Annihilation is climate fiction for the stage. Through excerpts from a field diary, interrogations, scientific observations and flashbacks, the audience gradually loses sight of the boundary between observer and observed. A gripping performance about the moment when nature looks back at our universe.

A biologist joins an expedition to Area X: a zone where nature has reclaimed the land and where previous expeditions have ended in disappearance, madness or suicide. She is the only one to return. She is placed in quarantine and an anonymous authority questions her in order to piece together what happened. But what returns from Area X no longer corresponds to the person who was sent there.

“If I have no real answers, it is because we still do not know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motives selfish.” – Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

Thomas Ryckewaert and performer Ika Schwander are creating a theatrical adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s cult novel Annihilation – a universe where horror, science fiction and ecology converge. Excerpts from a field diary, interrogations, scientific observations and flashbacks form a labyrinth in which the boundary between observer and observed begins to blur. Annihilation is climate fiction for the stage. A performance about the moment when nature looks back.