''The Drowned Man'' was an original theatre production by British theatre company
Punchdrunk
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head. The encephalopathy symptoms can include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. The disease often gets worse o ...
, in collaboration with the
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...
.
Overview
Set within the fictional "Temple Pictures", ''The Drowned Man'' was Punchdrunk's largest theatre installation,
covering 200,000 sq ft., catering for up to 600 audience members per show
with a cast of nearly 40.
The production fell within several genres of theatre, including so-called
site-specific theatre,
,
interactive theatre
Interactive theatre is a presentational or theatrical form or work that breaks the "fourth wall" that traditionally separates the performer from the audience both physically and verbally.
In traditional theatre, performance is limited to a design ...
or
immersive theatre
Immersive theater differentiates itself from traditional theater by removing the stage and immersing audiences within the performance itself. Often, this is accomplished by using a specific location ('' site-specific''), allowing audiences to conv ...
.
The audience members were free to roam around the sets at will, wearing white masks to distinguish themselves from the cast, and the narrative was communicated through a series of overlapping scenes blending the mediums of
interpretive dance,
contemporary dance
Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in ...
and traditional acting.
The show opened June 2013 and tickets ran until 6 July 2014.
Temple Pictures
Temple Pictures was the name of the fictional Hollywood film studio which formed the setting and backdrop of the production. It was physically located at 31 London Street, London, next to Paddington Station, occupying four floors of the building that had previously been a
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sorting office.
It was described within the fiction as the British outpost of major Hollywood studio Republic Pictures around the time period of the 1960s.
The various sets and locations within the building represented internal and external locations both within Temple Pictures and also the outskirts of the town near which it was situated. The various locations included a desert, a saloon, a trailer park, a chapel, as well as several dressed sound stages and a Lynchian black and white chequerboard dancefloor.
As in previous Punchdrunk shows, the audience was free to roam around and explore the sets in their own way,
and the intricate detailing of the props and locations assisted the audience in picking up the threads of the narrative.
Narrative
Creative Director Felix Barrett noted that ''The Drowned Man'' was "the first time that we've played with the idea of more than one lead narrative".
The two main narratives formed mirrors of each other, one following the story of a couple within Temple Studios and the other a couple living on the outskirts of the Hollywood town.
The main characters played out a tragic love story, with the numerous supporting characters embellishing the detail of that story as well as having some independent side-stories of their own.
Many aspects of the narrative were influenced by Georg Buchner's unfinished play ''
Woyzeck'', including the main themes of murder, madness and adultery. However, the work also drew on several other sources for inspiration, including Nathanael West's (1939) novel ''
The Day of the Locust
''The Day of the Locust'' is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene ...
''
and
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...
's (1962) novel ''
Something Wicked This Way Comes''.
Critical reception
Several reviews complimented the scale of the production and the ambitious use of multiple narratives, while also commenting that the scale could at times make the experience feel fragmented and difficult to follow.
The majority of official media reviews were written at the beginning of the show's run in June 2013, and as a result several changes were made to improve the audience's understanding of the story, including handing out slips of paper with a brief outline of the plot at the start.
[ ''Time Out'' magazine awarded the production 3 out of 5 stars, commenting that "as pure spectacle, Punchdrunk are now operating on a level that makes criticism basically redundant. But in terms of straight-up theatre, they have made better".]
Credits
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Drowned Man
2013 plays
British plays
Site-specific theatre
Works based on Woyzeck