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

Eye&I - Manchester Science Festival

[Booth at the Arndale!]

So for the past two weeks there has been a humongous series of events that have been popping up all around Manchester, all culminating into one glorious festival of Science. Hosted predominately by the Museum of Science and Industry, the Manchester Science Festival is a simply brilliant way for everyone of all ages to celebrate their love of science whilst learning and this year, I had the absolutely wonderful opportunity of being involved in a unique performance-exhibition known as Eye&I. 

Led by brilliant artist and scientist, Helen Storey (@ProfHelenStorey), the Museum of Science and Industry and also the 24:7 Theatre team, the piece was an interactive installation which was designed to 'investigate the science of emotion recognition and the relationship between emotion in the eyes and the brain', also allowing the audience to 'explore human behaviour, communication and authentic emotion through eye contact'. 

The installation (as seen above) was built with two huts, one for the actors, and one for the audience to pass through with a wall linking the two huts. In the wall there were rectangular shaped slots where the actors would put their eyes whilst 'emoting' at the audience. The audience would then walk through and could take as long as they wanted to analyse and reflect upon the emotions shown, before coming out the other side and writing their thoughts and any feedback onto the side of the installation. The emotions shown were happy, sad, anger, fear, humour and disgust. Each emotion were held for 2 minutes each per performance, which lasted a total of 12 minutes. There were two troupes of of six actors, five emoting and one to help with front of house. 

As an actor, I found this experience to be quite a challenge as it is unusual that you find yourself in a situation where you are holding an intense and exaggerated facial position for more than a few seconds at any one time, which created a slight muscle ache in my face and small headaches due to the sheer concentration I had for holding the emotions. We were all given regular breaks in which we could relax in and were even given money towards lunch, which was wonderful! I also found it very interesting that you feel the emotions after going through the physical movements and I feel that the knowledge I gained will be able to help with my ability to portray emotions not only more accurately, however also in a more engaging manner for the audience. 

As the installation was in the Arndale, the reactions we got were rather varied, as most people who came to the exhibition didn't know it was going to be there before they happened to see it and were led in purely by curiosity. I found it very interesting, having been acting, to see what the people then wrote as feedback as I felt that holding someone's gaze for an extended amount of time creates a sort of bond between us. I found in general that the people who rushed through the installation in a matter of seconds tended to write negative comments at the end, quoting the performance as 'scary' or 'weird'. I believe that this was because they refused to engage with the eyes and emotions in front of them and possibly felt overwhelmed at the experience. I believe the refusal to participate could be due to social conventions, such as societal pressures to keep certain emotions locked away. Also, holding eye contact with a stranger is an unusual experience and, again, most of society tend to avoid direct eye contact with people they are not familiar with (an example of this? Being sat on the the Underground!!). 

I also noticed that a few people, predominately children and teenagers, tended to dehumanise the actors, possibly due to the fact they could only see their eyes, and what would not normally be socially acceptable suddenly became fine. For example, despite there only being a thin layer of wood between the actors and audience, a select few members of the audience seemed to think it would be okay to suggest and joke about poking the actor in the eye! Of course non of the actors were hurt, however the fact it was suggested was something I found to be quite interesting. 

There were also people who were very responsive to the experiment and spent a while looking into the actors eyes, staying for set amounts of time. They tended to leave positive, more thought provoking feedback and were very open to letting the experience wash through them! Reading their thoughts were most interesting to me whilst acting, I found myself wondering what the person on the other side must be thinking about!

Overall, this experience has been completely positive for me and, although I was unfortunately unable to do all three days, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and found it not only helpful to my acting ability, but also engaging on a social and intellectual level and, given the opportunity, I would love to be able to participate in this event again, either as an actor or as an audience member!

Thank you to everyone with whom I worked with and hopefully I'll get to do more fun dramatical things soon!

Till next time~

xxx

Night of Neon!!

[MIPP Actors]

Good day there my fellow people! I hope the winter storms aren't taking too much of a toll on you!

So this is the end to a fairly hectic two weeks, to say the least! A few nights ago (26/10/2013) I was involved in a piece of Street Performance for the Night of Neon with the absolutely wonderfully talented MIPP theatre group. 

The Night of Neon is a fun walk which raises money for the Christie Charity and BBC Radio Manchester. It takes place in Salford, starting at The Lowry in Media City and is a staggering 10km! For more information on how to get involved, please follow THIS LINK to the Christie Website :)

Unfortunately that evening, Manchester was practically submerged by huge amounts of rain for a large proportion of the evening. Despite my initial worry that the rain would disrupt the event, I was very mistaken as a substantial amount of people managed to make it, with so much energy and enthusiasm that the rain was almost forgotten. 

Dressed head to toe in luminous neon clothing, armed with nothing but a jacket, we all set off to our set positions at 7:20 in order to meet and greet the walkers as they passed certain check points. Our job? To entertain the crowd as much as possible and help keep motivation levels high and enthusiasm soaring.

Due to the interactive aspect of the performance, I managed to get to speak to quite a few of the runners and I was absolutely overwhelmed with the positive attitudes of all the walkers and their eagerness to not let anything get in their way! In fact, numerous people had told me that this was not their first experience at the Night of Neon and nor will it be their last!!

My character group was called 'The 80s Girls' and, as the costume and title suggests, involved a dance routine, choreographed by my ever-so talented partner Tempemy, which we performed to the walkers as they ran by, accompanied by our mild screeching rendition of 'Girls just wanna have fun', by Cyndi Lauper. The crowd seemed to enjoy our free high fives and terrible american accents and were even more open and responsive than I could possibly have asked for as a performance. 

This opportunity was truly an honour to be a part of, and pleasure to do! Hopefully I shall be able to get involved in more cool projects like these in the near future!

Until then~