Withdrawal from the City: Searching For the Source of Valentinas Masalskis’s Creative Work

In psychology of creativity, there has been a growing need to explore not only the individual world of the artist, but also the broader context of creative work, such as the influence of the environment on creativity. By combining the methods and insights of theater studies and psychology, this article raises the question of the impact of urban and non-urban environment on the theater artist and explores the phenomenon of “withdrawals” of Lithuanian actor, director, and pedagogue Valentinas Masalskis. The article is based on qualitative research: case study analysis, with in-depth interviews as a method of data collection. The research resulted in selection of four meta-themes that emerged from the interviewing material: “city is bustle,” “to withdraw in order to come back,” “I am no one without others,” “beyond aesthetics,” with the theme of withdrawal as the essential axis. The analysis of these meta-themes in phenomenological perspective revealed how withdrawals help Masalskis to realize his vision of the theater. For Masalskis, withdrawals are the way not only to produce a new performance, but also to go further—to deepen anthropological reflection, to develop pedagogical methods, to discover unusual perspectives, to strengthen ethical principles, and, finally, to search for the source of creativity in a calm and focused manner.