#PROTEST is an experimental theatre project by director Žilvinas Vingelis and experimental visual theatre company “Kosmos theatre“. Inspired by circumstances of quarantine project aims to analyze the boundaries of theatre and seeks to adapt with openness, quickness and relevance. During the lockdown, this online performance was broadcasted live from actors’ homes, but at the ConTempo festival, spectators have an opportunity to see it in three different ways: to watch it live though the windows of Kaunas 2022 office, watch a live stream projection on the wall of Mykolas Žilinskas gallery, and virtually, during a live webcast.

Performance offers a fresh thought on themes of loneliness, isolation, social distancing, online communication, narrowness of expressions, obscurity, fear and responsibility to others.

The piece by Goda Simonaitytė, which was specially made for this project, takes us to 2220, an utopian republic of Monaksy (Greek Μοναξιά – “Lonliness“) where isolated people meet each other online to learn the forgotten social skills and brings back the eventually lost emotions.

Monaksy is a closed utopian, particularly modern, frugal, ecological, with maximum mechanization and collective ownership, a non-racial republic. The people of Monaksy are rational, closed, emotionally hidden and isolated from birth living in a social distance. The goal of the republic is perfection. In the long run humanity became an obstruction and was understood as a disease. Human emotions as symptoms which must be cured.

Could we live a fulfilling life without our daily emotions even if they are small, meaningless and annoying? Could we be truly happy scarifying ourselves for a higher purpose? Does isolation and social distancing makes us more sensitive and open to each other? Is it possible to reconcile unconditional progress with the drama of humans’ inner life? Human- is it a destroyer or a saver?