Previous Editions

This edition of the festival featured leading national and international artists and companies, including The Tiger Lillies, La Perla 29, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Sasha Waltz & Guests, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Royal de Luxe, and Colectivo La Patogallina. Under the motto SÍ IMPORTA (“IT MATTERS”), the programme brought together theatre, dance, circus, and music, reaffirming that culture and the arts are fundamental to the development of individuals and society. In 2026, the festival also celebrated a partnership with ¡Hola Rio!, a platform dedicated to promoting the culture of Rio de Janeiro, which, among other initiatives, presented Brazilian music legend Ney Matogrosso in Chile for the first time.

For this 2025 edition, the Teatro a Mil International Festival put together a dedicated program from different curatorial origins that adds to the International Program a national lineup composed of the National Jury Selection (Santiago, Antofagasta, Valparaíso and Concepción), Anniversary Special (which celebrates the years of trajectory of companies and works), some of the Teatro a Mil Coproductions and programming from our Associated Venues. In addition, the 2025 works selection also considers thematic lines that represent different views and readings of the More Humanity motto.

In a constantly changing world, theater reinvents itself to remain relevant. Under the motto Change the Stage, this edition of Platea invited programmers to be agents of action, to immerse themselves in a lineup with a strong Latin American character, and to reflect, dialogue and build community around the theatrical experience. In these hundreds of professionals, from festivals, theaters and cultural institutions around the world, lies, in part, the task of spreading the word about our artists' creations, so that their borders continue to expand.

Despite the lifting of pandemic restrictions, theater in 2023 continues in a recovery phase and in transition towards a future that is not yet fully defined. These signals are present in this selection of festival works, as its programming reflects a shared concern by creators and groups from different latitudes to use the various scenic languages that exist to contrast reality with fiction, and power with utopia and activism. Additionally, these companies have decided to focus their work on the ancestral stories of their communities to find answers to this fractured present crossed by social movements, in which without a doubt new theatrical productions will continue to be developed.

In Chile, in 2019, we began a process of social mobilization that led to the realization of a plebiscite to ask citizens if they wanted a new Constitution. 80 percent of voters expressed themselves in favor and currently we have, for the first time in our history, a Constitutional Convention made up of representatives elected by popular vote, parity and with seats reserved for indigenous peoples, who will draft the new Constitution. Added to this is the recent presidential election where the majority of Chileans voted to defend a process of transformation to achieve a more just, equitable and solidary society. The feeling of a development model that is exhausted, shared beyond our borders.

After months of theaters closed due to the pandemic, the Santiago a Mil International Festival celebrated its XXVIII edition under the motto "Coming Together Again". This version was a hybrid, multi-format and multi-scenario meeting, where the digital (Teatroamil.tv and social networks), and the in-person, served as a stage to enjoy more than 140 national and international works, which allowed expanding this celebration beyond physical borders.

Faced with a society mobilized in the streets for more dignity, Santiago a Mil can no longer be the same "festival". Together with theaters and artists, we will transform our stages and seats into spaces of containment and dialogue for citizens, where the values of democracy and human rights are the foundation. Under the motto "The Power to Act", our programming captures part of that, like a visionary breath of the feeling of our time. The uncertainty of the future of societies and their political-economic systems have marked creations, whose fictions, many times, seem to be surpassed by reality.

The Teatro a Mil Festival proposed a programming that stood up as a space for meeting, reflection and, also, resistance. #STGOrebeldeaMIL was the motto of this year, because we believed and firmly believe that our militancy and engine are the performing arts: a cry of alarm against the homogenization and individualization of our society, a transformative power that rebels against territorial, disciplinary and emotional limits, and a force that pushes us towards encounter.

Under the motto "The Theater Party", we wanted to celebrate 25 years of history, passion and commitment to the performing arts. A special occasion to reflect on what moves us, value our memory and reunite with great artists, programmers and managers with the common goal of toasting to the creative vitality of the Latin American scene.

Under the motto "Latin America Today" we gathered to celebrate the performing arts from this side of the world and to look at what happens around us. What do we talk about when we talk about Latin America? What are the discourses, the problems, the realities that affect us as a continent, as a country, as a sector, as individuals? What are we defending when from theater we promote a festival "without borders"? What do our works talk about today? If there is something we are sure of is that these questions are a vital part of our practice and that to try to answer them, we need to meet face to face.

The Teatro a Mil International Festival is not just a special selection of Latin American programming, with a particular focus on the Southern Cone. It is also a community, a collective that shares, meets, confronts points of view. Platea is a great congress of specialists who come together to look in Chile at what is being said in Latin America, what our continent talks about today. It is in that dialogue with the context and the various artistic languages to address it where what Platea seeks each year is produced: to generate a network of exchange and circulation that enables artists to move around the world and meet with their audience.

PLATEA15 reinforced our mission of searching for new artistic talents in Latin America and accompanying them on their path of internationalization. This year we wanted to make a special emphasis on providing new spaces for meeting and real contact through activities focused on generating effective dialogues between participants.

Chile reflects what Latin America lives today: resistance, welcome, debate... In all these instances contemporary performing arts continue to be present.

We face a new festival with reflection and senses wide open. Our motto for 2014, #ILOVETHEATER, says a lot about it. It speaks of the context in which we find ourselves today as society, immersed in a hyper-connected world where every day new hashtags are born that mark the interests of virtual citizenship. At the same time, we exist in a Chilean context that in the last year has seen the debate around our cultural policies, spaces for the arts and creation processes be reborn. We want to join this impulse and continue to value the performing arts in Chile.