Winter’s Journey

Peter Mazalán is a versatile artist whose original projects pique increasing attention among audiences and the public. With a training in classical opera, his work usually blends operatic inspirations with themes he takes personal interest in. Recently, this has been primarily the subject of autism and neurodiversity – a medical term denoting the variability of human brain activity and mental capacities. Recent expert studies show that the proportion of individuals with an autism spectrum disorder is on the rise, while society at large is, on the other hand, becoming increasingly open to this diversity, including through the prism of such individuals’ real and potential contribution. Mazalán’s interest in this theme is rooted in personal experience – his nephew Felix, too, is autistic. This was one of the inspirations behind his production A Person with ASP (autism spectrum disorder), followed up – although entirely different in form – by his project Winter’s Journey.

Winter’s Journey combines several inspirational sources: Franz Schubert’s song cycle, based on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, and Elfriede Jelinek’s play Winterreise. The central figure in both works is an individual on the margins of society, a misunderstood vagrant lost in the mist of his own existence. This is precisely where author and director Mazalán finds parallels with the opaque inner world of autism, a pendulum of fascination and profound absorption on the one hand, and anxiety and social isolation on the other. The play’s initial setting is a concert of Schubert’s songs, interpreted by Mazalán himself. Music becomes a means of communication with an autistic girl and is equally a mysterious world in which the girl becomes ever deeper immersed, ignoring the admonitions of her mother. The demands of a role of a parent in caring for children with special needs is yet another theme explored on the backdrop of the play’s action. By way of the mother-daughter relationship, we witness the conflict of two realities, is turbulent and often exhausting to the point of resignation, difficult for both sides, but also loving and instructive. Elfriede Jelinek’s text is typically fragmentary, allusive; it is a journey through a winter landscape, serving as a metaphor of wandering, backed in the production by impressive light design, and at one moment the whole space is enveloped in a misty haze. The actors and spectators immerse themselves in the labyrinthine mind of a person who perceives differently, they can try to empathise with an unfamiliar psychic and mental world, and simultaneously come to the realisation that their own path is often also far from straight and clear.

Besides Mazalán’s interpretation of Schubert’s songs, the production’s strengths include a subtle performance by Annamária Janeková in the role of the Girl, a minimalist but realistic performance by Jana Oľhová as the Mother, the piano virtuoso skills of Peter Pažický, as well as the visual concept by Ján Ptačin. Above all, the production is a purposeful social impulse, because it broaches themes that are rarely and marginally opened in theatre. Mazalán and his collaborators give us an opportunity to reflect and revalue or attitude to otherness, often based on pity or ignorance. The production’s final moments deliver a surprising, movingly beautiful ending that shows nothing needs to be the way it seems at first sight.

Martina Mašlárová