Previously in Singapore in 2017, Chilean playwright and director Manuela Infante returns for the 2025 edition of the Singapore International Festival of Arts with Vampyr, the third part of her trilogy exploring the non-human that started with Estado Vegetal and How to Turn to Stone. Where the two previous shows explored plant consciousness and geology respectively, Vampyr instead turns its attention to something that seems much more mythological – vampires that haunt the wind turbine parks of northern Chile.

Vampyr takes the form of a darkly humourous mockumentary, as it finds its vampires in disoriented bats and overworked night-shift labourers that roam the wind turbine parks, creatures on the edge of form and species, flickering between exhaustion and energy, the boundary between the bat and the human becomeing increasingly unstable. “They’re stubborn,” says Manuela, as she considers these shapeshifting beings that refuse to fit any clear category — not quite dead, not quite alive, not quite human, not quite animal. “They just won’t obey that mandate of nature versus culture. They don’t buy it. And maybe neither do I.”

The starting point, she explains, was vampires, a genre that Manuela loves. But make no mistake, these are not the elegant Gothic ones, but “a South American vampire, the kind that sucks blood and then dies from a wind turbine blade.” She describes reading about how Bram Stoker came up with Dracula after seeing a drawing in the New York Times, based on Darwin’s first description of a Chilean bat. Going deeper into her research of this species, she found that many of them ended up killed when they flew into wind turbines, leading her to incorporate themes of greenwashing and the unstable relationship between man and nature into the work.

“This work isn’t just about how the bats have suffered, but also the humans who end up entangled in this exploitation of green energy and subjected to this paradigm of increasing energy production and consumption, which feels paradoxical to the climate crisis,” she says. “And anyway, isn’t the very idea of consuming the planet’s resources for our own benefit making us the true vampire instead?”

Manuela mentions how over the years, she increasingly began to think about how many South Americans didn’t realise the deep connections humans held with nature, without realising ‘the human in the animal, and the animal in us.’ That’s why she takes on the structure of the documentary, as her characters begin investigating these creatures and pondering over what they are and the significance of their existence. “It’s structured around an environmental report, something we have a lot of in Chile, with so many transnational companies exploiting the countries with natural resources,” she says. “These reports end up serving the companies, and with these creatures thrown into the mix, will it be enough to affect our view of these reports and what they’re really hiding?”

In a way, Manuela also wanted to seek justice for the bats, maligned and misrepresented by stereotypes for years. “People who fight for animal rights like to pick cute and fluffy animals, and bats are often excluded from that category, even if they’re suffering too. In Chile, a lot of people call bats ‘rats with wings’, and believe they’re carriers of disease,” says Manuela. “I spoke to a specialist, who told me that it actually all comes from hearsay based on the myth of the vampire, and that bats are actually good for environment. Bats may seem a little scary, but we need to learn to respect them, feeding into our need to have a conversation about co-existence with creatures and entities we may not necessarily be comfortable with, but are necessary for the world.”

More specifically, Manuela also wanted to inject a sense of absurd humour into the piece, which is characteristic of her work. “Humour has always been a north star for us to follow, because beyond laughter, it also raises questions when seemingly normal things become absurd,” she says. “I wanted to use it as an entry point to talk about the relationship between humans and the environment, and realise how little we actually control of the natural world, as much as we try. It’s less dry than an essay, and theatre communicates things in a way that touches our minds, passing through our ears and into our bodies, beyond just metaphors and symbols and text and ideas.”

“I’m very lucky to have found two very talented actors to bring this show to life as well. The themes sound intense, but it’s definitely to be very playful, and wonderful to watch these two actors transform into these half human, half animal creatures, and perhaps get people to question the limits of their own humanity,” she adds. “Can we recognise the animal side of ourselves, and in turn, relate to the suffering and exploitation of animals that are innocent? Maybe it will make us care more.”

On her position when it comes to how much people care about going green, Manuela believes that people do care, but are often lost when it comes to how exactly they should start tackling it. “Tackling climate change is complex – and it’s hard to find a solution. It’s become so intertwined and caught up with issues of capitalism, of patriarchy, of colonialism, and it goes so much further than just using a reusable bag at the supermarket,” says Manuela. “It’s a hydra with many heads, and it takes time to unravel all its complexities to resolve one at a time.”

“If you think about it, sustainability contains the word ‘sustain’, which means to maintain at a consistent rate. The root of the climate crisis stems from how we continue to increase our consumption and production, which becomes an issue of appropriation of the world’s resources,” she adds. “There are people making money off the green energy industry, and countries that still lack regulation, like Chile, are the first to be exploited. Animals suffer, humans suffer, and until we start asking the deeper questions of what really is causing all this, and question our own need to colonise the planet and adjust our mindsets away from ideas of conquering and exploitation.”

On the sustainability and continuity of Chilean and South American theatre, Manuela believes in its longevity. “Chile has a strong tradition of literature and theatre, and continues to have a very vibrant scene which reaches into the communities and territories, far beyond being an art form that’s catered towards the wealthy and rich,” she says. “The beauty of being in the theatre is how for one and a half hours, you’re away from your phone, and listening to whatever the artist has put on for you. It feels akin to a religious experience of a sorts, and trains you to figure out what’s going on, to make sense of things and join the dots. Maybe you end up discovering something you never expected or hadn’t thought of before, and I think more than ever, we need the theatre to remind us that other perspectives exist, and to learn to listen to dialogue that may not be tailored specificially for you.”

“Most important of all, theatre gives you an opportunity to see the world from a very different perspective, to consider the impossible, and change your mind. We continue to make art because it creates a practice space and arena for imagining other worlds or other possibilities, with new rules or what could be. It’s a luxury to be working in theatre, and a luxury to be learning something new by the end of the show.”

Vampyr plays from 23rd to 25th May 2025 at the Drama Centre Theatre.Tickets available from BookMyShow

The 2025 Singapore International Festival of Arts runs from 16th May to 1st June 2025. Tickets and more available here