The Snow Queen

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen” is one of the most famous works by the Danish storyteller and has become a classic of world children’s literature. The tale of Gerda’s journey to find her brother Kai has been staged in various theatres many times and adapted for the screen. Although H. C. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” was staged at Vilnius Theatre “Lėlė” in 1993 (director and set designer Vitalijus Mazūras), the creators’ original ideas for the production have inspired a return to the work. According to the production’s director, Nijolė Indriūnaitė, Andersen’s tale contains questions relevant to every generation of young audiences: what forms the basis of relationships; how should we understand the meeting of Life and Death; and where is the hope needed to create a new quality of communication? These questions emerge in the story of the main characters, sister Gerda and brother Kai, when the children lose the ability to listen sincerely to one another and become inattentive to the doubts and pain of those close to them. Gerda’s journey to Lapland, the Snow Queen’s land, to find her brother and bring him home is, in Nijolė Indriūnaitė’s words, “a journey of nurturing faith and love in a child’s inner world.” “In the word ‘faith’ we see an encoded reference to a concrete action through which spiritual peace can be restored: ‘faith’ [tikėjimas] contains ‘just going’ [tik – ėjimas]—the action that propels Gerda forward and does not let her lose hope,” reflects N. Indriūnaitė, noting that the performance gives ample creative space to shadow theatre and visual theatre forms, enabling an associative, open-ended field of meaning. The actors perform using the principles of shadow theatre, with screens of various sizes, projections, puppets of different forms and techniques (paper cut-outs and carved, textured shadows), masks, and paper-art objects. The stage design draws on principles characteristic of cinematic aesthetics, including montage of different shots and images and the expressive dynamics of moving objects. “We want our young viewers to immerse themselves in a distinctive visual world, full of dream and vision imagery that unfolds like a memory,” says the production’s artist, Aušra Bagočiūnaitė Paukštienė.