PUNCHDRUNK IN CONVERSATION
December 10th, 2004 by susanna
We hope you didn’t miss venturing to the Art Trail at The Big Chill festival this summer. That you did lose yourselves in Punchdrunk’s escapist fantasy of tunnels, Peruvian monsters, freak shows, and coconut shies.
Punchdrunk founder, director and drama graduate, Felix Barrett shares festival anecdotes ahead of his company’s grand, unique, unmissable and spectacular ‘The Firebird Ball’, which will be presented in London in February 2005.
Punchdrunk’s ambitious show, funded by the Arts Council, supported by Creative London and in association with The Big Chill, will run for six weeks. A forgotten labyrinth in central London will set the fairytale scene for intensely rehearsed choreography, where theatre, dance, art and music worlds collide for enchanting periodic performances in a ballroom, in tunnels and creative spaces.
First then Felix, talk us through the name Punchdrunk.
“Our original concept was to assault the audience’s senses and leave them reeling at the end of the night. The sensation of being ‘punchdrunk’ is when a boxer has had one hit too many and gets plunged into a few seconds of dazed trance. We aspire to create that dreamlike state within our work.”
Who’s in the company, where are you based?
“Punchdrunk started life in Exeter in 2000. Now the core company is Colin Marsh our producer, our production manager Colin Nightingale, and Maxine our choreographer / co-director but we have a great in house artistic team. We’re project, therefore site based, although we do now have a desk at The Big Chill’s new office. ”
How did you first get involved with The Big Chill?
“Colin N and I met in 2002 and got into a discussion about the future of bar culture. We did a show together at London’s 291 Gallery the following year, which became a prototype concept for providing an interactive music, installation and social environment. We approached Katrina Larkin at The Big Chill who, although it’s very hard to describe to someone what we do, gave us space at this year’s festival. We were one of the first on site, and chose the far side of the arts trail, as we wanted to be one of the last things you would discover in the festival.”
So, you were open from 10pm-2am each night…
“Yes. We rely on lighting and creating atmospheres for our shows so it has to be dark. We had to plant 300 three-metre fence posts to create an abstracted wood for a controlled, isolated environment. We had army tents where peformers reenacted the play ‘Woyzech’ by Georg Buchner about a soldier who works hard trying to raise money for his baby. He cuts the captain’s hair and goes to see the doctor who puts him on a diet of peas. His wife is having an affair with the drum major, and all this is happening on the night a fairground comes to town. The audience could go to the doctor, to whom about thirty people actually gave urine samples, and some even let him measure their ‘body parts’! There were stalls including hoopla and pluck a duck where you could win tickets to the main attractions, the freak show and the Walk of Terror featuring a Peruvian masked man. Oh, and a gypsy telling fortunes, speaking in gibberish.”
Any Punchdrunk tales to tell?
“Thirty of us had arrived the weekend before the festival, so we had this bizarre community going on. Every night we went to bed when the sun came up. We worked shifts but all lost our voices by the Sunday. For us it was a crazy study in human behavior as the performance was largely improvised and we were relying on the audience to trigger the action. We were always having to get rid of shagging couples, there were at least two a night, although the ones who picked romantic spots we left alone. But one couple we found in the entry tunnel! We left it to ‘Daddy Euan’, our technical manager, to move them along!”
Now, on to the imminent ‘The Firebird Ball’. Fill us in.
“The Firebird legend is a Russian tale about a prince saving his princess. It lends itself to great design potential, because it’s such an amazing mythical epic set in dense woodland and a secret garden with trickling fountains. The inspiration was from wanting to do a Romeo and Juliet themed ball, so the two tales are fused. Romeo and Juliet met at a party, and with Punchdrunk being very much all about an adventure for the audience, we want them to come as the party’s guests, and we’ll give them masks based on the Italian ‘Commedia del Arte’ stock characters.
“Live music will cover the vintage pre-war era, as those days contained highly charged, evocative smoky underworlds and that is more of what our ball will be about. Seedy music and a brooding atmosphere! The soundtrack will include the Stravinsky score to the ‘Firebird’ ballet and Prokoviev’s amazing ‘Romeo and Juliet’. We’ll also underlay the entire soundscape with our special blend of sub-aural bass to keep the audience on their toes – a real mix of all styles. Most of the cast are contemporary dancers with a sprinkling of RADA graduates and arialists. We do five weeks of rigourous rehearsals, the first three weeks of which are studio based. We don’t want them on site early on, they’d just get too excited, running around stairwells and lying on the windowsills!
“We don’t want to give too much away just yet. Let’s just say you’ll be walking into a decadent ballroom and from there you go on to explore the rest of the building. And the harder you work, the more you’ll discover.”
You have such unimaginable imagination!!
“Two directors in particular, Robert Wilson and Deborah Warner, have been hugely influential to us. Wilson put on an event at The Clink in London in 1995, although he didn’t have performers, just an installation with the implication that people had just left the space.
“We’ve always operated via word of mouth, we like that people stumble across us, as in the book ‘Steppenwolf’ by Hermann Hesse, in which the protagonist is out walking and sees a tiny sign saying ‘Magic Theatre for madmen only!’ so he goes in, not knowing what to expect… ”
A disused factory then; Londoners like going to new venues.
“We’d been hunting for four months with no luck then Creative London – a new lottery-funded agency that looks to make use of empty buildings – found us via the Creative Space Agency’s website and got us this venue. When we first saw the outside we weren’t sure, but the inside is just brilliant. We genuinely attract people who don’t usually go to the theatre, even though what we do is inherently theatrical. It is theatre, but using a physical language and you don’t need any prior knowledge to appreciate the adventure.”
Are people going to get dirty?
“No, but they might get covered in feathers.”
Before we go, tell us about your plans for 2005′s The Big Chill.
“The Punchdrunk site will be twice as big with a tent too, so it’ll be in and outdoors. We’ll have a ball pool to swim about in and a mountain of foam cushions. Then, elsewhere for 2006 we’re planning a promenade opera of Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’ with a full orchestra in a disused hospital. ”
Pheeew!
Sam Sofa
For general ticket enquiries and info email info@bigchill.net with Punchdrunk in the Subject Header
