Dance, Edita, Dance! at Factory Series@The Chain Theater

Dance, Edita, Dance! — Off-Off-Broadway Premiere

Dance, Edita, Dance! makes its global English-language premiere this December as part of the Factory Series at The Chain Theatre. Directed by Rūta Mėta Pauliukaitytė and adapted from the acclaimed work of award-winning Lithuanian author Rimantas Kmita, this quasi–one-woman, movement-driven production explores the wild, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking world of a teenage girl growing up in 1990s Lithuania.

The play follows Edita, a sharp-tongued, restless 17-year-old from the Šiauliai housing blocks, caught between American pop-culture fantasies and the realities of post-Soviet life. Working in a tiny video rental shop filled with Western VHS tapes, she searches for role models and tries to decode how life and relationships “should” look—until real events force her to step beyond movie logic and find a voice of her own.

This female-led production unites an international ensemble of performers and designers based in New York. With artists contributing onstage and off, the team creates a dynamic work that crosses borders, generations, and creative disciplines.

Blending monologue, movement, and ’90s nostalgia, Dance, Edita, Dance! brings a rarely told Baltic coming-of-age story to the New York stage, capturing the courtyards, blocks, dance floors, and dreams of a newly independent Lithuanian youth—just steps from Broadway.