Marius Ivaškevičius is a Lithuanian author, playwright, film screenwriter and director. He is one of the most produced contemporary playwrights in Lithuania and shot to fame with his plays Madagascar and Banishment. At the beginning of his writing career, he was famous as a re-maker of myths and a de-constructor of history.
His first play The Neighbour won the Lithuanian dramaturgy competition 1998. Close City has become the most popular play by Ivaškevičius staged abroad.
Kant is a play about famous philosopher and a circle of his dinner guests. Following the success of Kant Ivaškevičius wrote a play Russian Romance, which tells about Leo Tolstoy’s wife Sophia. In the dystopian play The Sleeping the action takes place in 2117.
Play Grand Evil looks at war from an unusual angle. The Dawn of the Gods is a living testimony of the events of the war in Ukraine.
Ivaškevičius was awarded the The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore prize in 2005. In 2014 he was awarded the The Order for Merits to Lithuania and in 2016 the Golden Cross of the Stage. In 2018 he received the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts. Ivaškevičius has won several times the Best Lithuanian Play of the Year Prize.