Irina Komissarova is a young Moscow-born stage designer who has lived in Lithuania for many years. From 2017 to 2020, she worked with award-winning director Oskaras Koršunovas, founder in 1998 of the Oskara Koršunovo Teatras (OKT) Vilnius and considered the heir to the great pillar of Lithuanian theatre, Eimuntas Nekrošius. She was struck by his scrupulous work on the text and ability to directly extract scenographic elements from it. Thus, having noticed that Koršunovas did not have a permanent set designer while working with the same composers, choreographers, and light artists, she proposed herself for the role.

Koršunovas’ method for creating the scenes, as Komissarova says, is that of a «universal Meccano»: he starts with a first basic element, which he identifies before letting the set designer access the material to enrich it. For the collaborator, this is a real «leap into the void» because, after an initial approach of clarification with the director, they are alone and have the reins of the visual project, all the responsibility for the scene, and must make decisions.

Komissarova collaborated with Koršunovas on Russian Novel (2018) based on the play by Marius Ivaškevičius, one of Lithuania’s leading contemporary playwrights. The play dwells on the story and last months of life of a world famous Russian novelist Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910). In the centre of the play is writer’s wife Sofia Andrejevna, her fate and life upon turning into the wife of a world-class genius. This is also Koršunovas’ first production to include a video projection conceived as a space continue by a set designer.