Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel is one of the best known European fairy tales. It is tremendously, unbelievably cruel, but we see it as a metaphor of human coming of age – a person’s paths through vital situations and the changes one has to confront to survive. On the symbolic level, growing up is filled with such situations. Hansel and Gretel thus leave on their journey as children and return as young adults. This journey has marked and changed them. It has changed not only them but also their surroundings – the home they return to is now free of evil. It has died out by itself. Their transformation from weak children into strong individuals has made them more powerful than the evil, making it disappear.

What we’re interested in when staging this old, perhaps even outdated tale is its charge of a “journey”. It makes the protagonist “shape” themselves, and change. When they return, nothing is the same – neither they nor their world.

The characters in this production for children in preschool and the first triad of primary school don't speak, because we all know the story already. This special characteristic leaves more space for the actors’ bodies, movement, music and visual image. The production is directed by Andrej Jus, who successfully staged The Bitter Fruits of Justice, which inaugurated the SNG Nova Gorica Small Stage, and the poetry concert Become a Street Lamp (Srečko Kosovel).