VACA

Guillermo Calderón addresses this situation in his latest work – a play “that does not seek to spread hope. Because if we wait for hope, optimism or any kind of inspiration, it will never come,” says the author and director.


Three friends who organise their precarious survival as pizza delivery drivers on the streets of Santiago de Chile (or elsewhere) are confronted with a world of social decay and violence. At the centre of the parable is a cow, but the cow is sick and produces too much milk. So what to do? The discussion about its fate becomes an exercise in justifying cruelty.


A series of monologues describe the tragic and comical life of the cow. This drama of absurd ideas increasingly resembles a degenerate political television discussion. It is about marginalised theatre, which has become socially ineffective, cheap television reduced to dull talk shows, and the struggle for survival of people living on the breadline.


“VACA” is a biting social and media satire that has long since become reality in many places. According to Calderón, the basic idea behind the project is to show “how people become fascists without realising it”. He condenses the various levels of his urban parable with text inserts and sound to create a dystopian portrait of society.


75 mins.