What’s Wrong with You?

Zuga’s new production tackles mental health. Like a large, sensitive animal, it lives in our home, in our room, under our blanket, in our heads. What does it want from us? What does it need? What’s wrong with it? Every day, young people have war, climate, current affairs, changing schools, their parents’ divorce and an annoying older brother on their minds. That’s already enough. More than enough, even. But no: let’s add the attention economy, algorithms demanding extreme opinions, and bot armies spreading misinformation. So why, when adults are aware of all this too, do they still ask young people, “What’s wrong with you?”

The production “What’s Wrong with You?” is being created in collaboration with mental health advocate Peaasi.ee. Before beginning the creative process, Zuga visited schools to explore the topic with young people and completed mental health first aid training.

Young people’s minds seem entirely different and unique to adults. Everything around young people feels either hugely significant or too small; either terribly good, terribly bad, or simply pointless. Adults scratch their heads in bewilderment. Some of the more diligent ones have shut themselves away in a laboratory to finally find out how a young person’s brain works. They describe their discoveries roughly like this: imagine opening the case of a perfectly functioning computer. You see wires, with plugs at their ends, all connected somewhere. Close your eyes and pull out some wires so they’re no longer connected, and pull out others so that one end is still connected to the computer. Imagine there are millions of these connections, and imagine that most are either completely or partly disconnected. Now close your eyes and start putting those millions of connections back together, hoping you might succeed.

Zuga Ühendatud Tantsijad is an association of dancers and choreographers. For more than 20 years, they have been creating together through movement, engaging audiences, and addressing social issues. Zuga’s productions are not created only in a closed studio, but in real life—in collaboration with communities, children, young people and audiences. Their work is characterised by warmth, immediacy and trust in the audience. Their productions for children have attracted attention and received several theatre and dance awards (the Salme Reegi Award, the Draamake Award, the Estonian Theatre Annual Award, the Independent Performing Arts Award, among others), and they have performed their productions in Estonia and abroad.