La Luna en el Amazonas

With its latest production La Luna en el Amazonas (The Moon in the Amazon), Mapa Teatro once again uses the stage to explore the reality of true events. Directors Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden connect the current situation to that at the end of the 19th century when an Indigenous community deliberately isolated itself in the face of the violent intrusion of settlers in its territory in the Colombian Amazon. Scientific and fictional texts, visual material, contemporary testimonies, electronic sounds, and live music form the base for a futuristic ethno-fiction which merges history, the present, and curious anecdotes. The search for the existence of isolated Indigenous communities is carried out by Mapa Teatro in the same way that quantum physicists trace the tiny particles that make up the universe, or that astronomers try to determine the existence of planets in other galaxies. When direct contact is impossible, the gaze must be directed towards the forces and vibrations in the surrounding space. In the continuation of their trilogy Anatomia de la Violencia en Colombia (Anatomy of Violence in Colombia), which illuminated various facets of the Colombian civil war, Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden create a form of poetic resistance to the ideological and ecological violence of the present and explore the question: The destruction of the environment, the appropriation of rainforest areas by multinational corporations, the murders of representatives of Indigenous communities or environmental organisations—are these signs of a new colonisation? Mapa Teatro defines itself as a laboratory for transdisciplinary artistic creation. Based in Bogota, it was founded in Paris in 1984 by the Colombian-Swiss artist and director couple Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden. In recent years, Mapa Teatro productions have focused on events that combine micro-politics and poetics. The first part of the trilogy “Anatomia de la Violencia en Colombia”, “Los Santos Inocentes” (The Innocent Saints, 2010), was the first Colombian play to be invited by the Festival d'Avignon. The play, as well as the other two parts of the trilogy, were shown at numerous other European and international festivals. The performances is part of Kaserne Globâle in cooperation with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia.