Geografía Teatral

After graduating from the Theater Department of the University of Chile, a group of newly graduates, but former friends, decided to get together to create a new theater company, since we knew that we all shared the need, the desire, to explore new forms that could express our views of the world using the eyes of theater. Thus, on 2006, we put together our first project as a company, titled AFTER. Since we needed this play to present our statement as company, we worked very hard to discover somewhere different and unique, that could distinguish our play from the traditional formats used by our contemporaries.
And so, without knowing exactly what it would happen, we found, one day, an abandoned basement that belonged to the owner of a bar. This basement became the first stage for our very first play.

With AFTER we explored how to inhabit this basement from the point of view of theater. We wanted to know how to make the best of this space, and how to make the text interact with our proposed stage. Through this play, we wanted to give the audience to relate to a more critical view of society by all the components of the play, which is difficult to find in a more classical type of playwriting. This work was our first approach to the style and language we would develop as a company, presenting the audience the elements that are characteristic in our work, such as humor, irony and the simplicity of wanting to tell a story.

Our company started to grow by developing many new projects, specially due to the success of AFTER. We were able to strengthen our work thanks to the collaboration of different actors, actresses, designers and friends that wanted to help us create our new theater company. The name came from something we all had in common, something we thought was fundamental for our view of the world as well as theater. We named it “GEOGRAFÍA TEATRAL”, which in English means “Theater Geography”.

Daily acts, things that surround us, are all highly relevant elements that compose our poetics. Through texts that we’ve written ourselves, such as AFTER, MENU B, JAULA OBESA (Obese Cage), and LA CAUSA DEL SINIESTRO (The Cause of the Disaster), we have been able to discover and present, by the use of irony most times, symptoms that are familiar to our society.
In some way or another, our theater proposal has become an opportunity to present in a stage current social issues that are around us every single day and that are whether to formally analyzed or strictly erased from the public opinion. Through our theater approach, we try to create with the audience a sort of complicity by exploiting absurd and pathetic situations that have a concrete social basis. An example of this would be a recurrent theme we use: social inertia; a situation that involves a psychological violence produced by the weights of social standards, and that involves an incapacity to communicate, individualism, etc.
Even though we are always looking for new forms of experimentations, this hasn't set us apart from Chilean playwrights that belong to the last century. We have approached these type of works by picturing a contemporary view of the texts. That is the case of NATACHA, and ISABEL SANDOVAL MODAS. We were interested in revising conventional cultural referents by studying why there are certain conflicts that reemerge in time, and that can always be read as contemporary since their problematic are still legitimate.

In all of our plays we have strengthen our actors and actresses and their capacity to perform using a critical observation; it's part of our methodology. We encourage them to rescue and reinterpret expressions that belong to real characters. The analysis of gestures operates as a way to study the symptoms which belong to the social problems we present on stage. The characters represent different lifestyles as well as people that are affected, nowadays, by a political context, understood both socially and culturally, which can be seen as a cause and effect.

This necessity we have mentioned, being responsible for the context that surrounds us, which gathered us together, makes us strong as a company. We feel is our duty to show what encourage us, to make our reflections evident. Our theatre proposal is a way to explore the potentiality of the space that creates up in the stage, which means to always think and work as a group together with the stage designers, since the architectonic place where our plays take place is essential to our proposal. In some way or another, we have intuitively developed a poetics of space that is every time more specific and more relevant.

This is where the analysis of "buildings" and "theaters" becomes a discursive element, strengthening our work.
The diversity of our given interests has led us to participate in a wide amount of theater festival, aiming to a more international style of playwriting - UNA IMPOSTURA DEL RECUERDO (An Imposture of Memory), CUERPECITO, CUERPECITO, DIME... (Little Body, Little Body, on the Wall...). Without a doubt, this has given us a defying challenge since, as a company, we must work with discourses that may feel apart from society, and that are always looking for solutions and visual supports within local contexts. On the stage, these situations become universal since they impregnate the play with many different readings, making the text familiar to any kind of audience that participates is involved with our plays.


La Causa del Siniestro (The Cause of the Disaster) Season 7 - 30 January 2011. Venue Azotea Teatro Lastarria 90 Santiago Cuerpecito, Cuerpecito, Dime... (Little Body, Little Body, on the Wall...) First season festival Fabre 28 - 31 de october 2010. Venue Universidad Finis Terrae Santiago Una Impostura del Recuerdo (A lie of the mind) Festival Presentations 16 - 27 de June 2010. Venue Lastarria 90 Santiago Awarded Season 16 July - 1 August 2010. Venue Lastarria 90 Santiago Isabel Sandoval Modas (Isabel Sandoval’s Fashion) Season 15 May - 25 June 2009. Venue Teatro del Puente Santiago Jaula Obesa (Obese Cage) First season 14 August - 13 September 2008. Venue Sala Sergio Aguirre Santiago Second season 14 - 25 January 2009. Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil. Venue Sala Sergio Aguirre Santiago Natacha First season 17 April - 18 May 2008. Venue Casona Partido Radical Santiago Second season 9 July - 15 August 2009. Venue Teatro del Puente Santiago Performances 22 - 23 y 24 July 2009. Festival Llueve Teatro en el Maule Cauquenes - Linares – Talca Menú B First season 3 - 13 January 2008. Venue White Sessions Lounge Café Santiago Performances 20 - 21 y 22 February 2009. Venue Amandita Cachagua After First season 22 November - 16 December 2006. Venue Sofá Santiago Second season 9 - 20 January 2007. VenueSofá Santiago		After graduating from the Theater Department of the University of Chile, a group of newly graduates, but former friends, decided to get together to create a new theater company, since we knew that we all shared the need, the desire, to explore new forms that could express our views of the world using the eyes of theater. Thus, on 2006, we put together our first project as a company, titled AFTER. Since we needed this play to present our statement as company, we worked very hard to discover somewhere different and unique, that could distinguish our play from the traditional formats used by our contemporaries. And so, without knowing exactly what it would happen, we found, one day, an abandoned basement that belonged to the owner of a bar. This basement became the first stage for our very first play. With AFTER we explored how to inhabit this basement from the point of view of theater. We wanted to know how to make the best of this space, and how to make the text interact with our proposed stage. Through this play, we wanted to give the audience to relate to a more critical view of society by all the components of the play, which is difficult to find in a more classical type of playwriting. This work was our first approach to the style and language we would develop as a company, presenting the audience the elements that are characteristic in our work, such as humor, irony and the simplicity of wanting to tell a story. Our company started to grow by developing many new projects, specially due to the success of AFTER. We were able to strengthen our work thanks to the collaboration of different actors, actresses, designers and friends that wanted to help us create our new theater company. The name came from something we all had in common, something we thought was fundamental for our view of the world as well as theater. We named it “GEOGRAFÍA TEATRAL”, which in English means “Theater Geography”. Daily acts, things that surround us, are all highly relevant elements that compose our poetics. Through texts that we’ve written ourselves, such as AFTER, MENU B, JAULA OBESA (Obese Cage), and LA CAUSA DEL SINIESTRO (The Cause of the Disaster), we have been able to discover and present, by the use of irony most times, symptoms that are familiar to our society. In some way or another, our theater proposal has become an opportunity to present in a stage current social issues that are around us every single day and that are whether to formally analyzed or strictly erased from the public opinion. Through our theater approach, we try to create with the audience a sort of complicity by exploiting absurd and pathetic situations that have a concrete social basis. An example of this would be a recurrent theme we use: social inertia; a situation that involves a psychological violence produced by the weights of social standards, and that involves an incapacity to communicate, individualism, etc. Even though we are always looking for new forms of experimentations, this hasn't set us apart from Chilean playwrights that belong to the last century. We have approached these type of works by picturing a contemporary view of the texts. That is the case of NATACHA, and ISABEL SANDOVAL MODAS. We were interested in revising conventional cultural referents by studying why there are certain conflicts that reemerge in time, and that can always be read as contemporary since their problematic are still legitimate. In all of our plays we have strengthen our actors and actresses and their capacity to perform using a critical observation; it's part of our methodology. We encourage them to rescue and reinterpret expressions that belong to real characters. The analysis of gestures operates as a way to study the symptoms which belong to the social problems we present on stage. The characters represent different lifestyles as well as people that are affected, nowadays, by a political context, understood both socially and culturally, which can be seen as a cause and effect. This necessity we have mentioned, being responsible for the context that surrounds us, which gathered us together, makes us strong as a company. We feel is our duty to show what encourage us, to make our reflections evident. Our theatre proposal is a way to explore the potentiality of the space that creates up in the stage, which means to always think and work as a group together with the stage designers, since the architectonic place where our plays take place is essential to our proposal. In some way or another, we have intuitively developed a poetics of space that is every time more specific and more relevant. This is where the analysis of "buildings" and "theaters" becomes a discursive element, strengthening our work. The diversity of our given interests has led us to participate in a wide amount of theater festival, aiming to a more international style of playwriting - UNA IMPOSTURA DEL RECUERDO (An Imposture of Memory), CUERPECITO, CUERPECITO, DIME... (Little Body, Little Body, on the Wall...). Without a doubt, this has given us a defying challenge since, as a company, we must work with discourses that may feel apart from society, and that are always looking for solutions and visual supports within local contexts. On the stage, these situations become universal since they impregnate the play with many different readings, making the text familiar to any kind of audience that participates is involved with our plays.