The installation theatre of Punchdrunk

I’m slightly obsessed with the work of theatre company Punchdrunk at the moment. A: i’m an ex-drama student (nice to be reminded theatre can be cool after all) B: we’re putting together an installation  fashion event for a client at the moment for which they provide great inspiration.  They have become well-known over the last years for the creation of immersive performances that the audience wanders and explores rather than sitting and consuming in the traditional linear way (in a seat). Sadly their latest performance, Tunnel 228 in collaboration with the Old Vic theatre was sold out in the space of a few hours, so despite being in London at the time I missed it. This is how The Guardian describes the work:

This wormhole experience is like stumbling into the strangest gallery in the world; it’s a dark, underground place that is miles away from the white-walled, antiseptic experience of most galleries.

Here, in a series of chambers, you find yourself in a dank world of the future, inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and featuring artwork by, among others, Olympia Scarry, Petroc Sesti, Anthony Micallef, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Here, it is always night, and workers scurry around setting off a witty chain of events that results in a sudden flood of light. This isn’t a performance in any traditional sense; it’s more like an art show in which objects have been brought together to create connections that conjure the moody experience of the city nightshift worker, or a dark night of the soul.

Among the horrors and the dull boom and thud of mechanisation, there are curiosities and wonders: a strange, reptilian pigeon in a glass case; time being quite literally shredded; a dead man face down in a pool; an eerie filigree forest where birds twitter and nymphs might play; a woman slumped at a table at which the spoon and plates have gone into Dalíesque meltdown. You might glimpse arcadia on the ceiling, or spot a miniature bingo hall in a corner. One of the dislocating pleasures of the experience is that this is recognisably our world, but also something quite other – as if the future is already here, without us having noticed its arrival. Read The Guardian’s full review.