A Fight Against... (Una Lucha Contra...)
The Royal Court
 

PABLO MANZI is an internationally acclaimed Chilean playwright achieving many awards with his native theatre group, Bonobo, but this stimulating production marks his English-language debut.

His play is a series of five, thematically connected scenes set in different periods throughout the Americas exploring the relationship between violence, community and communication.

Manzi’s style employs surreal touches in largely naturalistic settings, often with darkly comic effect, in order to isolate his subject. This technique allows him to explore how language connects us when confronting the psychological and emotional impact of violence: a lecturer forced to redefine her description of being assaulted for the sake of explaining it to her perplexed husband, a nationalist, home-defence meeting realising its unifying, violent philosophy is at odds with its members’ personal needs and a hangman losing his job because public executions no longer communicate effectively.