The Earth-Eaters
Los que comen tierra
by Mafalda Bellido (Spain), 2020
Cast of seven, with doubling.
Read an extract in Asymptote Journal, published January 2024.
History will not remain entombed. In the present-day, at an unmarked rural location, a team of experts dig in the soil, uncovering the remains of those murdered in a time of war and denied the burial their surviving descents long for. As the blazing sunshine and bureaucracy conspire against them, their efforts are haunted by echoes from the past, voices beneath their feet demanding justice. Trapped underground in a timeless limbo, the dead struggle to piece together their pasts and wonder at a possible future. And back when this story began, even as fatal bullets hurtle to their innocent targets, a chorus of rage, defiance and foretold remembrance rises across the landscape.
I saw him with his shotgun this morning; I asked him if he was going out hunting; he said it didn’t have any bullets in it; he was just doing a walk-around to scare off the wild boar. He said ever since that day neither he nor any of his family have fired a single bullet in La Hoz. He doesn’t want to wake the dead with the sound of what killed them.
Los que comen tierra was translated with the support of the 2021 fund for the translation of theatre texts from the Fundación SGAE, the foundation of the Society of Authors of Spain.
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