In modern society everyone seems to have an obsession with the pursuit of happiness, but nobody seems to have a complete idea of what it is and why we are all trying so hard to find it. What are the effects of our inevitable desire for optimism? Has happiness perhaps turned into a farce, an aggressive form of superficiality? Do we wait or do we actively search for happiness? Will we be satisfied once we’ve received what we wished for? By creating Happiness Now!, we have started a quest to achieve the unachievable; to catch happiness. In our performance we explore different notions of happiness, firstly by objectifying it and presenting it in the familiar formats created by the Media, Politics, Religion, and other institutions of modern society that seem intent on defining our personal happiness for us. Then we attempt in a real and personal way to reach the root of what it means to be happy in today’s world, and why we all deem its presence so important. The performance is about the dichotomy between representation and authenticity, as we try to find the grey area between the constructed ‘hype of happiness’ and a genuine search for joy and meaning. Are we looking in the right direction? How do we search for something we cannot define?  And who has the authority to tell us (you) what happiness is? Happiness Now! is about the juxtaposition between societal conditioning, honest searching, and the idea of an impossible, unachievable search.  

Happiness Now! Is an interactive site-specific theatrical experience, in which the audience takes on the role of guests in a “happiness training camp”.  The guests are led through a series of active exercises, steps, and procedures aimed towards the achievement of their personal happiness potential. We will transform the space made available to us into different rooms with different aesthetic and functional purposes, which represent our treatment center.  As the audience psychologically advances in their pursuit for happiness, they are also physically advancing through the different spaces on a journey from the superficial to the profound. The audience is led through the “treatment” by our qualified Happiness Now! Staff- characters who are entirely a part of the world of the treatment centre. In the first room our guests will experience a communal physical exercise, in the second room they will be requested to fill in a questionnaire. This preparation is applied to build up tension for the third room, our treatment room. When our guests are finally guided into the third room, they first have to read a set of strict rules and then are requested to sit down on two lines of chairs in a waiting room ‘setup’.

In the current concept, the space is divided into three separate rooms.  The experience begins in the first room on a more superficial level with “Psycho-Physiological Serotonin Enhancing Exercises (PPSEE)”(like a sing-along song and dance, for example). Our guests are then led into the second room, where they are guided through personalized examinations. All this preparation is applied to build up expectations for the third room, our treatment room. (self-filled questionnaire). In this treatment room each guest will eventually receive a customized treatment designed to lead them to reaching their true happiness. Each guest will find himself participating in a ‘waiting room’ setup, observing all the other visitors and waiting. After a considerable time of waiting a phone rings. Our guests are requested one by one to return to the starting point of the performance, where having arrived at their final phase of treatment, they receive a special package containing their very personal happiness with the request not to open it. Our guest is kindly thanked for choosing Happiness Now!, and leaves the treatment centre.

The piece is developed on an arc advancing from a superficial presentation of the commercialized notion of happiness to a more personal, individual, and affecting examination  and experience of this idea. Currently, the piece is thirty minutes in length, and is a work in progress now being further developed into a longer experience (about one hour), which will then be catered to the specific durational and physical conditions of the theatre in which it plays.