Thomas Mann had a short but memorable connection to Lithuania. Five years after the publication of his novel The Magic Mountain, in August 1929, he, his wife Katia Pringsheim-Mann and their two children arrived in Nida, an archaic fishing village on the Curonian Spit, a peninsula surrounded by the Baltic Sea, Curonian Lagoon, pine forests and sand dunes. The family stayed at Hermann Blode’s, a guest house with colorful memories of German expressionist painters.

The existential text of the novel Flights (“Bieguny”) by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk has inspired actress Aldona Vilutytė and director Jonas Kuprevičius – theater creators of different generations – to create a chamber performance in which the themes of the novel are explored through one woman’s intimate presence with herself.