Stage | guardian.co.uk: Most theatre companies announce new productions in a press release. Only one would deliver that release by asking journalists to go to a mysterious video shop in east London, have them go down dark corridors and stairs to meet a slightly creepy old man repairing his film equipment who then proceeds to tell a puzzling and scary story, before sending them on their way with a copy of the announcement.
The theatre company is Punchdrunk and on Thursday it unveils its first big production in London since The Masque of the Red Death six years ago.
4 comments:
It appears Punchdrunk is taking cues from the film industry and has arranged themselves a bit of a "viral" marketing campaign. Viral campaigns can be really cool when done properly. They get people questioning and trying to figure out what it might have to do with or what its going to be like. Most viral campaigns are on youtube and are promoting movies but this works just as well.
This theatre company seems to be approaching the ideas behind sleep no more and other space based theatre productions. I think a good name to describe this type of theatre would be to call it Theater of Spaces. From my start here at Carnegie Mellon I have been thinking about and even look at this type of emerging theatre. The ideas behind it seem to be exactly as Barrtte described "So if you flip it and it is all about the danger and the anticipation then suddenly you are ready for what might happen. Your brain is charged – your body is active and your mind is active – so the whole show will hit you more deeply." It seems as if the experience of the theatre then seeing and understanding. There also seems to be elements of blurring the line of performance versus real life and overwhelming audience members. I wish I had a chance to experience this production and study this more I think it would be very interesting topic to write a book on.
Awesome approach. It seems eerily familiar to a piece I would expect to see in Playground. It warms my heart that there are still people out there in the industry that still refuse to accept the norms of theater and will go out of their way to push the envelope and ultimately present us, the audience, with something that we would never in a million years expected.
Things that are pretty amazing about this production:
1. As Hunter said, the immersive viral component is awesome. It's something theatre companies are very slowly starting to "get".
2. Co-production with the National Theatre will give Punchdrunk a lot of the support they need to fill a gigantic space like they're planning on.
3. This is one of the first times I've seen Punchdrunk develop a site-specific show independent of the actual venue itself - in the McKittrick in NYC and in their London productions, the show has been much more heavily based on the physical architecture of the space, whereas this one is one big empty warehouse that they will be adapting to their purposes. Not remarkable, but interesting for the company.
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