14. Klaipėda Drama Theatre

About

Some buildings simply stand still – but there are also those that live. The Klaipėda Drama Theatre is one of the latter. It is an actor with many masks, who greets you with a classicist calm, expressionist tension, and the cool restraint of modernism.

This collector of masks was born on a modest wooden comedy stage in a swamp at the mouth of the River Dangė. After the Great Fire of Klaipėda in 1854, new walls went up. The city later purchased the building and reconstructed it in a neoclassical style, adorning it with magnificent pilasters, a risalit, and a pediment embellished with bas-relief. Many of these architectural and decorative elements have survived to the present day with little alteration. Over the years, the theatre has adopted a new mask in each period. 

Time and people have played key roles in shaping to the theatre’s architectural masks. At one time, architects closed the theatre off from the outside world. Later, Stanislovas Lukšas, Saulius Manomaitis and Kristina Jurkutė reopened it, allowing in light, sound, and people. Rather than tearing down what had come before, they entered into a dialogue with it.

Yet the theatre has always remained true to itself – even when the façades stood silent and its stages whispered. Even when the walls fell, the spirit endured – the feeling that here, everything is possible.

This building speaks not only of architecture or masks. It speaks of survival. It shows how one can change without losing one’s identity. Come and discover the many masks of the Klaipėda Drama Theatre.