Varėna District Municipality
Dzūkija National Park
site of Dzūkija village barn-theatre tradition
Margionys, Marcinkonys eldership, Varėna District
54.04120, 24.22590
30 minutes without an event; 1.5-2.5 hours during a performance or event
check the events calendar, because the theatre makes sense through performance
Margionys Theatre
Margionys Barn Theatre: a living village stage since 1929
Margionys Barn Theatre cannot be fully understood by looking at a building alone. Its essence is action: the barn becomes a stage, villagers and guests become an audience, and a tradition of more than nine decades comes alive through performance.
The theatre's beginning is counted from 1929, when teacher Teofilis Sukackas gathered an acting group and staged Keturakis's comedy Amerika pirtyje in Margionys. It belonged to the tradition of Lithuanian evenings of the period: plays, songs, and community gathering in a remote Dzūkija village.
Juozas Gaidys and Margionys's own dramaturgy
The strongest theatre figure was local creator Juozas Gaidys, who died on March 15, 1992. During the Second World War he revived theatre activity, wrote and directed plays himself, and by 1988 had staged about 19-20 different productions, including Ašarų pakalnė, premiered on June 20, 1941, and Siratų ašaros in 1989.
After Gaidys, Rimutė Avižinienė began leading the theatre and continued the local creative tradition. Margionys is distinctive because it staged not only classic comedies but also plays written by village people about local life, the Skroblus stream, and the fate of the village.
What barn theatre is
The Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia explains barn theatre as a Lithuanian theatre tradition in which performances and concerts took place in barns, especially during the national revival from the late nineteenth century to the First World War. It was a form of culture and community, not only entertainment.
The barn provided a stage when professional theatres or public Lithuanian spaces were lacking. The tradition is therefore closely tied to language, amateur creativity, community courage, and local inventiveness. Margionys is one of the few Lithuanian villages where it has continued to the present day.
The barn building, fire, and rebuilding
The present theatre barn began construction in 1991 and opened in 1993, and in 2020 it received a new roof laid with the traditional wooden-shingle technique. Sadly, during the night of September 9-10, 2022, the barn burned down, so the authentic building was lost.
After the fire, the theatre did not stop its activity: the tradition continues through performances and fundraising for a new barn. Before travelling, check the current rebuilding stage and exactly where performances are taking place.
Margionys setting and the Citnaginė festival
Margionys is a village in Dzūkija National Park, so the barn theatre belongs to a setting of forests, village homesteads, and local dialect. This theatre works best not in an isolated hall but in the real village landscape, beside the Skroblus stream.
Since 2011, the barn-theatre festival Citnaginė has been held in Margionys, bringing village theatre groups from different parts of Lithuania. Combine a visit with Marcinkonys, the ethnographic homestead, and Dzūkija National Park trails, so the barn theatre becomes part of a wider understanding of the region.
