Chilean Experimental Theater Collective Bonobo Makes U.S. Debut At Baryshnikov Arts Center With TU AMARAS

In Tú Amarás, a Humorous Reflection on The Other in Contemporary Society, an International Conference on Prejudice in Medicine Is Complicated by the Arrival of Extraterrestrials Who Have Settled on Earth to Escape Genocide.

Bonobo Developed Tú Amarás during a 2017 BAC Residency.

Baryshnikov rts Center introduces celebrated Chilean theater collective Bonobo to New York audiences with the U.S. premiere of Tú Amarás (You Shall Love). In Tú Amarás, a group of doctors prepare for an international conference on prejudice in medicine, a subject complicated by the arrival of extraterrestrials who have settled on Earth after escaping genocide. The work reflects on discrimination and marginalization, and offers sharp political critique in Bonobo's signature style, with what Chile's El Mostrador describes as "remarkable humor and very intelligent dialogue."

Bonobo performs Tú Amarás, in Spanish with English supertitles, Thursday, February 13, through Saturday, February 15, at 7:30pm in BAC's Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 West 37th Street. Tickets are $25, and can be purchased at bacnyc.org. Running time is approximately 85 minutes.

The Santiago-based Bonobo, founded by Pablo Manzi and Andreina Olivari in 2012, is one of Chile's most renowned, award-winning young theater companies. Their plays have been performed in countries including Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and Perú, in addition to Chile. Tú Amarás received the José Nuez Martí Award from the Literature Department of Universidad Católica (Chile) and was selected for the Second Annual International Play Reading Festival of New York's Columbia University. The play was selected to represent America at the Tokyo Festival World Competition (Japan), where it received the Critics' Choice Award, the Award for Outstanding Performance, and the Audience Award.

Through a methodology of collective creation, with particular emphasis on research and improvisation, Bonobo stages plays aimed at stimulating critical reflection on timely sociopolitical themes. Like Tú Amarás, the company's widely performed two previous productions, Amansadura (2012) and Donde Viven los Bárbaros (2015), addressed the violence that underlies representative democracy, undercutting its supposed capacity for tolerance and consensus. Bonobo explains, "In Chile and beyond, we are currently witnessing the contradiction that exists between an honest desire to practice democratic values and the inevitable appearance of cultural structures that we have inherited from recent history. These structures continue to exclude-and, ultimately, to make disappear-those who are different."

So, the doctors assembled in Tú Amarás ask themselves, "Who's the enemy? How do they become an enemy? What defines them or makes them different? How do we interact with 'others'?" The Amenites, the aliens who recently settled on Earth, in turn afford the physicians an opportunity to reflect on discrimination and the implicit violence towards "others."

Written by Pablo Manzi, directed by Andreina Olivari and Pablo Manzi, and produced by Horacio Pérez, Tú Amarás features set, lighting and costume design by Felipe Olivares and Juan Andrés Rivera and music by Camilo Catepillan. The cast is: Gabriel Cañas, Carlos Donoso, Paulina Giglio, Guilherme Sepúlveda and Gabriel Urzúa.

With Tú Amarás, BAC continues its support of new work from Chile's foremost experimental theater-makers. In May 2019, the organization premiered Manuela Infante's Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), an exuberant and polyphonic one-woman show about the impossibility of dialogue between humans and plants, also developed in part through a BAC Artist Residency.

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