In 1983 Kestutis Nakas was on the verge of giving up acting, even though he’d been landing occasional roles in TV commercials and soaps. “I wasn’t working enough,” says Nakas, who was living in New York at the time. “But then I said, ‘I’m going to do one more thing before I quit.’”
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Nakas went on to become a fixture on the East Village performance scene, writing and directing a series of vaudevillian plays about, among other things, Andrew Carnegie and the supposed occult power of the sword that pierced the side of Jesus on the cross. Then, in 1985, he applied for a six-week language program in Lithuania. Nakas’s parents had fled the country during the Soviet takeover, and his first language had been Lithuanian, though he’d refused to speak it once he’d started school in Mesa, Arizona. The trip was an eye-opening experience. “I was surprised at how incredibly beautiful I found it,” he says. “You had these nationalist, patriot-type people conducting you around to these places and trying to inspire you with their love of it. In the meantime you’re being continually followed by the creepy state security apparatus and being delivered healthy doses of propaganda.”
“My father saw it, and he loved it,” says Nakas. “But I remember him saying to one of my friends, ‘I liked it. Was it good?’”
He says it’s not necessary to be Lithuanian or to have seen the other three installments to enjoy the fourth. But ultimately, he says, “I want to go back and fix up the first three parts, so they can be presented in one long weekend, like a Wagnerian opera.”
