Chilean National Theater, Morandé 25, La Moneda metro.
April 3 to 27.
Wednesday to Saturday – 7:30 p.m.
Tickets through Ticketplus HERE.
Estela, a domestic worker, is questioned after the death of the girl she was caring for in the home of an elite Santiago family. Inside a Gesell chamber, a mirrored room where judicial and/or psychiatric interrogations are carried out, we hear the testimony of this woman from the rural area of Chiloé, who has spent seven years watching over the life of the girl and her employers. .
Uprooting, exploitation, sincere affection and humor are some of the feelings that run through the pages of “Limpia”, the second novel by the award-winning national writer Alia Trabucco Zerán, with a staging by Alfredo Castro, and a cast made up of Paola Giannini , Taira Court, Álvaro Espinoza, Teresita Ríos, Djure Gasic and Benjamín Muñoz.
“With ‘Limpia’ we kick off our Teatro a Mil Presenta 2024 project, with which we will continue all year presenting performing arts in Santiago, regions and the world in alliance with artists, venues, municipalities, festivals and programmers from different countries. “says Carmen Romero Quero, director of the Teatro a Mil Foundation, co-producer of the play with the Chilean National Theatre.
From book to tables
In his role as director, the actor of Los Colonos, El Conde, Tony Manero, El Club and so many notable films, continues with his unique stage posture, dazzling and critical, giving rise to those testimonial voices, censored, omitted and/or denied historically in the country, broadening and deepening the view on social crises, the psychological and emotional pain of subjects neglected by the system.
This is what he did in his renowned Testimonial Trilogy, made up of History of Blood, Adam’s Apple and One-Eyed Days. Also in Facts Consumed, a work by playwright Juan Radrigán, which was re-released at the Teatro a Mil 2023 Festival and which had a season at the Chilean National Theater within the framework of the cycle 50 YEARS: SINCE LA MEMORIA organized by Fundación Teatro a Mil for the commemoration of the Coup d’état. And more recently in Girls & Boys, which had several sold-out seasons and critical acclaim.
Now with “Limpia”, Alfredo Castro once again explores the social gap from the voice of a domestic worker.
“The protagonist of this novel is a nanny who works behind closed doors, a woman who comes from Ancud, a rural area located in Chiloé. As has historically happened for decades in our country, these young women who migrate to the capital in search of better working conditions are practically kidnapped from their reality and identity. This is a territorial and social deportation linked to slavery, mistreatment, labor abuse and exploitation,” explains the director.
Castro, who for years as a director has resorted to literary texts by important Chilean writers, such as Diamela Eltit, Carlos Droguett for his creations, has sought in his writings everything theatrical that there is in them, his seditions, images, his narrations on the margins. of the political and social system, which fight against neoliberal, totalitarian, binary ideologies.
In this passage from literature to “the theatrical” great turbulences of meaning arise and new readings, thoughts and emotions also emerge. Castro chooses material precariousness in his creations, understanding it as an aesthetic that treasures a belonging to a baroque, exuberant and splendid imaginary, typical of the third world, which is his world.
Meanwhile, the author of the novel, Alia Trabucco, recognized for her debut, “La resta”, a novel that explores the children of the dictatorship and which was a finalist for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, also sold the adaptation rights to her second work “Las homicidas”, a book of essays that narrates the police cases of four Chilean female murderers. One of those stories, that of the writer María Carolina Geel, who killed her lover at the Crillón Hotel, has just been turned into a film, directed by Maite Alberdi and will soon be released on the Netflix platform.
