2025/26

The Necessity of Making Theatre for Children at a Time When the Genocide of Children is Being Normalised Politically and in the Media

I was about to start writing my usual editorial describing the diversity of content of the productions and the variety of genres of our premieres that we will be presenting to a growing audience in the upcoming 2025/26 season, but I held back. As is so often the case these days, my thoughts were elsewhere, with the children somewhere else.

In recent months, I often watch a full house of curious little heads in the halls of the Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana before a performance, eagerly waiting for the show to begin, and each time I shudder at the thought that on that day, on the other side of the world, a similar number of their peers will end their short lives under rockets. We live in a time when countless children are killed every day by guided missiles or irreversibly injured in all sorts of physical, social and psychological ways (and let's not forget: behind every missile is an adult human being). We live on a planet where curable diseases, famines and similar unimaginable consequences of the military encirclement doctrine feed without mercy among the youngest and weakest.

They may have ‘luckily’ survived a deadly rain of steel for a day, but the very next day they could not escape the humanitarian and sanitary catastrophe created by a genocidal policy that must be condemned and punished by all. And while our theatre's halls, whose viewers' seats are filled with the lives of happy children, follow one another day after day, the reports from the war zones, which endlessly repeat the unimaginably high numbers of child victims, seem to follow one another with even greater persistence. But the difference is striking: the repetitions of the performances evoke playful, loud laughter, while the repeated reports evoke an anxious, serious silence. Can you imagine children's theatre in silence? With empty seats? Without children? The dead silence of emptiness?

In a blinkered world that so easily kills and injures thousands of children, why make curious performances for the little ones? In this ugly world that so easily reports the deaths and injuries of thousands of children, why make visually provocative theatre for children? In a world that is so callous, that so easily turns a blind eye to the fact that a whole generation of young people are dying right next to us, why should we still offer children content full of hope?

Every child is first and foremost a child. And the dead silence of children's theatre must not become our political and media normality.

Mare Bulc, LGL Artistic Director

In the world into which Gerda and Kai were born, eternal winter reigns, the result of human insensitivity. After his encounter with the Snow Queen, Kai's heart freezes, but his compassion is overwhelmed by cold reason. While Kai searches for answers to the questions of eternity in the far north, Gerda embarks on a long journey to him, which also leads her ever closer to herself.

This magical production centres on the friendship between Gerda and Kai. It travells from the closeness in childhood, through a youthful distancing, to arrive in the development of the integrity of the male and female principles, and end in a deeper understanding of love.

A story about growing up and the scars that growing up leaves on us. A story about the unbearable burdens that the family imposes on us. It is about the gap between the generations, the relationship between the periphery and the urban centres, the question of the emancipation of the son and the mother in a patriarchal world.

A movement and object performance for an adult audience based on the exploration of the building blocks of individual identity through various figures of motherhood, in which the question of religion also plays a special role and creates an ideological framework for the perception of the figure of the mother as something more than (just) human.

Can a stone that appears dead at first glance become the centre of an emotional interaction? The discovery of ways to "breathe life" into one or more stones symbolises the process by which our young audience gives space to the things they don't like and "breaks down" the limitations in their perception of themselves and the world.

The performance poses the question of how to bring the stone to life. It is conceived through the puppeteer's relationship to radical immutability, to the incomprehensibility or rather the incomprehensibility of the stone, to its immovable persistence. It will reveal the inner struggle of each of the five characters.

The journey of two best friends - self-proclaimed dinosaurs and the most colourful and lovable creatures the world has ever seen - who love to sing songs and think about life more than anything else. On their journey, they search for answers to the essential questions of humanity beyond the age of three: What is that? What is that over there? Why is there a sun? How did the world come into being? And why is there a home? And also - again and again - why?

The puppetry show, based on a text commissioned by Jure Karas for children aged three and up, is brought to life with hand puppets that resemble the well-known muppets.

The school door opens and we enter an empty classroom for the first time. A new world that slowly fills up with imagination. What will happen here and who will we be when we leave this place in a few years' time? The classroom is full of chairs and benches. There is a large green blackboard on the wall. And above the blackboard a clock ticks, announcing that in a few moments a teacher will enter the classroom!

The puppet show is based on the picture book of the same name by Susanna Mattiangeli, illustrated by Chiara Carrera. The creators of this production, which is classified as object theatre, enter the playful classroom without a teacher.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, a blend of comedy and horror, is a drama template themed around a subject that is particularly dramatic and disturbing for teenagers (and adults): zombies! In his one-act play, award-winning playwright and screenwriter Ben Muir uses education as a narrative framework to prepare teens for the possible arrival of these eerie dead and teach them effective survival strategies.

Alongside the theatrical ‘grit’ of the genre, the production also addresses deeper issues of threat (both abstract and concrete) felt by young people, playfully exploring themes of fear and manipulation as well as creativity and collaboration.

Marko »Mare« Bulc and the creative team

Some time ago there was a strange true story in the news about a donkey that had strayed from the farm into the woods. After an unsuccessful search, the owners gave up hope of ever seeing the donkey again. A few months later, they recognised their donkey in a video shared by a forest walker. He came across an unusual scene in a forest clearing: he saw a herd of deer, which included the lost donkey.

The performance will raise important questions about accepting differences, overcoming fear, the importance of friendship and loving our neighbours. The production will mainly use large-scale puppets animated by several animators for the main character Donkey and his friend Little Deer.

Do you like bears? Hot air balloons? And sailing boats with crazy captains and grumpy old geezers? And travelling around the world and back again? And adventures that require a lot of courage and even more imagination? Welcome to the weirdest little town in the world with the weirdest inhabitants, to whom something unexpected happens every day.

The production, based on the novel by Andy Stanton, is an invitation into the eccentric and crazy world of the inhabitants of this weird city - and with them a journey around the world. The production is based on the coexistence of the puppet, the object and the dramatic, bringing them into dialogue and turning them upside down.

Cankar's hero, Šimen Sirotnik, is a labourer who has worked all his life for the good of others and at the end of his life, exhausted and written off, embarks on his last journey across the country through the landscapes of systemic ignorance. On the day he is released, he reacts with resignation - in contrast to his more politically aware literary ‘brother’, The Servant Jernej. Although Šimen does not strive for his own justice, he remains stuck in the wheel of bureaucracy in search of one last bed.

Šimen Sirotnik will be resurrected in the Kulturnica, which will become a repository for forgotten lives given flesh through the language of object theatre, recalling discarded and useless objects from the dustbin of history.