COMPLICITÉ’S 'The Encounter': Binaural innovation at The Barbican
- harrypd21
- Jun 27, 2019
- 2 min read
Two nights ago Simon Mcburney (and thus Théâtre de Complicité)’s The Encounterpremiered at the Barbican theatre whilst simultaneously live-streaming on Youtube. The results, and the performance itself, were impressive and mesmerising.
Based on The Encounter: Amazon Beaming, the story of journalist Loren McIntyre’s attempt to discover the source of the Amazon (and perhaps a lot more) with the help of the Mayoruma tribe, as told by Petru Popescu, the story is potentially not a familiar one (I was formerly unawares) and yet, it is the fantastical, deceptive and transformative nature of story that is the star here.
The Encounter, as Mcburney explains in a carefree manner that might leave you realising you’ve missed the start of the performance proper, focuses exclusively on sound and timelines – which make it all the more astounding to witness the ripple effect of these on the performance as a whole (more on this in a moment). The keynote for The Encounter is that all audience members are required to wear headphones, as the play clinches on binaurally-accessible soundscapes.
Mcburney introduces us to a crash-test dummy head, centre-stage, which serves throughout the play as the receptacle for us a totem and many other wild and imaginative objects. Mcburney continues to introduce us to the types of microphone and the gadgets that will trick out brain into believing they are the bonafide objects their sounds represent, and so the narrative begins out of pure unadulterated noise.
‘You’re told what’s happening…and yet you still find yourself being tricked, and going on this extraordinary trip’ – Benedict Cumberbatch
As we are drawn seamlessly into The Encounter and jerked back through its narrative levels from Mcburney’s conversations with his daughter to the deep Amazonian jungles you will not only be amazed that one man (though not really as Mcburney, by admission, is nothing without his team in the wings) can: remember all of this; create of all this, you will be astounded at the complexity that comes out of simplicity through sounds, rhythms and mime and you will be in awe that within all of this pure innovative joy there is a, somewhat moralistic, narrative.
It is perhaps true however, that having sampled any of Complicité’s work before or even just from gauging the atmosphere of the ongoing performance that the narrative’s bizarre offshoot in the second half is almost somewhat predictable and furthermore, that the material itself is at times thin. As for the theatrical experience the preceding description may have made The Encounter with Mcburney and his gadgets sound indulgent and a one-trick sound pony – of which it is neither, action and physicality is woven energetically into the sounds making you feel you could almost simply listenrather than watch this piece.
That Mcburney, and indeed the whole of the Complicté company, have added something profound and considerable to the portfolio of sensory theatre is an understatement; The Encounter is baffling in the economy and scope of its work and begs a lot of stimulating questions as to what exactly we have just received as a piece of art, an experience. We should, by now, have learnt to expect nothing less.
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