Seven Questions About Happiness
- Lovro Finžgar
- Tomi Janežič
- Sonja Kononenko
- Maja Kunšič
- Jure Lajovic
- Iztok Lužar
- Gašper Malnar
- Nina Skrbinšek
- Daniel Day Škufca
- Set and puppets design: Branko Hojnik
- Dramaturgy: Tomi Janežič
- Costume design: Marina Sremac
- Direction and dramaturgy assistants: Tjaša Črnigoj, Mirjana Medojević, Daniel Day Škufca
- Set sesign assistants: Nina Rojc, Aleksander Vujović, Liza Privšek
- Music selection: ustvarjalci predstave
- Lighting design: Tomi Janežič, Branko Hojnik, Maša Avsec
- Sound design: Tomi Janežič, Sven Horvat, Luka Bernetič
- Speech advisor: Mateja Dermelj
- Make-up artist: Marina Sremac, Nina Jordanovski
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 monumental effect of time, space and imagination, empowered by a firm grip of the community, is a fundamental attribute that, following the no title yet project, also leaves a mark on Seven Questions About Happiness, the new seven-hour theatrical journey directed by Tomi Janežič. Finding a blue bird as a synonym for finding happiness is not an activity, but rather an idea—therefore formless, but no less true. This is why the stage time is not linear (if anything, it is our physical experience of it that is linear), but rather cyclical, fragmented along the way like crumbs, scattered and complex, since the utopia of finding happiness does not exist by itself; it only needs to be invented.
The directing of the performance is masterful, and the interplay between directing, set design and puppetry is remarkable—there are several scenes that are superb aesthetically (and aesthetically-emotionally) speaking. The fog and snow are the leitmotif, creating a beautifully painful, sad yet gentle and warm atmosphere, in which the audience is often explicitly, yet very casually included—there is a scene in which spectators and the creative team sit together in a circle and create ‘fire’ with their wiggling feet, eat together and listen to stories.
Few performances captivate the audience so much, making it part of the action along with the creative team (including sound and light technicians), while creating scenes both fairytale-like yet meaningful and open. At the same time, Seven Questions About Happiness is a show in which the entire creative team works together in a cohesive and coordinated way. The performance pays close attention to detail, having innumerable meanings and allowing countless interpretations on the meta-fictional, narrative, conceptual and aesthetic levels. It is simply outstanding.
In the strongest design you can immediately see the indispensable connection between synchronicity and duplication. For example, dream events are mirrored in the materiality or spirituality of other temporal or spatial frames as coincidences. In the lands of projection, associations, symbols and synonyms are multiplied. Biographical fragments of the narrative are inexplicably contained within the imagination of a personified object or in a momentarily irrational representation of a certain embodiment. It sounds as though the performance, in its decomposition and construction, mainly deals with the metaphysical, the transcendental and the mythological, but on the temporal axis of causes and effects you delve deep into the existing witty and tragic life contexts, which are masterfully interwoven by the director using the method of psychodrama and including the audience in the performance. As expected, he has not got an answer on how to find, take ownership of or adopt happiness.
Seven Questions About Happiness is elusive, unpredictable and deceptive, yet so fulfilling. Each minute of this collective creation is worth the seven hours.
- Maribor Theatre Festival, Maribor, Slovenia, 19 June 2021
- Prešeren Fund Award to Tomi Janežič for the projects realised in the last three years, especially for performances no title yet and Seven Questions About Happiness (2021)
- Borštnik awards for acting to Gašper Malnar (2021)
- special Borštnik award of the jury for production (2021)