“THE THINKING HEART OF THE BARRACKS” / TRUE STORIES OF THREE DESTINIES (documentary performance)
Playwright and director – BIRUTĖ MAR
Composer – ANTANAS KUČINSKAS
Stage and costumes designer – INDRĖ PAČĖSAITĖ
Choreographer, assistant director – SIGITA MIKALAUSKAITĖ
Video Projection Designer – MARIUS VILČINSKAS
Lighting artist – AUDRIUS JANKAUSKAS
Cast:
NATALIA – ALEKSANDRA METALNIKOVA
ETE – BIRUTĖ MAR
JOANA – SAULĖ EMILIJA RAŠIMAITĖ, GABRIELĖ MALINAUSKAITĖ
Duration – 1 hr 20 min.
Premiere – 13 October 2024 at the D. Tamulevičiūtė Professional Theatre Festival, Varėna.
The performance features excerpts from Joana Ulinauskaitė-Mureikienė’s memoir “Trials of Fate”, fragments from Etty Hillesum’s letters and diaries (translated by Aušra Gudavičiūtė and Birutė Mar). The story of Ukrainian Nataliya Skrinnik was recorded and translated by B. Mar.
The project was funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
Upcoming events
About
A documentary performance telling the stories of three women faced with historical genocides – Dutch Jewish woman Etty Hillesum (who perished in Auschwitz during World War II), Lithuanian Joana Ulinauskaitė-Mureikienė (a sixteen-year-old deported to a Soviet labour camp in the post-war years), and Ukrainian Nataliya Skrinnik, who spent a month in Russian captivity near Bucha at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Three heroines, three eras, three lives “in barracks” – when a person is stripped of their identity, their future, their human dignity trampled upon… When the only weapon that remains is faith, prayer, and song. When in the face of despair, inner freedom awakens – stronger than coercion, unlocking invisible powers hidden within.
Photos from the performance
Photos by L. Vancevičienė
Press and reviews
- Theatre scholar A. Gudavičiūtė’s conversation about the performance with playwright and director B. Mar “The Thinking Heart of the Barracks: On the Necessity of Bearing Witness” (menufaktura.lt, 11 November 2024)
- Theatre scholar I. Ragelskienė’s review “A Distilled Formula of Inner Freedom”, “7 meno dienos”, 30 January 2026
Awards
- Audience Award at the D. Tamulevičiūtė Professional Theatre Festival in Varėna (2024)
Audience Feedback
“A powerful impression after the performance. Every scene, every word was like an open wound
Tender, authentic, heartbreaking… a silence hung over the hall – that particular silence when everyone is feeling the same thing 
Thank you to the director and the actresses for this evening of emotion.”“Thank you for your authenticity. These tears aren’t from self-pity, not at all…”
“The Thinking Heart of the Barracks” – a performance I wish did not exist. Not because of the actresses – they performed with fantastic conviction, so truthfully that it is hard to tell whether it is an actress embodying a heroine or the heroine herself on stage. And yet – I wish this performance had never needed to be created in this world. Because it is built on true stories, on a true and painful present. Thank you for having the courage to stage what hurts. This is not just a performance – it is a quiet explosion within, when you do not know whether to applaud afterwards or to remain silent for a long, long time and leave the auditorium in that silence. This is a performance after which I feel – I have no problems. Not the smallest worry. Only gratitude – that I am here, and faith that the world still holds light. Thank you, Solo Theatre, dear and talented actresses, Birutė Mar, Aleksandra Metalnikova, Saulė Emilija Rašimaitė, for showing the present and bringing history back to life. For awakening the soul. For touching what so many would rather forget. And you – dare to remind us. Go and see it. Solo Theatre “The Thinking Heart of the Barracks”. (director – Birutė Mar)
“Women, you were magnificent. A tear rolled down and I wanted to leave, because it felt too hard to listen to what the characters were telling us… so many thoughts, so much anxiety and pain. And I cannot comprehend how people survived this, how they endured it – so many young, healthy, promising people never lived to see freedom, never saw the day they had waited for so long. Thank you for giving your hearts to the audience. You are fantastic!”
“You were fantastic! Thank you for creating a journey through time and heart.”
“It was unreal
– thank you for telling such painful stories so beautifully.”“Thank you for a wonderful, moving premiere! Just as in childhood we used to thread wild strawberries onto the slender stems of meadow grass, so the creators of this performance threaded pain and faith onto the strings of my emotions.”
“Fantastic! Bravo! We left full of everything… thank you for the quality of thought and the moment!”
“A moving performance, so that we might truly re-evaluate what we have today…”
“Yesterday I was at the theatre. Solo Theatre presented the performance “The Thinking Heart of the Barracks”. Real events, stories, experiences, and losses were woven together into the lives of 3 women. A Lithuanian, a Jewish woman, and a Ukrainian – three women, three nations, three different eras, but one shared pain. They all endured unspeakable human cruelty and great injustice, yet never stopped fighting. Their suffering became history, their strength – an example. No matter how much time passes, their voices will remain alive, reminding the world: such things must never happen again. And I wept during the performance, wept and wept. I so wanted to cry out, to scream – I felt that pain so vividly. But I could not, the hall was full of people. I wonder, would anyone have joined me? After the performance, I could not go straight home – I needed to collect myself, to be. I received word that all was quiet at home, so I walked the streets of the old town. I found myself thinking that here, in our beautiful Vilnius, there was a Jewish ghetto that imprisoned over 50,000 people, and after the war, only around 2,000 remained. Goosebumps ran through my body, and my heart ached so. I reached the sanctuary, knelt, bowed, and worshipped – for this Most Sacred Heart receives all and offers hope.”
“Birutė Mar’s performances are history lessons that must be remembered and seen more than once. The first performance by Birutė Mar that I saw was “Mother’s Milk”. I watched it a second time, too. After that performance, I set myself a goal to see all of Birutė Mar’s works. I am keeping to that goal. I have seen the magnificent “Ice Children”. Yesterday, I watched the premiere of “The Thinking Heart of the Barracks”. And I recommend them to you. All of them.
“THE THINKING HEART OF THE BARRACKS” (dir. Birutė Mar) – a performance telling the stories of three women faced with historical genocides. They were transported in railway carriages and carried on barges. They ate snow and licked frost from the walls to quench their thirst. Constantly hungry, they made rosaries from their bread rations and said their prayers. Beneath thick black quilted coats, they carried a free white heart, and no one, even in the harshest conditions, was able to soil it. “[…] today, God, You cannot help us, but we can help You to help us” – so says one of the performance’s heroines, Dutch Jewish woman Etty, who was imprisoned in the Westerbork and Auschwitz camps. And Lithuanian Joana, a post-war schoolgirl arrested for sewing sleeve bands for partisans (she embroidered the national tricolour onto them), never stopped reciting poetry even in exile: “Oh beloved spring, you will find me here no more…” And this gave her the strength to remain human. As did the belief that one day things would be better.
Today’s heroine, Ukrainian Nataliya, spent a month in a Russian-occupied village near Bucha. Nataliya received help and managed to return to her already liberated village, but she, who had so loved music, can no longer sing. Although we might call the era of the Jewish woman’s and the Lithuanian woman’s stories history, the experience of Ukrainian Nataliya – and all others who have lived and continue to live through similar ordeals – does not allow us to draw a final line. That same history, with all its brutal consequences, is no further away than the stage is from the audience.
The real Joana, now a 96-year-old woman of great spirit (her story brought to life on stage by actress Saulė Emilija Rašimaitė), is invited onto the stage after the performance and speaks in such a way that it feels as though, having bought a ticket to one performance, you receive two at once – the one masterfully directed by Birutė Mar, and another from Joana’s own lips. In such a moment, there is nothing left to do but recall the words of Jewish Etty, who, on the wings of a bird-shaped origami and with the thinking heart of the barracks, rose to Heaven: “What a miracle it is to live in Your world, despite what we, human beings, do to one another…””