“I’m not imagining it, I saw it on the telly: when humanity is wiped off the face of the earth, the plants are going to move in within three months and cover everything. The planet is going to become one big green ball”.
State of Vegetation is a polyphonic, branching, exuberant, reiterative, divisible and sessile monologue. Its protagonist is a woman, who is not an individual; she is a multitude, a swarm. This is not an animal play; it is a vegetable play.
Based on the revolutionary thinking of plant philosopher Michael Marder and plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, the exploration consists of probing the ways in which new concepts such as plant intelligence, vegetative soul, or plant communication can transform our creative practice.
If we accept that plants have other ways of thinking, feeling, communicating, other way of being intelligent, a different form of consciousness and another notion of time, perhaps we can see our own notions of thinking, feeling, communicating and being aware, transformed. In Michael Marder’s words, “recognizing a “valid “other” in plants is also beginning to recognize that vegetal other within us.”
The show was developed through a collaboration between Chilean theatre maker Manuela Infante and actor Marcela Salinas. The Out of the Wings Festival will showcase a reading of the English translation of the text, which was co-translated by director Camila Ymay González and actor Lucy Phelps.
Born out of a collaboration between its co-founders and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed Spanish Golden Age season, OOTW has been bringing English translations of theatre from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds to the UK and beyond since 2008.
All plays at #OOTW2024 will be presented as staged readings.
