MIT 2026: Dehumanization

Dehumanization is a stage adaptation of Valter Hugo Mãe’s novel A Desumanização. This is a story of loss, grief, and resilience that makes us question the limits (or the transgression of those limits) of humanity. In a small village dwarfed by the grandeur of the Icelandic fjords, Halldora emerges onto the stage from the mouth of God to tell us what it was like to cope with the death of Sigridur, her twin sister.

How does one fill the half that has been lost? How does one live for both of them? How to occupy the other side of the mirror? Halldora tells us that “The world displayed beauty, but knew only how to produce horror.” Dehumanization is Ice, Earth, and Fire; it is the “inner body of Iceland.” This play is, according to the author, a true love song to Iceland. The production, like the play itself, draws on Iceland for references to its theatrical fiction as a metaphor for “THE WHOLE WORLD,” offering a “foreign” perspective on a country and its people and an artistic vision that confronts the various perspectives that make up life: between the real and the imaginary.