The performance, based on a novel by little known in Russia Icchokas Kieras, presents the Lipmans, a family living in a ghetto. One of its members, a seventeen-year-old Izaak, will play a crucial role in his family’s life. Their fate and the fate of other families living in the ghetto will lie in his hands. It will depend on the result of the game of chess the boy will play with a German officer, Adolf Shoger, the commandant of the ghetto. This tragic situation is a background for presenting a whole spectrum of characters from the Lipman family. The way one perceives the world that surrounds them, the way to find a place for oneself in this world, the way to survive when one is deprived of freedom, aware that the end is close. Emotions, thoughts and deeds that come to the fore are love and friendship, the birth and death of children, pride and compassion, devotion and submission, pain and unlimited happiness experienced on daily basis. The performance of Mindagus Karbauaskis shows a man in a situation that changes the natural course of life, confronts people with the necessity to take action, make difficult choices, fight with or surrender to the fate.

Russian Academic Youth Theatre (former Central Children’s Theatre) was established in 1921 by Natalia Sac, its first artistic director. Since 1980 RAMT Theatre is run by Aleksey Borodin an outstanding Russian artist, the laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, Moscow Award, K. S. Stanislavski International Award. In its repertoire it has plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Nabokov, Klyuev, Shvarts, Alfred de Musset, Tennessee Williams, Erdman and Borys Akunin.