Manuela Infante refers to her play, Estado Vegetal, as performing plant-thinking through polyphonic aesthetics. Being a musician, Infante stresses the importance of rhythmic dialogue as a marker of the plantedness. I am caught on the audibility of plant aesthetics. It is easy to visualize a plant’s physicality, as one can conjure images of roots and…

What struck me about Manuela Infante’s Plant Dramaturgy is the structural and processual decisions made to decentralize anthropocentrism so common in the cannon of theater. From the point of view of a playwright and director, Infante pushes the envelope of what theater is while simultaneously using the theater setting as a kind of laboratory in…

Manuela Infante’s seminar on the play Estado Vegetal offered a lot of information on new theatre practices and how the method of a “branching out” play challenges the traditional theatre practice. By being fragmented but not fragmentary, Estado Vegetal can be cut into pieces without it losing its rhythm and linearity. Since we were able…

During the Transmission in Motion seminar held on 18 November 2020, “Plant-based Dramaturgy”, Manuela Infante discussed the creative process of her performance Estado Vegetal. Understanding theater as “embodied philosophy in development” (Infante 2020), Infante explores the ideas of plant intelligence and communication. Her work is post-anthropocentric in the sense that she experiments with the possibility…

“What does new materialism tell us about the Anthropocene? It means that, despite a new label, we have always profoundly influenced (and been influenced by) the earth system, simply by being a part of it…We have been, and continue to be, since our creation, part of an interconnected, complex and dynamic web of materiality. Our…

How do we relate to objects? This is the question that theatre director Manuela Infante explores in her performance Estado Vegetal (Infante 2017). More specifically, how do we relate to plants?                     Infante stresses that she does not want to imitate plants, to represent them, but…

The last Transmission in Motion session included an inspiring conversation with Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician Manuela Infante. Manuela has introduced us to her ongoing attempts to decolonize the theatrical space from anthropocentric practices through dramaturgies that are based on natural elements. In some sort of biomimicry-like compositions, she translates posthuman theoretical and philosophical…

The Transmission in Motion (TiM) Seminar, took place on November 18th, 2020, under Corona-proof conditions, in a virtual auditorium in Microsoft Teams environment. The title of the online session “Plant-based Dramaturgy” – Manuela Infante, revolved around the artistic work of Manuela’s Infante, Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician. The seminar was moderated by Liesbeth Groot…

Western understanding of humanity has permeated into different layers of cultural and societal considerations. The western master narrative has turned the understanding of what it means to be a human into the myth of “original unity, fullness,” stable and not subjected to changes (Haraway 2016, 8). Such a way of reasoning may result in ceasing…

“Knowledge in Making – Design by Doing” is the title of the Transmission in Motion seminar series. Its second session, moderated by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink, “Plant-based Dramaturgy”, took place on November 18, 2020. This session’s guest was a Chilean theatre director, scriptwriter and musician, Manuela Infante and she discussed the process of creating Estado Vegetal…