Little Man, Time and the Troubadour

The troubadour in the title is artist Sipa Labakhua, who cycles through his native Abkhazia with his micro-theatre. The autobiographical—and at times almost surrealistic—story he tells is based on the fate of his father: an idealistic politician who, at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was forced by the war with Georgia to flee with his family to Moscow. But now his son has returned home. With his traveling performance, he confronts the audience with his own history of uprooting and war, and discusses things people would rather not talk about. Along the way, he collects personal memories and dreams of a colourful procession of fellow countrymen: Orthodox priests, Abkhaz nationalists, Syrian refugees, Georgian peasants, and Russian hippies.

Labakhua developed the libretto for his micro-theatre with Dutch director Ineke Smits, for whom Georgia and the South Caucasus have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for years. The piece is the starting point for a poetic road movie with song and imagination, nostalgia and wonder. \"Look, we're talking. It's getting better,\" someone says after seeing the performance. The media reports to us daily about war and misery. But what happens when the dust settles? What of the refugees, the warriors, and the witnesses? ‘Little Man, Time and the Troubadour’ looks for the small and the personal, for the scars instead of the wounds. As a result, current questions such as \"What is a home, and what is a country?\"—questions equally relevant in our part of the world, where nationalism and identity issues dominate the public debate—are explored with finesse and artistry