Territorium

Was the fire an accident, an attack, or simply one of nature’s games? »Territorium« tells us about the fate of a woman and about a collision between two worlds: at a young age, she is received into the mansion of a large farm, in order to work there, and is thus wrested out of poverty. Henceforth, she will live with a family that is not her family. She is present, but never entirely belongs. At the same time, the community she came from views her as a traitor. The estate owners are loathed for their industrial exploitation of nature. The further extension of agricultural land leads to increasingly violent conflicts. Ultimately, a fire destroys the estate, and the lords of the manor die. Soon, the only survivor, the employee, is suspected of having murdered her foster parents.

»Territorium« is a play about an afflicted, beleaguered landscape and about the clash between different worldviews. What consequences has the colonial project had to this day? European land grabbing has led to a new spatial structure all over the world: nature is fenced in and corralled. The construction of a territory presupposes a power that controls borders in order to exclude other people. At the same time, this authority oversees what happens inside the fenced-in area and governs its exploitation. But this aproach, which relies on utilisation, technology and machines, ignores what used to be there: perhaps the beings that used to populate this landscape have not been displaced at all, but continue to inhabit their original home as they always have in shadow form?

Marco Layera, born in Santiago de Chile, writes for theatre, directs, and manages his own company, »la re- sentida« (the resentful), which has appeared on over 100 stages in over 30 countries since 2008. To date, Marco Layera and his company have attended the FIND Festival numerous times: »Tratando de hacer una obra que cambie el mundo« (2014), »La imaginación del futuro« (2015), »Paisajes para no colorear« (2019) and most recently with the premiere of »Oasis de la Impunidad « (2022), which was selected by the NY Times as one of the most remarkable plays of the year in 2022.
For »Territorium«, Marco Layera is now working with the Schaubühne ensemble for the first time.