In 2015, the opera was awarded the Main Prize of the Fast Forward festival in Braunschweig (Germany). In 2014, Have a Good Day! was awarded the Golden Stage Cross prize for the best Lithuanian Authors’ Performance and has also garnered two prizes at the Baltic Theatre Festival.
In 2013, Have a Good Day! was selected by an International Theatre Institute (ITI) jury for a presentation at the finals of the worldwide competition Music Theatre NOW (Biennial for Performing Arts, Jönköping, Sweden), where the work was awarded the Globe Teana-Theatre Observation prize. The mosaic of different destinies transforms into a single poem suggesting the pleasure of consumption. To avoid any moral or judgemental suggestion, critical attitude towards capitalism is expressed through humour, paradox, irony and poetry. Instead of becoming the main point of the opera, the music serves the thoughts of the cashiers – it facilitates their voice. Songs that accompany the beeping are as monotonous as the very process of shopping and selling. It may be louder or quieter, but it is always present. The monotonous beep heard each time an item is scanned is a key sound throughout the whole opera. Real goods – the recognizable décor of a shopping centre – exist only in acoustic and verbal form. The atmosphere of the supermarket is established through the glimmering and buzzing installation of daylight lamps and environmental sounds, connecting the audience to the stage and the 10 cashiers. The libretto represents a revealing mosaic of spoken, literary language and documentary. The characters of diverse sales clerks, embodying universal archetypes, convey the predominant social landscape. It transforms the faceless, robot-like shop workers found in everyday life into unique and lively characters, whereas their secret thoughts and biographies turn into short, personal dramas. The opera focuses on the inner lives of cashiers in a shopping centre: showing what lies behind their mechanical ‘Good afternoon!’, ‘Thank you!’, ‘Have a good day!’ and fake smiles.
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