ARCHIVES 2000 / Le Maître et Marguerite (Master and Margarita)

Even more than his plays, the huge novel by Boulgakov has become an infinite theatrical object from which directors all over the world draw and create the most varied of versions. The work associates two moments in the history of humanity that take place in parallel: the first half of the 20^th Century in Moscow and the dawning of Christianity in Jerusalem. Woland travels in between these two periods. Woland who claims to have known Pontius Pilate when Jesus is arrested - he is obviously the devil - and drags with him on his modern and devastating course, a writer called The Master and a woman, who like in Faust, is called Marguerite. The meaning of life and love is at the end of a journey that skews social behaviour and political certitude. The play directed by Oskaras Korsunovas - who, at thirty years old is already considered as one of the great artists of his country - does not claim to translate the book in its entirety, but aims to ignite a bright fire where a new generation of Lithuania is reflected. This performance puts the emphasis on the psychiatric world and its echoes found in the context of Communist Russia. In his hospital room, the Master recounts and lives out his fantastic adventures, characters spring from other characters and go from one metamorphosis to another. Madness or sanity ? Illusion or reality ? Contradictory truths are superposed in this great theatre of paradoxical fantasmagoria.