The Snow Queen

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen” is one of the best-known works by the Danish storyteller and has become a classic of world children’s literature. The story 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 Vilniaus teatras „Lėlė“ in 1993 (directed and designed by Vitalijus Mazūras), the creators’ original ideas 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 are the foundations of relationships? How should we understand the encounter between Life and Death? Where does the hope needed to create a new quality of communication lie? In the story of the main characters, sister Gerda and brother Kai, these questions arise when the children lose the ability to listen sincerely to one another and stop paying attention to a loved one’s doubts and pain. 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 a reference encoded to a specific action that can restore spiritual peace: ‘faith—going’—the action that drives Gerda forward and does not let her lose hope,” reflects N. Indriūnaitė, noting that the production gives considerable creative scope to shadow theatre and visual-theatre forms, enabling it to develop an associative, multilayered field of meaning. The actors perform using shadow-theatre techniques, with screens of various sizes, projections, puppets of different forms and technologies (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 objects in motion. “We want our young audiences to immerse themselves in a distinctive visual world, full of images of dreams and visions that unfold like a memory,” says the production’s set designer, Aušra Bagočiūnaitė Paukštienė.