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 tale of Gerda’s journey to find her brother Kai has been staged in many theatres and adapted for film. Although H. C. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” was staged at Vilniaus teatras „Lėlė“ in 1993 (director and set designer: Vitalijus Mazūras), the original ideas of the creative team have prompted them to return to the work. According to the production’s director, Nijolė Indriūnaitė, Andersen’s tale raises questions relevant to every generation of young audiences: what forms the basis of relationships; how should we understand the encounter between Life and Death; and where can we find the hope needed to create a new quality of communication? These questions emerge in the story of the tale’s main characters, sister Gerda and brother Kai, when the children lose the ability to listen sincerely to one another and become inattentive 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 an encoded reference to a specific action through which spiritual peace can be restored: ‘faith—going’ [tikėjimas—tik ėjimas] is the action that propels Gerda forward and does not let her lose hope,” reflects N. Indriūnaitė. She notes that the production gives considerable creative scope to shadow theatre and visual-theatre forms, enabling an associative, open-ended field of meanings to unfold. The actors perform using shadow-theatre techniques, with screens of various sizes, projections, puppets in different forms and made with different techniques (paper cut-outs and carved, textured shadows), masks and objects made from shaped paper. The stage design draws on principles characteristic of cinematic aesthetics: montage of different shots and images, and the expressive dynamics of moving objects. “We want our young audience to immerse themselves in a distinctive visual world, filled with images of dreams and visions that unfold like a memory,” says the production’s artist, Aušra Bagočiūnaitė Paukštienė.