A biologist joins an expedition into Area X: a forbidden zone where nature has reclaimed the land and previous expeditions ended in disappearance, madness, or suicide.

She is the only one who returns.

In quarantine, she is interrogated by an anonymous authority attempting to reconstruct what happened. But what returns from Area X no longer aligns with who was sent in.

“If I don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.” – Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

Thomas Ryckewaert and performer Ika Schwander adapt Jeff VanderMeer’s cult novel Annihilation for the stage — a universe where horror, science fiction, and ecology converge. Field journal fragments, interrogation, scientific observations, and flashbacks form a labyrinth in which the boundary between observer and observed begins to leak.

Annihilation is climate fiction for the stage. A performance about the moment when nature looks back.

Annihilation is the third part of a trilogy inspired by VanderMeer’s New Weird novel. Where Symbiosis starts as a scientific investigation and The Empty Lot reveals the hidden ecology of urban wastelands, Annihilation brings these trajectories together on stage.