Synopsis:

Vegetative State is a polyphonic, ramified and exuberant performance. Its main character is a woman, who is not an individual, but a crowd, a swarm. This is not animal work; it is fascinating vegetable work created by the dynamic Chilean star director Manuela Infante, with the amazingly expressive actress Marcela Salinas.

Based on the revolutionary thinking of plant philosopher Michael Marder and plant neurobiologists like Stefano Mancuso, Vegetative State probes the ways in which new concepts of the plant kingdom – from plant intelligence to vegetative soul to plant communication – can transform us. If we accept that plants have other ways of thinking, feeling, communicating, being intelligent and conscious, having another sense of time, perhaps we might see anew our own sense of thinking, feeling, communicating, awareness and being.

Marder argues that "to recognise the other in plants, is also to recognise the vegetal other in us". With the versatile Infante at the helm steering her way through vibrant matter, Vegetative State tirelessly dances an impossible dialogue, that of humans and plants. An unexpected encounter with nature that begins coincidentally reminiscent of Kuo Pao Kun's Singapore classic, "The Silly Little Girl and The Funny Old Tree".

Performed in Spanish with English surtitles.

Asia-Pacific Premiere.