Scattered Stories

The cast of four young actors (Lina Akif, Daša Doberšek, Blaž Šef, Stane Tomazin) in the roles of performers and narrators and their caravan take the spectator on a fairy-tale journey through the basic genres of Svetina’s stories and establish a magical atmosphere. The actors include the audience into the performance, listen and react to it and give the spectators a feeling that they are also a part of the production. Lively stage action, accompanied by the music of the Slovenian trio the Pantaloons gives the spectators additional energy. […] The atmosphere is always playful and radiates in intense, strong colours that change according to the stories’ common thread. The drama soon spills from the stage into the hall, where the caravan travels between the rows of seats, and the production retains the aesthetics of changing scenery throughout. The production speaks to the inner child in the spectators and awakens their curiosity. It takes them on a journey chock full with emotions and filled with laughter, and also physically engages them and doesn’t let them, from the start till the end, to take their attentions away from the activity on stage.  

Peter Svetina’s stories that the artists used as a base for this production are scattered, somewhat unusual, even bizarre. […] They are imbued with animism and grotesque, unpredictability and a lot of irony, and are therefore thorough when it comes to creating content for children and young adults (the staged version was created in collaboration with the creators of the production). But the artists don’t only use storytelling on the level of the content, the relationship between a stylised narration and eventful epic also serves as a performing strategy. The characters are also constructed on the principles of coincidence; in their unusualness, eclectic picturesqueness and their silly imbalanced (and therefore funny) character traits function as if they escaped from a Wes Anderson script, or particularly from the film The Fall which similarly to the production addresses the power of storytelling and creative openness of children’s imagination.

Scattered Stories, a production for children, intertwines theatre and storytelling accompanied by music. The narrators set up a cosy collaboration with the spectators, and lively activity. More than half of the full house were children who were far from bored, they eagerly awaited each next scene.

There were echoes of ancient, primordial and archaic, but the glossary of the games with euphemisms and neologisms, coined words and the exceptionally witty, original and daring linguistic attractions placed the untameable stories into a dialogue with actual present. The secrets of wandering stories, heavy and light, intertwined, unfinished and interrupted that travel in a suitcase of imagination, need mindful attention. New, innovative provocations are attached to the rules of a fairy tale narration, and they challenge the structure of our encoded thinking patterns. […] This intense show, charged even in its quiet moments, also reveals the commitment and dedication of the artistic group that put the whole together with a selection of their own contribution, inventions, commentaries, movements, gags, sound and musical interventions and other important elements.