Manuela Infante with Teatro de Chile

In Residence:
November 12, 2015 - November 21, 2015
Discipline:
Performance, Theatre
Country:
Chile

Teatro de Chile is one of the most highly regarded young theatre groups in Chile. They began working together in 2001 moved by the desire to develop creative processes driven by experimentation and investigation. From their first play, the company established itself firmly in the history of contemporary Chilean theatre and became known for the sustained quality of their work in the creation of avant-garde theatre pieces. With a repertoire of 11 plays to date, the company has shown their work in numerous editions of Santiago a Mil, and in other important international festivals such as Festival de Teatro de Cádiz, TeatroStageFest NewYork, Festival de Spoleto, La vida Después Festival HAU, Berlin, Festival de Artes Escénicas de Lima and Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. Teatro de Chile has been presented on stages in Holland, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, and Germany.

Manuela Infante, born in 1980 in Santiago, Chile, holds a BA in Arts from the University of Chile and a MA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam. Working as a director and playwright with her stable group Teatro de Chile, Manuela Infante has staged plays such as Prat (2001), which took first place in the Víctor Jara Festival for Playwrights and Directors in 2002, Juana (2003), Rey Planta (2006), Ernesto (2010), and Loros Negros (2011). All works have been funded by FONDART (National Fund for the Arts). In addition, Infante has directed Fin (2008), co-produced and premiered at the festival of Modena, Italy and What’s He Building in There? (2011), created in residency at The Watermill Center, and premiered and shown in several spaces in New York. In 2012, she directed On the Beach, curated by Robert Wilson and premiered at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York; as well as Don’t Feed the Humans, premiered in Hebbel am Uffer in Berlin, Germany. Three of her plays have been published in Chile and abroad. Manuela Infante also works as a professor in several theatre departments in Santiago, Chile. She was selected as Artistic Director of the XVI Playwright Selection 2014, organized by the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes.

 

Manuela Infante and Teatro de Chile will develop a new research process in collaboration with choreographer Rodrigo Sobarzo, inspired by the ideas of the newly emerged Object Oriented Philosophy. We will establish a collaborative laboratory where we will work exploring the moment of independence (from subjectivity) possessed by things. We will look at how objects can become vibrant things with a certain effectivity and voice of their own, how they can acquire an irreducible degree of independence from the words, images, and feelings they provoke in us. Taking the standpoint of a completely new form of “realism” we will engage in a new exploration infused by the ideas of the Speculative Realists, by the video art of Fichly and Weiss (Der Lauf der Dinge), the ideas of Graham Harman, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennet, Manuel De Landa and the film genre of slapstick.

 

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