Seven Questions About Happiness
Ljubljana Puppet Theatre and Mladinsko Theatre
About the performance
The creators of the performance are also the authors of the text.
Seven Questions About Happiness doesn’t ask questions, nor does it provide answers. Instead, the performance takes us on a fantasy journey through seven theatre lands where we can pose questions to ourselves and, if we wish, answer them as well.
The creative process for the performance drew from Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird—a story of the archetypal journey of seeking happiness. After the première at the Moscow Art Theatre under direction of Konstantin Sergejevič Stanislavski (1908) and on Broadway (1910), the story saw a number of interpretations, radio and film adaptations, and a TV serial adaptation. The great success of the performance fostered Maurice Maeterlinck to write a children’s novel The Blue Bird for Children together with Georgette Leblanc. At the Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana (Ljubljana Puppet Theatre), the Blue Bird performance (1964) directed by Jože Pengov, was considered one of the pinnacles of the then marionette theatre. The painter France Mihelič created the artistic design of the performance, and the composer Uroš Krek wrote the music.
The creators of the performance Seven Questions About Happiness use the story describing the search for the blue bird to write their own story about family, memory, dreams, death, joy, love, future, repute, and sense.
Seven Questions About Happiness is a performance about theatre spaces. This time (again), the director and the set designer Branko Hojnik, who have worked together before in Russia and in Norway, paid particular attention to spaces as places of imagination.
Seven Questions About Happiness is a long theatre journey, a performance about a performance, a story about a story, and in some way a sequel to the creative process that started with the performance no title yet (Mladinsko Theatre, 2018). In fact, in recent years, Janežič has staged a number of unusually long performances in various countries, which aim to deconstruct theatre, highlight its miraculous nature, and put forward the community, which is part of the event.
Given the obsession with happiness typical of this day and age, it is not needless to say that the two children in the story never catch the blue bird that can survive daylight. This doesn’t mean, however, that the two children don’t see and experience a great deal (may we say all of life?) and that they remain unaffected by all the things that they encounter on their path. On this journey, their view of the world, in which they return after their dreamlike life, changes. In other words: this doesn’t mean that they failed to find happiness. But we should not forget that they haven’t set out on the journey to find the blue bird for their own reasons.
*The text is summarized from the webpage of the performance.
"All the dimensions of reflections that emerge on the different levels and layers of the spectator’s and actor’s presence are impossible to arrange into a simple, linear narration, and yet it seems that the production collects and connects the points of reference which imprint themselves onto the travel map because of the impact of the important, conscious or unconscious, building blocks of life." (Magda Tušar, Radio Slovenija, 11 January 2020)
The production is 7 hours long.
Première: 10. 1. 2020
The performance will not be present at the festival.
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