HAPPY ThinGS ACADEMY

happy
thin
GS aca
demy

When we felt the need to give more…We made a decision…
And Happy ThinGS Academy was born!

Everything in life is one big domino effect, and our Glulo and Smrlo story was the first domino tile that started the unstoppable creative momentum in Crocon’s life.

But to make it clear how it got to that moment, we have to tell you about the domino tile first. ????

The year is 2013, Crocon d.o.o. celebrates 20 years of existence and work. We are gathering partners from all over Europe, all principals and dear clients, and only one thing is certain – no one knows what to expect, except that it will not be boring. Isn’t that always the case when it comes to Crocon?

In order not to have people dozing off at the tables at the celebration of this great anniversary, we decided on an unconventional approach and presented our entire portfolio through a cabaret!

What does this have to do with the first domino tile and Glulo and Smrlo? The link is, you guessed it, the actors. Nataša Tepša Budija, Emir Mulalić, Bojan Lakoš and other actors from our famous RI theater/Kalvarija staged a satirical show worth two decades of survival on the waves of the marine business, and our partners were delighted, falling off their chairs, from shock, from laughter, spared was nobody.

1 “Happy thinGS academy” theater

On the wings of the cabaret, the desire for our theater to live on matured and so in 2014 we founded the Happy ThinGS Academy Rijeka Association headed by Nataša Tepša Budija, our clown doctor, drama pedagogue, author of drama texts, actress and much, much more. ????

The association organizes an acting school for children and adults (we also ventured into senior citizen territory), through which generations of children from Rijeka grow and cement their self-confidence. Over time we also threw ourselves into creating short films that were also awarded internationally.

Ten years later, the association is still living and creating, and behind us are many beautiful, emotional experiences, theater performances, hundreds of fulfilled little actors, proud and tearful parents, grandparents and others.

Some of our children’s ensemble performances were:

THE WISE BOOK
MOMO
BABAROGE AND BABCIROGCI
FOOLISH COURT
RETRICA
ACTORS AND FOOLS CUSPAIZ
ZNJ SCHOOL
ANT ANT HILL
AT THE AIRPORT

And some of our adult ensemble performances were:

GLULO AND SMRLO IN STRIGILAND
LANA THE TEENAGER
GLUTEN FREE PARTY
…

2 One step further to “Film laboratory”

In the summer of 2018, the wonderful young participants of the HTA acting school came to us with the desire to try their hand at creating short films, and who are we to discourage the enthusiasm and creative spirit of the Happy ThinGS people, especially when we have ideal script templates for short films?

Namely, Crocon had regularly published satirical texts years before the Film Lab in which the author Linda Poščić Borovac mercilessly and wittily dissected the phenomena of business life (and life in general). Most of the texts on which the films of the HTA Film Laboratory would be based first saw the light of day as part of Crocon’s desk calendar for 2015. In them, we “slapped” and grounded behaviors and a (non)value system that completely contradicted our basic and most important principles: SIMPLICITY, POSITIVITY, PROACTIVITY and COMMUNICATION.

Four short films were created in support of the stated values, based on the satirical texts of the same name:

MIRACULOUS SPORT (in support of positivity)
THAT NAUSEATING SIMPLICITY (in support of simplicity)
WHAT SHOULD YOU REALLY EAT AND WHY? (in support of good communication)
POLI & TICS (bonus satire about the most infamous couple, Poli and Tics)

We shot the films in a completely volunteer and enthusiastic arrangement, from scripts, locations, hairstyles, microphones to clothes and shoes from our own closets 🙂

The films brought our HTA world fame by winning several international awards for short and satirical films: