Playing with Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company known for creating immersive, site specific productions where the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. The company was formed in 2000 and their style of “epic storytelling in sensory theatrical worlds” has continued to evolve over the years. Each production they make starts with the space. From there, they decide what story that space could tell and begin to design and create until the show becomes a mixture of art installation, one-to-one theatre, voyueristic scenework, and dance.

 

I love Punchdrunk. I love what they’ve done for reinventing theatre. I love that they create theatre in non-traditional spaces. I love that the audience is empowered to choose what they want to see in their shows. And I LOVE that non-theatregoing people want to come back again and again.

 

That being said, I was delighted when I got accepted into the Punchdrunk masterclasses in London. As an audience member, their work feels magical because so many characters and tracks are running at once and you can’t fathom how they do it… so a chance to see behind the scenes and breakdown their process for creating new work was fascinating.

 

Artistic Director, Felix Barrett and Associate Director and Choreographer, Maxine Doyle spoke about their process for the creation of their current show “The Drowned Man” with the National Theatre. They discovered a former Royal Mail sorting office building by Paddington Station and upon walking through the open space, it felt like being on a movie studio lot. That became their container as they began to craft the show.

 

Associate Artists, Conor Doyle and Fernanda Prata led a series of exercises that are used to generate content for their shows. This included tableau making inspired from the architecture, integrating props, the effect of music, eye contact, choreography, actioning, peripheral vision, touch, merging pedestrian and abstract movement, and ultimately creating pieces on the set of “The Drowned Man.” The work was physical, clever, and daring. We found the potential in the play space around us, and by using the vocabulary Punchdrunk taught us, we were able to use those tools to create performances.

 

I learned so much from the work that my brain was swimming. I learned that witches are the coolest, I can run upside down in a phone booth, seduce everyone, see out of your back, Felix Barrett has great hair, invading audience space takes extreme specificity to detail, amazing things can happen in cars, love your superstar designers, and always brush your teeth… “because this is immersive and you might snog someone.”