About this collaboration
Emily Ansenk, Director of Holland Festival:
'International festivals like Holland Festival, Festival d’Avignon and Edinburgh International Festival are living laboratories of artistic exchange. Artist driven and forward-looking, we co-produce new work that challenges convention and invites risk. Born from the belief that art can bridge what politics divides, these post-war performing arts festivals have evolved into platforms for new voices, challenging ideas, and artistic collaboration that knows no frontiers. Then and now, it reminds us that to cross borders through art is to rediscover our shared humanity.’
A Trial also marks the first collaboration between theatre and film director Christiane Jatahy (associate artist of the Holland Festival 2024) and award-winning actor Wagner Moura (best known for his Golden Globe–nominated role as Pablo Escobar in Netflix’s Narcos). Together, they give a new, radical, and contemporary interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, inviting the audience to choose a side.
In Ibsen’s groundbreaking 1882 play, protagonist Thomas Stockman seeks to expose a water contamination scandal in his spa town, but is ostracised as a result. More than a century later, the play remains strikingly relevant, with its sharp examination of the tension between personal integrity and social conformity, and between ecology and economic gain.
In Jatahy’s adaptation, Stockman, played by Wagner Moura, finds himself in a contemporary Brazilian courtroom where his fate is to be decided. There are no lawyers or judges — it is up to the audience to decide whether he is innocent or an 'enemy of the people'.
Christiane Jatahy on the collaboration:
'For an artist to develop a research, the network of support from festivals and theaters is essential. Without it, ideas fail to take shape, time slips away, and creations never come to life. The support and partnership of the Holland Festival, the Festival d’Avignon, and the Edinburgh Festival have been — and continue to be — fundamental for my artistic dreams to materialize, to become theatre, and to meet the audience.'
A Trial – after An Enemy of the People
Christiane Jatahy, Wagner Moura
25-28 June, ITA