Written, directed and performed by Ernes Orellana, the work is inspired by the first victim of HIV/AIDS in Chile, who died in 1984. A performative scenic proposal that investigates the traces and memories of one of the worst pandemics that hit the world during the 1980s, and which still continues.


40 years after the arrival of HIV/AIDS in the country, the director of the Teatro SUR Company and emblematic works such as Yeguas Sueltas, Los Justos, Demasiada Libertad Sexual will turn them into Terrorists, and Inútiles, among others, Ernes Orellana brings to GAM a scenic creation that reconstructs an unfinished sexual-political memory based on the case of Edmundo Rodríguez, the first fatal victim of AIDS in Chile in 1984.

The work proposes a biographical crossover through an autofiction scenario that investigates and digs into the traces of HIV/AIDS in the country since its appearance forty years ago. Through a solitary, abnormal and polyphonic performance, voices, images, landscapes and metaphors are woven about the paths of the human immunodeficiency virus in an intimate way, crossing eras through the seropositive memories of a past in pieces, and of the body that embodies it in the present.

"Talking about HIV/AIDS today, forty years after its arrival in the country, invites us to think and raise awareness about the political and emotional journeys of a virus that was originally considered a pandemic, homosexual plague, fatality, sexual tragedy, plague, divine punishment, and that built a social and moral stigma that persists to this day. Why is HIV/AIDS still a taboo subject? What is behind this virus that is not talked about?" Orellana asks.

On stage, it is the same director in monologue key who embodies the staging of EDMUNDO to continue his artistic exploration in what he calls sex-dissident theater, investigating anti-normative discourses and scenic aesthetics of hegemonic sexual culture. Here, memory, the homosexual body and queer activism seek to "re-construct a twisted and alternative history of sexuality that resists being forgotten."

Direction, Dramaturgy and Cast: Ernes Orellana G | Sound Design: Daniel Marabolí | Scenery, Costume and Graphic Design: Jorge Zambrano | Lighting Design: Catalina Devia | General Production: Macarena Guzmán | Mapping designer and operator: Matías Carvajal.
GAM Co-Production, Teatro SUR/ Dept. National Program for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS and STIs Ministry of Health.

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