Coming soon: DE JACHT (The Hunt). World-class theatre with a bite. Directed by the Chilean top director Manuela Infante.
In the latest NITE + Slagwerk Den Haag performance, director Manuela Infante (Santiago de Chile, 1980) dives into the world of ‘rewilding’; creating more wilderness and reducing human influence and control.
About De Jacht (The Hunt)
In De Jacht the distinction between ‘man’ and ‘nature’ is questioned. We often feel alienated from nature, and no longer see ourselves of part of it, but as its rulers. As guardians of nature, with ultimate responsibility. We often place ourselves outside or above nature in our thinking and acting; but man is an animal and we are nature.
In THE HUNT, Infante thematizes the duality of wanting to tame ‘the wild’, and at the same time man’s need to seek the wilderness. From nostalgia for this and our own animal drive, we have now imitated the wild in order to be part of it; in African ‘hunting farms’ where animals are bred to be shot by humans in a simulated hunt. And in the Netherlands we are currently under the spell of the return of the wolf, which is both romanticized and feared.
Manuela Infante x NITE
After completing studies in Chile and at the University of Amsterdam, Infante is now a sought-after interdisciplinary theater maker worldwide. She has worked at the KVS (Brussels), Schauspielhaus Hannover, Theater Basel, Volkstheater Vienna, Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil (Chile), The Watermill Center (USA), Theatre Works (Singapore) among others.
In collaboration with composer musician Diego Noguera, the actors of the NITE ensemble and the musicians of Slagwerk Den Haag, with THE HUNT she develops her associative reflections into an intriguing musical performance full of soundscapes that challenges your thinking and stimulates your senses. Musical, absurd, and over the top.
“Theatre is rooted in countless variations on the story of humanity, of us. It makes all stories meaningful and valuable, creates worlds and realities. Makes something into nothing, and nothing into something: from word to world.” – Guy Weizman, Staat van het theater (2021)
Credits
Text: Manuela Infante, inspired by Ursula Le Guin
cast: Bram van der Heijden, Sarah Janneh, Bien de Moor, and others
composition: Diego Noguera
music: Slagwerk Den Haag, Enric Montfort en Dirge Kuran
set design: Ascon de Nijs
lighting design: Wil Frikken
dramaturgy: Camilla Valladares, Liet Lenshoek
costume design: Tania Ballve