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 hanging over them every day. That’s already enough. More than enough, even. But no, let’s add the attention economy, algorithms that demand 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 created in collaboration with mental health advocacy organisation Peaasi.ee. Before beginning the creative process, Zuga went to schools to explore 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 enormously big or too small; either really good or terribly bad, or simply pointless. Adults scratch their heads in confusion. Some of the more diligent ones have locked themselves in a laboratory to finally figure out how a young person’s brain works. They describe their discoveries roughly like this: Imagine opening the case of a fully 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 a few so that one end is still connected to the computer. Imagine there are millions of these connections, and imagine that most of them are either fully 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 created not only in a closed studio, but out in the world—in collaboration with communities, children, young people and audiences. Their work is characterised by warmth, directness 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, among others), and they have performed their productions both in Estonia and abroad.