What’s Wrong with You?

Zuga’s new production takes on mental health. Like a large, sensitive creature, 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? Young people have war, the climate, daily politics, changing schools, their parents’ divorce and an annoying older brother on their minds every day. That’s already enough. More than enough, even. But no—we add the attention economy, algorithms that demand extreme opinions and bot armies spreading misinformation. So why, even though they know all about this themselves, do adults 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 open up the topic with young people and completed mental health first aid training.

To adults, young people’s minds seem completely different and unique. Everything around young people feels either overwhelmingly big or too small; either really good or terribly bad—or simply pointless. Adults scratch their heads in bewilderment. Some of the more diligent ones have locked themselves in a laboratory to finally work out how a young person’s brain works. They describe their discoveries roughly like this: imagine opening up the casing of a perfectly functioning computer. You see wires, with plugs at their ends, all connected to something. 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, involving audiences and addressing social issues. Zuga’s productions are not created only behind closed studio doors, 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 received recognition and several theatre and dance awards (the Salme Reegi Award, the Draamake Award, the Estonian Theatre Annual Award, the Independent Performing Arts Award, etc.), and they have performed their productions in Estonia and abroad.