Punchdrunk: The Drowned Man

The Best Theatrical Experience.

The Drowned Man, by Punchdrunk has become somewhat of a legend among aspiring theater students as it is not only entirely unconventional, but is also an entirely interactive and immersive experience. 

From before you even enter the studios where the piece is set, you feel the buzz and excitement all around you from the other audience members, all apprehensive, nervous and yet strangely excited. You have to queue to get in and they require you to leave all bags in their bag storage area, for reasons which become obvious once you enter the main stage performance space.

The studio is built up of four different floors. You enter the performance via the elevator after being given a mask which you are to wear for the duration of the performance. The Gatekeeper gives you a bit of an idea of what you are about to experience whilst encouraging you to stay away from friends and experience this performance by yourself. This may seem daunting, given the creepy music and dark hallways, however I found it to be highly beneficial to split up from my friends as this helped add to the realistic feel of the performance. 

The first floor, from what I could see was only props which you were allowed to touch and examine as you liked. The belonged to the characters of the play and every detail was absolute perfection. You could spend hours trawling through the different rooms, exploring the lives of the characters through their possessions.

However the main action happened on the upper floors. Characters were scattered around the building in different rooms and each of them had their own, highly detailed story. There were two 'main' storylines, the William and Mary story, and the Marshal and Wendy story, one of which was an inversion of the other. 

The characters all interacted with each other at one point or another, using a mixture of dialogue and contemporary dance to convey the emotions and aims of each scene before they would split off. The wonderful thing about this was that you could follow any characters you liked!

After examining the first floor for a length of time, I then found William and Mary and decided to follow their story line for a while, swapping between following William and Mary and some other of the main characters until that storyline was finished (each story looped 3 times). After that, I followed random characters, which turned out to be highly confusing at first, as I had no idea who they were in relation to anyone else, but somehow found Marshal, entirely by accident, and managed to catch the end of his story with Wendy before everyone was gathered together for a truly haunting ending.

The experience was entirely amazing. Props, set, costume, performance... everything was done in so much detail that the world and stories truly came alive in that space. I would say that it is not only one of the best performances, but also one of the best experiences I have ever had and has also given me an idea for a new project I would like to do! (When I eventually get money that is...)

Anyway, The Drowned Man is only on for another few performances, so if I were you, I'd get down there straight away!

Tickets can be found HERE.

Other than that, that's all from me for today. Catch you soon :)

xxx

Welcome to 'La Biblioteca'~

[Isabella - The Lover]

Ahh I was doing so well with the updates and everything and now it's been about 3 weeks... 
Hopefully I'll be better in future!

So, as you may or may not know, I was recently in a production with my theatre company in Manchester called 'La Biblioteca', performed in John Ryland's Library. (which, seriously, if you haven't been there before, you should definitely go! It's so beautiful! I felt like I was in Hogwarts :) ). The piece was site specific, and it was very intense - both emotionally and physically! 

The show was in the style of Comedia Dell'Arte, which is a style of Theatre that has it's origins in the early 17th Century Italy. It was the first form of professional theatre groups and was, at first, performed on the streets of Italy. Naturally, most of the performance work was improvised as, like with all forms of art which has elements of audience interaction, spontaneity is key. We incorporated this element of interacting with the audience in our piece, which, I personally felt was a success! The audience seemed to really enjoy being able to talk to the characters and make suggestions - although some people weren't the most responsive! For me, the improvised element of the whole show was possibly my favourite, as it allowed for a lot of creative freedom, which as an actor is something rare to come across!!


Comedia Dell'Arte is also a very physical type of theatre as most of the characterisation of the set roles starts from the body and works it's way inwards - very different from naturalistic performances where characterisation is usually starting mentally and then physicality. Strangely enough, although perhaps not too strange considering my background in theatre mainly stemming from physical theatre, I often find that the Comedia method of starting with a physicality and developing a personality from that to be far easier! And whilst that's possibly not very good for working on film, where movement is usually underplayed as much as possible, in Comedia I found that it helped a lot and I feel that I managed to get a grasp of the style very quickly.

There are also set characters in Comedia, which usually represent the hierarchy of the Italian era. At the bottom you get the 'Zannis' who are the slaves, then there are the Lovers who are the pampered children of rich old people. Next there are the Capitanos who represent foreigners of Italy at the time (namely the Spanish). Finally there are the rich old people, who are usually rather stuck up and stingey. 

Of course, I ended up playing a Lover, of the name 'Isabella' (undoubtably cast in this role due to the sheer amount of Disney that I had watched as a child...) 
This involved a lot of balletic movements and stances floating through the corridors wailing about how my love interest was being sent to Rome! 

It was highly over dramatic and very very silly in terms of storylines (we used 3 set stories - The Toothpuller, The Absurd Visit of Dotorre and The Two Identical Capitanos) and although in the last week, we had 13 hour rehearsals with high stress and little sleep and practically no food (only a few sandwiches for lunch and that was it!), I thoroughly enjoyed the entire performance process and experience!! 

It is, to this day, the best production I have ever been in and I am so grateful that I managed to get involved with such an amazing theatre company! And even though we had 7 shows in 3 days (I KNOW!!), I felt nothing but happiness!

So yeah! Overall, amazing project! Can't wait for the next one at Christmas! Go CYAC! 

Till Next time~

If you would like to read more about this amazing play from an audience point of view, here is a blog from another member! :)

https://ashybabe91.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/contact-theatre/
xxx