Gabrielė Labanauskaitė is a playwright, a poet and an assistant professor in theatre studies. She highlights the importance of search for new textual forms and establishment of creative networks through mutual growth and cooperation of different artists. This passion inspired her to organize the festival for audiovisual poetry ‘TARP’, play reading festival ‘DRAMOKRATIJA’, establish an audiovisual collective ‘AVaspo’ and start teaching creative writing courses and workshops ‘IŠ TYLOS’.
Gabrielė received her bachelor degree in Lithuanian Philology and Finnish Language at University of Klaipėda, then master degree in Theory and History of Literature at Vilnius University and since 2002 she has been working, creating and studying in Vilnius. Gabrielė Labanauskaitė defended her doctoral thesis ‘The principles of narrative construction in the contemporary dramaturgy’ in 2013 at Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy. She continued analysing drama storytelling and the result of it appeared in her book ‘Dramatica’, published in 2018. Also Gabrielė was developing her professional knowledge at universities in Europe (Finland, Italy, Greece) and courses in USA (for instance, ‘Gotham Writers’ scriptwriting Workshop and Pataphysic Drama Writing workshop (organised by Flea Theatre) in Newyork). At the moment she is teaching students at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and other worldwide universities in Latvia, Holland, Greenland, etc.
Gabrielė Labanauskaitė is keen on LGBT+ and femministic topics, also – analysing social awareness awakening questions – how could we all live a better and more friendly life for us and all the environment. These topics are seen in all of her plays for theatre and librettos for opera, which were presented in England, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Latvia and Lithuania. As far as poetry is concerned, Gabrielė consciously is choosing to release her poetry in audiovisual form and not printed in books. Her poetry was released as an audiovisual trilogy: CD/DVD ‘No Ocean’ (Nėra okeano, (2009)), CD ‘Niagara’ (2010) ir CD ‘Ocean is Bleeding’ (Kraujuojantis okeanas (2013)).