Bring the happy to Tbilisi!

We're at Tblisi airport; all of the luggage from our flight has been retrieved from the carousel. We are waiting for someone to come round the corner with our flight case. Covered in "fragile" stickers, it contains the neon sign we hang in our show. We are pretty much alone in the airport. We wait. There is a loud noise and the flight case appears on the carousel, upside down. We laugh, take it off, meet Marita from the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre and have a nerve-shredding ride from the airport to the theatre. Schools are back today, the driver abandons three routes into town, U-turning away from grid-locked streets and tunnels. The theatre is amazing, huge fret-worked chandeliers, grandiose double doors, a catacomb of rooms downstairs. It could easily be something out of a Wes Anderson film. We have not been in the city more than a few hours and we have already fallen for the place. 

We are here to present our piece, Bring the Happy. The concept for Bring the Happy is fairly simple: in each place we install a large 3D map of the city and ask people to mark on to it their moments and memories of happiness. Each memory is recorded on a digital map of the world and represented by a glass rod which is placed on the very spot at which the memory took place. The memory is given a happiness rating between 1 and 10 and it is this that determines the height of the rod. As the map fills up, a glass city scape begins to emerge, an undulating architecture representing an emotional geography of a place. At the end of the mapping period these memories are transformed into a live performance, best described as somewhere between a wedding and a wake; a celebration of the lives that have collided with each other upon the map.

And so here we are in Tbilisi, as part of Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre, talking to Georgians about their happiness. Whether by design or chance – I'm not sure which yet – the memories cluster on either side of the Mt'k'vari River. I have managed to master six words in Georgian and, with these under my belt, stand at the bottom of the steps to the theatre and ask passersby if they would like to mark a happy moment on our map. They step inside to walk the lanes of the map trying to locate their homes or places where their lives have been enlivened or changed.

We are pre-advised that Georgians are likely to be a closed book and keep their emotions locked in, but we haven't experienced this – to be fair many of those interacting are from the younger generation. People seem happy to relate their personal stories, type up their moments of meaning and add them to the map. A beautiful story of a mother and daughter on a bridge, the little girl asking her mother if they will survive if the bridge crumbles, and her mother reassuring her – this moment frozen in time for her and reawakened every time she crosses the bridge. The neon sign might not have survived the trip, but our love for this project and of talking to all these people has. To be here in this city of crumbling balconies and meat-stuffed dumplings talking to people about their happiness is nothing short of a joy.

Richard Warburton is one of three lead artists at Invisible Flock, which was supported in taking Bring The Happy to Georgia by the British Council. For more information on Invisible Flock or the show, visit the company's website, and follow @UKTheatreDance for all of the latest news, blogs and opportunities from the Theatre and Dance Team.