An Involuntary Prophesy

Abstract

This essay proposes a thesis: Theatre that works with testimonies could be prophetic not because it offers prophecies but because it builds the conditions for listening to the fractured statements of those who have been erased from history and language. In this sense, the theatre that works with testimonies builds, for the future, conditions to understand the word of the other—another who has suffered violence. To demonstrate this statement, Animales invisibles (Invisible Ani- mals), by La Laura Palmer, is analysed; this is a montage articulated from the testimonies of the workers who perform technical trades in the Chilean National Theatre. Grey areas that bring forward the montage of these discourses are identified, and, lastly, it is concluded that this piece anticipates the discourse of the failure of the Left and reveals the conditions that allow the emergence of a new extreme Right.