a musical narrative—a play about modern humanity, disconnected from the earth and searching for identity in a globalised world. Inspired by the work of Jonas Mekas, the writings of Antanas Škėma, and other Lithuanian émigré literature, the performance explores the urban individual living amid speed, information, anxiety, and illusion, yet increasingly longing for nature and their roots. Twenty-first-century reality is presented with a touch of intellectual irony, while the score brings together contemporary rhythms and the sounds of Lithuania’s national heritage: sutartinės—traditional polyphonic songs—and music performed on the kanklės and birbynė guide the audience from the noise of the city back to an archaic world of sound.

H O M O A S F A L T U S is a new species of asphalt-dwelling human, capable of living without a permanent home like the homeless people of the modern age—not exiled and not displaced, but choosing to live without attachment to their native land. Homo Asfaltus has lost the ability to feel and is therefore unable to sense even the new life growing within. It is pregnancy—a new beginning—that finally awakens Homo Asfaltus and inspires them to begin again, transforming the end of the world into the beginning of a new one: a world in which language and words disappear, leaving only archaic music.

Homo Asfaltus travels back and forth by Bolt, just as Garšva—the protagonist of Antanas Škėma’s White Shroud—rides up and down in a lift, having completely lost any sense of meaning.

Homo Asfaltus lives with a persistent sense that the world is ending because of the ongoing war, yet may still be most concerned about withered begonias.

Homo Asfaltus lives without a sense of home or connection to their own land, wondering whether there is still earth beneath the asphalt.

The libretto, written by Laura Švedaitė, tells the story of a woman living in the city who stands on a bridge, ready to jump. The people around her tell her that she is pregnant, as she has failed to notice it herself. The revelation first turns her gaze towards the world: “What kind of world will I bring my future child into?” Her world is the city in which she lives—an allegory of hell. It is unbearably hot, and as she wanders through it, she circles endlessly through anger, greed, and deceit. The city is ruled by the homeless: people who have no home and merely find somewhere to sleep for another night.

The pregnant woman, an urban resident, begins to feel the desire to return to nature, because for as long as she remains in the city, she is effectively exiled from her natural state—from life in nature. In the city, she meets an old man standing barefoot. He asks: “Am I part of the last generation that will walk barefoot?” She starts running and finds herself in a forest. There, she takes off her shoes and begins to feel nature speaking to her. Eventually, she goes into labour, and rain begins to pour. The new human being signifies the possibility of a new beginning and a new chapter.

“The sense that the world is ending, which we live with today, also offers the possibility of a new world beginning. We have placed too much faith in reason, and so we continue to move endlessly through the circles of hell. Yet there are still forces that return us to nature—and pregnancy is one of them,” says the production’s director, Giedrė Kriaučionytė-Vosylienė.

The music composed by Dominykas Digimas reflects a journey beginning with the rhythms of the present day—rhythms that attempt to make Homo Asfaltus feel. It is contemporary music without subtlety, music that must be loud and intense to rouse Homo Asfaltus from inertia, as though awakening them from a dream of numbness. It is music Homo Asfaltus knows but has forgotten—music that evokes memories. It becomes a journey towards a wordless musical realm, towards the archaic, where only sound remains and words disappear, where only emotions and the hope of a new beginning continue to exist.

The opposition between the city and the countryside is a recurring theme in Lithuanian literature. Today, however, the writings of the “landless” generation seem to be taking on new relevance. In Lithuanian literature, the term “landless” refers to authors who wrote in exile and experienced a profound longing for their native land—more precisely, for Lithuania. Many of them emigrated to major cities, leaving behind the quiet rural life of Lithuania. Above all, the musical production Homo Asfaltus was born from the inspiration of Jonas Mekas’s work and his play The Very Beginning of the Beginning.

In numerous works, Jonas Mekas reflected on exile, identity, nostalgia, and adaptation to a foreign culture. To be inspired by Mekas means to draw inspiration from his personal experiences, his feelings of exile and loneliness, his longing for his homeland, his search for identity, the fragility of time, and other existential questions faced by a person caught at the crossroads of historical upheaval in a war-ravaged world—one that resonates strongly with the world we inhabit today.

The production is inspired by Mekas’s play The Very Beginning of the Beginning and by his ability to focus the human gaze on the living, pulsating natural world of the here and now—a world that exists without human effort and without the exertion of the human mind.

Drawing also on other classic works by Lithuanian émigré writers—including Antanas Škėma’s White Shroud and Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas’s Eldorado—we reflect the experience of the contemporary individual whom we have named Homo Asfaltus. These writers are described as “landless” because they all created their works in exile, most often in major cities around the world. We transpose this feeling—the longing for one’s native land—onto today’s Homo Asfaltus, who feels exiled within the globalised world and searches for a sense of self.

🌼 CREATIVE TEAM

Composer – Dominykas Digimas
Conductor – Egidijus Kaveckas
Director – Giedrė Kriaučionytė-Vosylienė
Script and libretto – Lina Laura Švedaitė
Costume designer – Izabelė Narečionytė
Lighting designer – Pijus Vasiliauskas

🌼 CAST AND PERFORMERS

Choir and Orchestra of the Lietuva State Ensemble

Pregnant Woman – Smiltė Murencevaitė-Janušienė
Mother – Ingrida Raugaitė / Aušra Kiuraitė-Svilainienė
Old Man – Saulius Vasiliauskis
Twin Sister – Asta Balnionytė-Grajevskė
Runner – Domas Saulevičius / Modestas Karanda
Person – Gintarė Kulikauskytė / Justina Kaminskaitė
Woman – Viktorija Šedbaraitė
Museum Employee – Daiva Čepulionienė
Yoga Teacher – Jevgenijus Kovalčukas
Father – Martynas Žukauskas
Neighbour – Kęstutis Papartis / Dainius Garuckas
News Voice – Donatas Kaikaris
Man – Ignas Ščesnulevičius

Urban Orchestra – Arvydas Jankus, Simas Miklovis, Viktoras Rimša, Tomas Matevičius, Lauryna Labutytė, Saulė Zadesenec, Gintarė Želvytė, Sonata Zavadskytė, Evelina Sulikaitė, Vincentas Daukšys