Prečítajte si ako hodnotia študenti a študentky Medzinárodného semináru mladej kritiky akademickú inscenáciu Limonádové more, ktoré malo slávnostnú premiéru počas otvorenia festivalu Teen Theatre Fest.

„The “Lemonade Sea” was the first performance we saw at the festival. It was made by a very young group of people enlightened by their joy and energy. They were a very close group, showing us unity. The performance emphasizes their way of connecting with the audience, breaking the 4th wall several times. The structure of the performance is circular and breaks the Aristotelic rules. It tells three different stories united with a common topic. The problem is the message, which was not clear to me. The mix of all the different kinds of theatre styles – like documentary theatre, conventional theatre, a metaphoric style – was confusing. I would underline the documentary part which used videos and introduced us to a special date: 28th of February 1968. It’s cool that they treat emotional and very deep universal topics. It’s unusual to see teenagers treat these topics. In this case, learning about the process was more interesting than the final result. Congratulations to all the team and the young theatre promises.“ Itziar Fernández Navas

„The Lemonade Sea is a play that shows us the world from three different perspectives, that at the very end become one. Through the same question – where our imagination should lead us and where it should stop, we see different worlds, both realistic and imaginative. The choice of narrators to use the Three Little Pigs story, where three little pigs got us through the year 1968, was well executed – in their story, three of them are choosing materials for their house and exploring what the world was made of. Going in 2024 where the group of friends decided to celebrate the mid-year report card, the play is questionning the closed circle of grades and the risk of not getting accepted to a high school because of them. It is interesting to see the fight between them, where actually they have inner conflict. Although some parts were uncertain, as the story about friendship between two girls without parents, the storytelling is starting, but it’s a misleading theme because the story never answers the question where the parents are, or what kind of friendship is between two of the girls. Showing utopia through Auroville as a real-life utopian city is a kind of explanation of the real meaning of the word utopia and what are the benefits and flaws of living in that kind of world. At the end, imagination becomes reality and vice-versa, reality becomes imagination, but stays uncertain, what the world will be like for that group of friends. The acting was exceptional and the actors and actresses were dealing with a small space, full of stairs in scenography. The interaction with the public was well executed, even though at some times it looked like it was really well rehearsed. When dreams became reality, all of them were somebody else, putting on new costumes and masks, which were from some other fairytales, so it looked like they were randomly chosen. Will the new generation drown in new Lemonade sea, or it will succeed not to and try to swim through the sparkling drink? It is the question that stayed open after the performance.“ Jana Milivojević

„The performance Lemonade Sea is all about utopias, the questions these may raise and how answers can appear out of nowhere. On one hand, it is hard to believe there could exist a society in which people almost do not have anything, including rules, but can live peacefully and work only to provide for themselves. On the other hand, we would expect that – in our present time, when anything we may need is easily reachable – young people would be happier and less stressed, even though it is just a false impression. I really enjoyed the playfulness of the show, especially the choice of having the narration done by the three little pigs, as I think that they were picked as a symbol for (in)stability and of building something from scratch without having a strong plan, but a vision. In essence, Lemonade Sea is a comparison between the past and the present, with the aim of encouraging people to find the will to hope and dream, despite all of the difficulties they may encounter. It is a play about optimism and rediscovering the little joys of living, even though they sometimes come only from our imagination and are not real. The actors, even though very young and not professionals, are very charismatic and manage at all times to keep the energy of the act and the one of the public very high, without having to use a lot of decor or other staging elements (which at times could have limited them). This is why I did not necessarily see the point of the projection of the year 1968 from the beginning, as the actors could have created that atmosphere and illustrate the main idea without this technology that diminishes, in general, the theatrical experience. It was more of a narrative theatre, a successful experiment of the Children’s Theatre Academy, that played with different situations and transitioned from one century to another, highlighting that perhaps the concept of happiness is not so utopic after all, but a fairytale we need to write for ourselves. „ Andrea Bichir

Fotografie Filip Cepka.