Theatre-installation brings to life Hansel and Gretel fairy tale

We were unsure of what to expect as we were waiting for our turn to witness a theatre-installation in the city based on the popular fairy tale by Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel. The story of young brother and sister duo, Hansel and Gretel, that gets kidnapped by an evil witch living in the woods in a house made of gingerbread to lure children and eat them, was still crystal clear in the memory, despite the last reading of it being only during childhood. Cristina Galbiati and Ilija Luginbühl, the founders of award-winning Switzerland-based theatre firm Trickster P, were guarding the doors that led to their installation, ‘.h.g.’ (Hansel and Gretel), that was housed at the Goethe Institut.

“There will be a voice that will guide you through headphones as you walk through the installation. Here’s a torch in case you feel it is too dark inside,” Cristina whispered, handing us over the headphones and a tiny hand light. Unlike in a conventional theatre, where we would have sat down to watch the actors perform, we had to walk ourselves alone through this theatre-installation to experience it. As we stepped in, all we could see was darkness, and the voice over the headphones kept guiding us through the nine rooms the installation was spread across. We sat down on a stool under a dim light in the first room just as the female narrator asked us to do, when we could hear the pages of a book being turned to begin the story of Hansel of Gretel. It, however, ended after a few lines and we had to continue walking through the rest of the darkness — across a room filled with tiny trees with the sound of ruffling leaves and crickets, and into a tiny wooden house that was giving off a strong cinnamon scent.

The walk that lasted for about 30 minutes had us reconnecting with the German fairy tale in a dark yet personal way, as if Hansel and Gretel were around to tell their tale. The experience was feeding our senses of sound, sight, touch and smell. This physical theatre show, which was created a decade ago by theatre veterans Cristina and Ilija, has been their most successful one. The show has travelled across 17 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, Russia and across Europe, and has been translated into eight languages. It had been brought down to Chennai and Puducherry for the first time by Bengaluru-based arts group, Sandbox Collective, along with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

“We initially began working with actors as the focus of a play, but after a while wanted to experiment with placing the spectator at the centre of it. That was the starting point of physical theatre with no stage actors. We then took two years to create Hansel and Gretel. We wanted the story to be based on a fairy tale for its archetypes like forests, wooden house, etc in this case, that anyone can relate to. Even if one doesn’t know the fairy tale, it is not so important for this experience, as the walk makes it deeply personal with correlations,” elaborates Cristina, who hails from Italy, and is currently based in Switzerland’s Novazzano. She works along with Ilija in creating similar theatre experiences sans actors, winning top Swiss theatre awards for their group, Trickster.

Hansel and Gretel was particularly chosen due to the grim nature of the story, which can help children understand the evil side of the world as well, she says. “The story could mean a dark fairy tale to a child and remind an adult of some personal experience of being lost in life at some point. We wanted to create something that means differently to each person. Even though the human interaction in this experience is very little, people come out of the installation feeling a strong connection,” she remarks.