The purgatory

In 2012, a report was published about a rural school in the Biobío Region that had only one student. That "anecdote" inspired the CTM collective to create this work in 2016, which had only one season and was then stored away.

Today, Purgatory is being re-released to demonstrate a scathing criticism of the educational system. The proposal explores the tensions between ethics, power and survival, questioning how the abandonment of the State and profit dynamics impact education in rural areas.

In the scene, a newly arrived religion teacher begins to lose patience when the only student at school does not show up to class. All this within a context of strikes and demonstrations due to the so-called "penguin revolution." While the other teachers take the matter with great patience and normality, the teacher from Santiago understands the atypical process and functioning of the place, where from the director to the cleaning staff, they take advantage of the shortcomings of the educational system, to earn money at the expense of the State.

With biting humor and deep reflection, the work exposes how institutions designed for social well-being can be transformed into spaces of corruption. "I think the work points to a broader contingency that transcends the educational field. It is a satire that reflects how social structures are often manipulated for the benefit of a few," says actor Cristóbal Bravo, who plays the young professor protagonist.

With a realistic scenography of a classroom, the work achieves an atmosphere that places the audience in an everyday story, of tensions in the classroom, strategies to make paychecks, timely complicities. "Our proposal has a very particular seal: a humor that borders on the absurd, languages ​​that do not always coexist and the use of physical theater that we want to bring to the general public. We take precisely that everyday life, we take it to the extreme and put it on stage," says the director, María José Pizarro.

The CTM Collective, founded in 2014, has established itself as a reference for physical theater and interdisciplinary experimentation in Chile. With more than ten productions, it addresses social problems from contemporary languages, integrating movement, technology and critical dramaturgy. El Purgatorio is his fourth production, released in 2016.

Direction and dramaturgy: María José Pizarro | Company: Colectivo CTM | Cast: Cristóbal Bravo, Sebastián Trincado, Leonardo López de Arechaga, Valentina Escobar and Luis Chávez | Direction and costume assistance: Daniela Espinoza | Design: Gabriela Torrejón | Lighting design: Francisco Herrera | Sound design: Nicolás Bascuñan | Mapping: Ignacio Tolorza | Production: Pamela Jaque & Cizarro productions.