ESTADO VEGETAL

MANUELA INFANTE (RCH)

Manuela Infante, one of the young talents of Chilean theater, author and director, arrives in Lugano and debuts with her new work Estado Vegetal, a polyphonic, branched, lush, repetitive monologue. The protagonist is a woman who is not an individual; she is a crowd, a swarm. “This is not an animal work it is a vegetable work says the performer.” The work takes its cue from the revolutionary thinking of philosophers and plant neurobiologists like Michael Marder and Stefano Mancuso who suggest that we reevaluate our generally undervalued concept of the plant kingdom.

The idea is to discover how concepts such as plant intelligence or the vegetative soul can transform our creative practice. If we accept that plants have other ways of thinking, feeling, communicating, another way of being intelligent, another consciousness and another sense of time, perhaps we can transform our notions of what it is to be thinking, feeling, communicating and being aware of.

Estado Vegetal relentlessly revolves around an impossible dialogue, that between humans and plants. The failed dialogue with nature that is perhaps our most innate monologue. Among Infante’s works: Prat, Juana, Narciso and Zoo; Fin awarded at Modena Festival (2008); What’s he building in there? (2011) the result of a residency at the prestigious The Watermill Center directed by Bob Wilson. On the Beach awarded at Barishnikov Arts Center in New York and Don’t Feed the Humans at Hebbel am Uffer in Berlin.

ESTADO VEGETAL direction Manuela Infante
dramaturgy Marcela Salinas e Manuela Infante
with Marcela Salinas
set design, costumes e light design Rocìo Hernàndez
production Carmina Infante

SAT 07.10.2017 | 20.30
TEATRO FOCE – LUGANO

22.00 After-show meeting with the audience
moderator Angela Demattè