Thursday 2 April 2015 at 6:00 and 8:00 pm
After the 8:00 pm presentation – a meeting with the project creative group, moderated by Vlada Kalpokaitė and Veronika Janatjeva.
Librettist: Vaiva Grainytė
Composer: Lina Lapelytė
Director and set designer: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
Lighting designer: Eugenijus Sabaliauskas
Costume designer: Daiva Samajauskaitė
Sound director: Arūnas Zujus
Producer: OPEROMANIJA
The opera focuses on the inner lives of cashiers in a shopping centre: showing what lies behind their mechanical “Good afternoon!“, “Thank you!“, “Have a good day!”, and fake smiles. Faceless, robot-like shop workers found in everyday life are transformed into unique and lively characters. Their secret thoughts and biographies are turned into short, personal dramas. The characters of different sales clerks, embodying universal archetypes, convey the predominant social landscape. The libretto is a revealing mosaic of spoken, literary language and documentary.
The atmosphere of the supermarket is established through the glimmering and buzzing installation of daylight lamps and environmental sounds, connecting the audience to the stage and the 10 cashiers. The set itself is very minimalistic. Real goods – the recognizable décor of a shopping centre – exist only in acoustic and verbal form. The monotonous beep of each item being scanned is a key sound through the whole opera. It gets louder and quieter, but it is always present. Songs that accompany the beeping are as monotonous as the process of shopping and selling. Instead of becoming the main point of the opera, music serves the thoughts of the cashiers – it facilitates their voice.
The premiere of the short version of this opera took place in 2011 at the Contemporary Art Centre during the 4th Contemporary opera festival NOA (New Opera Action), and the full version was first presented in 2013 at the 10th International Vilnius Theatre Festival “Sirenos”.
Cashiers: Cashier I (an early morning duet) – Lina Dambrauskaitė, Cashier II (a foreigner) – Liucina Blaževič, Cashier III (an ecstatic optimist) – Vida Valuckienė, Cashier IV (a somewhat rough bimbo) – Veronika Čičinskaitė-Golovanova/Anna Miščenko, Cashier V (a new girl, clumsy) – Lina Valionienė, Cashier VI (a mother of an emigrant) – Rima Šovienė,
CashierVII (a young woman with a degree in arts) – Milda Zapolskaitė, Cashier VIII (a single mother) – Rita Račiūnienė, Cashier IX (sings about sleeping products) – Svetlana Bagdonaitė, Cashier X (an early morning duet) – Kristina Svolkinaitė
Security Guards: Kęstutis Pavalkis (piano), Aleksandr Kuznecov, Aleksandr Kravčun
Lina Lapelytė (field recordings, electronics)
More information: www.haveagoodday.me