LOS INCONTADOS – Anatomía de la violencia en Colombia: un tríptico

by Mapa Teatro (Bogotá)
Concept, Dramaturgy and Direction: Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden

Guest performance during FIND 2017

04/07/2017, 20.30–21.40
In Spanish with German and English surtitles

Followed by audience discussion

Three microcosms located between fantasy and reality, three set designs nestling one behind another: combiningextraordinary narrative and visual montage methods, in »THE UNACCOUNTED« the Mapo Teatro transdisciplinary collective from Bogotá chart an »Anatomy of violence in Columbia «, which has defined the country for well over half a century and notably led to the bloody guerrilla war whose end has been under negotiation for many years. Part 1, »The Holy Innocents«, transforms an old African-Columbian ritual into a delirious performance: masked men dressed as women parade through the streets whipping everyone who is not masked and a transvestite. Part 2, »Discourse of a Decent Man«, presents the ghost of a murdered drug mafia overlord who in the company of his last musician, is forced to look the ghost of his own past in the eye in the Columbianjungle. Part 3, »The Farewell«, brings onto the stage a group of children gathered around a radio waiting for news of a revolution that will never happen. Each part depicts a single side in this long war and shows the narrow edge which separates celebration from an outbreak of violence. Together the three parts form a grand vision – constructed from cultish and surreal elements – of Latin American democracies since the end of the Second World War.

The Columbian Mapa Teatro collective has been one of the most renowned theatre companies in Latin America for over 30 years. Founded in 1984 in Paris by the siblings Rolf, Heidi and Elizabeth Abderhalden, it has been based in Bogotá since 1986. Mapo Teatro created an extremely individual universe dismantling and combining various genres and art forms in which myths, history and the present, private and public spaces, opera, theatre, cabaret, radio and video all flow into one another.

>>> Essay about the production in Pearson's Preview: Theatre that Lies to Tell the Truth (with an appearance by Pablo Escobar)

Coproduction: Mapa Teatro, Iberescena, Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá and Prod.Art.Br, European touring: Camille Barnaud, Ximena Vargas In Collaboration with ¡Adelante! Festival, Theater Heidelberg.

Duration: ca. 70 minutes