Inadequate Subsidy and a Market Economy in the Baltic Countries

Abstract

As an institution, the National Theatre in Lithuania is quite recent. It was founded in 1998 on the basis of the Lithuanian Academic State Drama Theatre (and in turn the former State Theatre of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, established in 1940) and was legally defined by the Law of Theatre and Concert Organizations passed by the Lithuanian Parliament as late as 2004. Until then the Vilnius ‘Academic State’ theatre of the Soviet decades, however grandiose and centralized, did not quite correspond to the idea of a ‘National’ culture establishment. As the local Communist government was residing in Vilnius and all the important meetings of Soviet officials and delegations from Moscow and other Soviet republics took place in the capital city, the Lithuanian Academic Drama theatre had to meet harsh requirements for the proper representation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Consequently, the most provocative and nationalist oriented playwrights and stage directors were kept outside the capital in other smaller cities of Lithuania, like Kaunas, Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Klaipėda. Furthermore, during the Soviet years the institution as such was perceived by many as part of a repressive system and as a way of legitimating censorship and state coercion of the artists. Therefore theatre production as a celebration of national community was at best identified with the cases when a performer succeeded in escaping for a moment the ‘institution’ in the live and uncontrollable situation of theatrical communication.