A trip to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre Studio for the show Nigamon / Tunai may feel like an adventure on another planet, but it also very gently alerts us to the disruption and suffering of indigenous people in Columbia and Canada.
The unreserved seating allows you to sit on a cushion or stool by a young tree or a pool of water where copper jars might hang from the ceiling. If you need a backrest, there are two rows of chairs on either side of the studio.
Two women are walking the space, pouring water from grey pots into copper containers and a little later into a boat that rests on a small, raised platform. Sometimes, there is the sound of birds.
Encouraged to place our hands on the stem of a tree, we feel the vibration of the songs the trees appear to be singing. The trees, the copper and the water are part of a traditional relationship with the land in which women are perceived as tree protectors.
The space grows darker with the sudden noise of heavy industrial machines and war. This is the sound of the extractive industry coming to rip away their sacred copper and trees. It will also pollute the water supply.
Soon, there are the moans of a suffering population. We overhear a telephone conversation about land defenders concerned that multinationals are swallowing a mountain.
Explosions and gunfire remind us this is not without its casualties when Indigenous people resist the brutal attack on the land in which the surface copper is taken away, trees are chopped down and mining pollutes the water.
The immersive adventure of artists Émilie Monnet, from Canada, and Waira Nina, from the Colombian Amazon, concluded, it is followed by a post-show discussion with the artists pointing to the ironic effect of electric cars meant to help the planet leading to the rampaging multinationals wrecking indigenous communities.