Can theatre make you happy? In the performance »Happyology – Tears of joy«, the audience can try it out. Three performers join the audience on an expedition into the depths of a course to self-optimize one’s own happiness. Social pressure and the demand of performing at a constantly higher level has recently led to a flood of offers for seminars, workshops and body trainings. In addition to career success, they also promise individual happiness.

In this performance, Dragana Bulut examines different strategies for a supposed increase of physical and spiritual well-being. In a playful appropriation and deconstruction of different coaching methods, she questions individual desires for happiness – their commercialization elicits sad but also humorous associations.

Dragana Bulut, born in Mostar / Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1983, currently lives and works in Berlin. She completed her education in dance and choreography at the Inter-University Centre for Dance / University of the Arts Berlin. Since 2005, she has been developing her own choreographies that have been shown at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien and Museum Folkwang Essen. In 2010, she was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe, a European prize for upcoming choreographers. At euro-scene Leipzig 2011, Dragana Bulut – together with Maria Baroncea and Eduard Gabia from Bucharest – presented her performance »E. I. O.«.