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 children’s literature worldwide. 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 designer Vitalijus Mazūras), the original ideas of the production’s creators have encouraged them to 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 encounter between Life and Death? Where does the hope needed to create a new quality of communication lie? 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 land of the Snow Queen—in search of her brother and to bring him home is, as Nijolė Indriūnaitė puts it, 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 that can restore inner peace: ‘faith—walking’ [tikėjimas—tik ėjimas]—the action that keeps Gerda moving forward and prevents her from losing hope,” reflects N. Indriūnaitė, noting that the production offers ample creative scope for shadow theatre and visual theatre forms, allowing it to develop an associative, open-ended field of meanings. The actors perform using shadow-theatre principles, with screens of various sizes, projections, and puppets in different forms and made with different techniques (paper cut-outs, carved textured shadows), as well as masks and objects made from shaped paper. The set is created using principles characteristic of cinematic aesthetics, including montage of different shots and images and the expressive dynamics of moving objects. “We want our young audiences to immerse themselves in a distinctive visual world, full of images of dreams and visions, unfolding like a memory,” says the production’s artist, Aušra Bagočiūnaitė Paukštienė.