🇪🇺 TEEN European Digital Community: Strange Walking Tree from Vilnius, Lithuania

Strange Walking Tree

I am an actress from Belarus, living and studying in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the past five years. I completed my Bachelor’s in Theatre Arts and Acting and am now pursuing a Master’s in Conceptual Design and Contemporary Art.
Before university, I gained theatre experience with the Belarusian student theatres “Tuteishy Teatr” and “Na Balkone,” participating in festivals, performances, and lab processes. I also taught acting to children in Vilnius and completed a four-month internship in Warsaw, leading classes for kids aged 4–10.
Currently, I teach yoga and lead free movement workshops for youth and students. I have diverse physical experience—from swimming, rock climbing, and trampolining in my teens to yoga and somatic movement now. I explore embodied practices like contact improvisation, authentic movement, and play fighting, and share these approaches with my students through experimental workshops.

The soil / the need

I came to theatre at a fairly young age. I think it all started with poetry recitation and performance competitions. Around the age of 10-12, I came to theatre with a desire to be seen and heard in my fullness, because I felt there were hidden, mysterious sides of myself that I wanted to explore and express.
And of course, I think in every actor there is, to a greater or lesser extent, this desire: “Look at me, see how wonderful and interesting I am!” I wanted others to see how remarkable and interesting I was.
I also wanted to create something unusual, something special, together with others. There was a lot of curiosity about play in its different forms — especially the kind of play that becomes visible to others, that captures attention and engages people’s interest.
I wanted to find a place where there would be some interesting, deep process in which I could grow, express myself, and meet other people.

The first seed

A parent / Family.

Tell us about that first spark

I remember my first performance — I played a toad in “Thumbelina.” At that age, I loved making faces and being silly. In that role, I could use the full potential of my goofiness, and it was so vivid and fun. The audience and my teacher were delighted with my toad.
That’s when I felt I was in the right place — that even some of my strange, quirky traits could actually be important and useful here. My brightness and awkwardness could be used in theatre, and there was beauty to be found in it. That was very surprising, joyful, and liberating for me.
After that, my interest in theatre grew even stronger. I wanted to keep exploring: What else can I be here? How else can I express myself?

Roots (people & experiences that shaped your path)

On my acting and creative journey, I was greatly influenced by the children’s theatre Rond and its teachers. Through them, I first encountered theatre and was captivated by its beauty and complexity. Theatre became a space for creativity, experimentation, exploration, and self-expression.
Together with Rond, we traveled to festivals both in Belarus and abroad, and also spent several weeks in the summer at a theatre camp in the countryside. There, we created short etudes, painted, invented different stories, and filmed short movies.
I was also deeply influenced by my acting teacher Anna, who prepared me for admission to a university theatre program. Our work together helped me expand my creative range and achieve a more organic presence on stage, which was especially important after a long experience of exaggerated, grotesque acting in children’s performances. She also worked with me very delicately as a kind of psychologist, helping me, through theatre, to see my own inner conflicts and accept parts of myself that I wanted to hide from the world and felt ashamed of.
A huge part of my story and creative development was my work at the “Tuteishiy” Theatre, which I joined at the age of 17. It consisted mostly of students, but also included professional actors. Over a couple of years of participating in theatre labs, productions, and training sessions, I grew immensely both as an actor and as a person.
In that theatre, I found the kind of life I had always dreamed of—intense and vibrant, driven by an unstoppable desire to create and experiment. We often stayed at the theatre past midnight, discussing our creative attempts, watching Fellini’s films, reading and analyzing plays. At that time, theatre was the central and most important element of my life—its core.
Of course, many things changed when I moved to Lithuania and enrolled in the “Theatre Arts and Acting” program. Theatre and the profession turned out to be not only about play and joy, but also about hard work. Since this period coincided with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the worsening situation in my homeland, and the need to rebuild my life from scratch, theatre began to shift in meaning and place in my life—sometimes becoming an additional source of stress and pressure, and other times offering a way to process difficult emotions and reflect on them through performance.
As a result of this experience, I realized how important it is not only to give everything to art, but also to take care of oneself and loved ones, to create safe conditions for one another, and to remember that actors are also people who need rest and who are affected by what is happening in the world. They must not only be able to open their souls completely and deliver their best performance, but also to ask for support, and to know how to rest and recover properly.

The trunk (what keeps you in theatre)

The feeling of beauty and fullness that theatre gives me still draws me in. The sense of connection with the audience, with my fellow performers, and that special state—the energy that comes from the stage—is something truly unique and powerful.
Of course, I enjoy the audience’s attention, the ability to captivate it, to surprise and be surprised, to make an impression. I love to play, to be playful, to be silly, to invent things that don’t exist and genuinely believe in them.
I also love speaking on stage about things that are touching and important, and believing that at least someone in the audience will hear our message, encounter beauty, or look at their loved ones and the people around them in a new way.
After all, we are all human and fragile—we all make mistakes, feel jealousy, get hurt, and sometimes accomplish something heroic. And the stage is a wonderful place not only to talk about this, but to live through it, to empathize, and to change, even if only a little.

Branches (future / desire)

What interests me most at the moment is the intersection of psychology and theatre, as well as physical theatre and free movement. I am currently working as a yoga teacher and a facilitator of free movement practices, and I am deeply interested in the therapeutic potential of theatre and movement.
I believe that theatre allows actors to embody their inner characters—those parts that long for attention and acceptance, yet are often forced to remain hidden in the shadows. Free movement, especially when witnessed by others, and movement shared with others, can help one find that very acceptance which so many people need, and to build new inner support systems in our ever-changing world.
At the same time, I am drawn to participating in the theatrical process as both a creator and a performer—bringing into existence something new that has never existed before, and connecting to that energy which is greater than myself, yet capable of expressing itself through me.

Are you currently involved in cultural activities?

Yes, regularly

If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Why?

If I were a tree, I would be some kind of strange tree—perhaps even a walking one—with branches stretching out in all directions, curiously reaching toward the clouds and the sun.
I am very curious and deeply in love with traveling, with encountering the new and the unusual. So even as a tree, I probably wouldn’t be able to stay in one place—I would wind my way along mountain slopes, open myself to strong gusts of wind, and at the same time feel a deep connection to the earth that gave me life, and to the sky that draws me upward.

Contact

Email: yyyyyaaaaarrrrro8@gmail.com

Instagram: @yaroslavafedchenko