Discourse of a decent man

Taking a political speech found in Pablo Escobar’s shirt pocket on the day of his death, as a starting point, Mapa Teatro constructs a paradoxical and delirious piece, which questions the costly and failed war against drugs in Colombia, and revives the debate on the legalization of drugs around the world.  

 

This speech - supposedly classified as top secret by the CIA in 1993 – is turned by Mapa Teatro, 18 years later, into a micro-film and declassified document which is projected in the presence of natural actors – an international expert on drug trafficking and violence, a hip hop artist, and a music band that experienced the most ostentatious era in drug trafficking in Medellín first hand, and fell victim of one of Pablo Escobar’s terrorist attacks – as well as fictional figures such as a journalist obsessed by the drug trafficking world, and an erythroxilon coca plant.

 

Following The Holy Innocents (FIFB 2010), Discourse of a decent man, is the second piece in Mapa Teatro’s triptych: Anatomy of violence in Colombia, Mapa Teatro’s most recent work (2010-2015).

 

The first version of Discourse of a decent man, a lecture performance, is one of the projects commissioned by and performed at the Spoken World Festival at the Kaai Theater of Brussels in 2011. Coproduced by Mapa Teatro, Kaai Theater of Brussels and Siemens Stiftung.