Punchdrunk

This article is about an immersive theatre company. For the medical disorder known as "punch drunk", see dementia pugilistica.

Punchdrunk

File:Punchdrunk logo.jpg
Type	Theatre company
Industry	Entertainment
Founded	2000
Founder	Felix Barrett
Headquarters	United Kingdom
Website	punchdrunk.org.uk

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000, the pioneer of a form of "immersive" theatre in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. This format is related to "promenade theatre". Felix Barrett prefers the term "site-sympathetic" when describing their work.

The company was founded by its artistic director Felix Barrett. Its executive director is Griselda Yorke. Company members include associate director and choreographer Maxine Doyle, enrichment director Peter Higgin, producer Colin Nightingale, sound and graphic designer Stephen Dobbie, technical director Euan Maybank and design associates Livi Vaughan and Bea Minns.

The company is a National Portfolio Organisation with Arts Council England.

Innovations

In a typical Punchdrunk production, audience members are free to roam the performance site, which can be as large as a five-story industrial warehouse. They can either follow the performers and themes (there are usually multiple threads at any instant), or simply explore the world of the performance, treating the production as a large art installation.

Former Secretary of State for Culture James Purnell cited Punchdrunk as an example of "access and excellence" in modern British theatre.

History of productions

• The Cherry Orchard (2000), based on the play by Anton Chekhov

• The House of Oedipus (2000), an adaptation of Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles, staged in the garden of Poltimore House, Devon.

• The Moonslave (2000)

• Johnny Formidable: Mystery at the Pink Flamingo (2001)

• Midsummer Night's Dream (2002)

• Chair (2002), an adaptation of Eugène Ionesco's The Chairs, performed in the Old Seager Distillery in Deptford.

• The Tempest (2003), an adaptation of the play by Shakespeare, again performed at the Old Seagar Distillery, using its five floors to create a dark vision of Prospero's island.

• Sleep No More (2003); see below for the 2009 and 2011 reinventions. An adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth in the style of a Hitchcock thriller, using reworked music from the soundtrack of classic Hitchcock films. Staged at the Beaufoy Building in London, an old Victorian school.

• Woyzeck (2004), an adaptation of the play by Georg Buchner. Performed at the Big Chill Music Festival.

• The Firebird Ball (2005), inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird. Staged at Offley Works, a disused factory in South London.

• Marat/Sade (2005), an adaptation of the play by Peter Weiss. Performed at the 2005 Big Chill Music Festival.

• Faust (10 October 2006 until 31 March 2007), an adaptation of Goethe's Faust Part One, relocated to a small town in the 1950s Midwest. Staged across 150,000 sq ft (14,000 m²) of a derelict 5-storey archive building at 21 Wapping Lane in the London neighbourhood of Wapping. The production won the 2006 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Designer.

• The Masque Of The Red Death (2007 play) (2007–8), a co-production with Battersea Arts Centre. An adaptation of stories by Edgar Allan Poe including "The Masque of the Red Death". Performed at the BAC from 5 October 2007 until 12 April 2008. While each performance culminated in a ball scene, Friday and Saturday night performances were followed by Red Death Lates, an elaborate afterparty with interactive performance, celebrity guests, live bands and cabaret.

• Tunnel 228 (2009), a collaboration with the Old Vic theatre, in the abandoned tunnels beneath London's Waterloo Station.

• Sleep No More, a 2009 reinvention in Boston of the 2003 London production. An adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Produced in association with the American Repertory Theatre at the Old Lincoln School in Brookline, Massachusetts. It won the Elliot Norton Theatre Award for Best Theatrical Experience 2010.

• It Felt Like A Kiss (2009). Commissioned by the Manchester International Festival and produced in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis and musician Damon Albarn at a deserted office block in Spinningfields, Manchester. It depicted "America's rise to power in the golden age of pop, and the nightmare that came back to haunt us all."

• The Duchess of Malfi (2010), an operatic adaptation of the play by John Webster with a score by Torsten Rasch. Produced in collaboration with English National Opera and performed in a vast, decommissioned pharmaceutical headquarters at London's Great Eastern Quay.

• Sleep No More a 2011 reinvention in New York of the 2003 London production (also revived in Boston in 2009). Performed in disused warehouses at 530 W 27th Street in Manhattan, which was transformed into a faded hotel.

• The Crash of the Elysium, a 2011 one-hour show for children aged between 6 and 12, made in collaboration with the television series Doctor Who.

• Black Diamond a 2011 a travelling production that took place across 7 venues in East London between 3 July and 1 September to launch Stella Artois Black.

• And Darkness Descended... a 2011 site-specific performance that took place in the tunnels beneath Waterloo Station to launch the PlayStation game Resistance 3.

• The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (2013), an adaptation of Woyzeck set in a sixties film studio, performed in a disused postal sorting office in Paddington, London.

Literature

• Machon, Josephine. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. London: Palgrave (2013).
• White, Gareth. "On Immersive Theatre". Theatre Research International 37.3 (2012): 221-35.
• Machon, Josephine. (Syn)aesthetics: Redefining Visceral Performance. London: Palgrave (2009).
• Oddey, Alison and Christine White (eds.). Modes of Spectating. Bristol: Intellect (2009).

See also

• Site-specific theatre
• Postmodern theatre

External links

• Punchdrunk official homepage
• National Theatre information page on Faust
• National Theatre information page on The Masque of the Red Death
• New York Times review of Faust
• Guardian newspaper review of Masque of the Red Death