The biggest summer event in Pakruojis Manor – A Midsummer Night’s Dream Flower Festival 2020
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2020 flower festival will be inviting visitors until the autumn leaves descend, to enjoy a flower fiesta, which is being held for the second consecutive year in the biggest manor complex in Lithuania. Even more impressive than last year, several million flowers will bloom here during the summer months, amid huge floral arrangements, and exhibitions inspired by antiquity, and palm trees under the Lithuanian sky, and there will be an immersive world of theatre where fantasy mixes with reality.
Inspired by William Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, this year the festival returned to the manor with even more flowers and their species: flower admirer or not, you can enjoy almost two hundred different types of flowers that adorn the manor park and are arranged into massive sculptures and exhibitions. According to the manor Hofmarshal, Vadim Ovčinko, “Last year a million flowers bloomed in the manor, and this year’s ambition is several million, so we are happy with flowering spectacle twice as large, which has no equivalent event anywhere in Lithuania and abroad. It is also gratifying that the flower carpet competition held at the beginning of June this year also attracted twice as many participants as last year. The festival attracted florists and artists from all over Lithuania, because it is a great space for self-expression”.
One of the artists who created the exhibitions in the manor, Evaldas Jasiūnas, admits that he usually creates for indoor conditions, but this year he decided to try creating art from flowers, where there are many challenges. “It is important to match not only the colour but also the plants, and the latter must match the sculptures so that they don’t like two different components, but have always looked like this. Of course, it is also necessary to take into account that everything must be as resistant as possible to the elements of nature – wind, rain, sun,” said the artist as he shared his insights.
The festival invites visitors to admire not only the flowers, but also the engaging, and new performances by actors, this year directed by the famous Spanish contemporary circus and theatre director, the creator Adrian Schvarzstein. Together with a large group of theatre actors, he will be surprising the audience with unexpected episodes and interpretations of texts from Shakespeare’s plays. According to the director, “We don’t play Shakespeare; we are inspired by Shakespeare and his work. Based on this inspiration, we take small etudes from Shakespeare’s plays and apply them to the festival, and its spirit. The historical environment of the manor and a great Lithuanian summer also inspires our work here”.
The flower festival “A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2020” in Pakruojis Manor takes place every day throughout the summer until the first autumn frosts.
Pakruojis Manor is not only the largest remaining manor house in Lithuania, but also one of the 18 most attractive cultural tourism sites in Europe and holder of the “Tourism Object of the Year 2019” award in Lithuania, where 19th and 20th century manor life is being restored.
