Hair

An actor is in her early sixties when she suddenly starts losing her hair in tufts. Without putting up a fight, the hair starts to depart her body, the strands lying limp in her hands like dead snakes. Decay has set in, time is the killer. Or is she sick? In any case, she cannot play her stage roles like this anymore, especially not that of Medusa or the Queen Mother. She is pushed out of the theatre business. There’s nothing waiting for her at home, no child, no dog, no plant. Her apartment is a void. What should she do with all this emptiness? She purloins her wig from the theatre, has it spruced up at a wig shop – but people quickly sniff her out, with her unreal hair. Only the real counts. But what – and more importantly, who – is actually inside this wig made of real hair? When she is forced to undergo a DNA test, she suddenly finds herself on a journey through the history of the origins and tradition of the wig, which is marked by vanity, theft, violence, and power.

In her play, Hair, Manuela Infante, one of the most exciting theatre-makers in South America, investigates how much we really want to know about the entanglements of global trade. Infante deftly zooms in on the reality of a cultural-historical niche that is intricately interwoven with notions of beauty, aging, and illness. Philosophically, poetically, and with striking imagery, Manuela Infante writes a polyphonic monologue for a collective snarl that is finally raising its voice.