This piece, directed and created by Luiz Felipe Reis and performed by Rodrigo Bolzan, brings to the stage the work and life of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. It reinvents fragments from works such as 'The Unknown University', '2666', 'The Insufferable Gaucho', 'Between Parentheses', and 'Bolaño Himself', alongside poems, stories, chronicles, lectures, interviews, and autobiographical passages.
«The piece is an expanded dramatic proposal where theatre, literature, music, image, and performance intertwine», explains Sonia Díaz de Corcuera, Councillor for Culture and Education.
The project, conceived by Reis, began to take shape in 2015, the year marking the 40th anniversary of Bolaño's literary debut. Nine years later, 'Deserto' premiered in 2024, coinciding with the anniversaries of Bolaño's first novel and his masterpiece '2666'.
Through these materials, the play prompts a collective reflection on the role of the artist and poetic creation amidst the violence of the contemporary world, exploring the life of the author, marked by displacement and rejection of the system's norms.
Polifônica, a research and creation center founded in Rio de Janeiro in 2014, focuses on aesthetic and thematic research into scenic polyphony and counter-scenes to the Anthropocene, aiming to experiment with responses to Anthropocapitalism.
