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The Encounter (NHB Modern Plays)
Complicite, Simon McBurney
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eBook - ePub
The Encounter (NHB Modern Plays)
Complicite, Simon McBurney
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About This Book
In 1969 Loren McIntyre, a National Geographic photographer, found himself lost among the people of the remote Javari Valley in Brazil. It was an encounter that was to change his life, bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus.
Inspired by the book Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu, The Encounter traces McIntyre's journey into the depths of the Amazon rainforest, incorporating innovative technology into a solo performance to build a shifting world of sound.
The Encounter opened at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015 performed by Simon McBurney, and received its London premiere at the Barbican in February 2016 before embarking on a world tour.
'Masterful storytelling from a man and a company who are incapable of remaining within known theatrical boundaries' - Independent
'The stuff of a twisting, turning, thoroughly engrossing fairytale... McBurney captures the metaphysical spirit - as well as the pulse-quickening heart - of the experience with this head-turning, spellbinding show' - Telegraph
'The effect is a soundcloud of a process, in which fact and fiction, past and present, research and production intermingle, spinning a story out of the air' - Variety
'In a solo performance made with many people... [McBurney] pulls the thread of a story from out of the noise of contemporary western life and the sounds of the jungle to create a meditation on interconnectedness, perception and time' - Guardian
' The Encounter is a tour de force that shows contemporary theatre at its most immersive and thought-provoking' - Financial Times
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Britisches Drama1. The Beginning
As the audience enters, it seems there is almost nothing on stage. Anechoic soundprooļ¬ng covers the back wall, but the stage should appear prosaic to the point of dullness.
Onstage are various speakers and microphones. A desk and chair are downstage-right. A binaural head is centre stage, facing the audience.
Multi-packs of water bottles are placed at various spots around the stage.
The opening section is partly improvised.
The ACTOR invites the audience to turn their telephones off, and from this simple announcement begins to talk to them in a conversational manner that suggests the show has not really yet begun. This draws the audience into another kind of attention, through the description of how the evening will unfold.
ACTOR. My daughter is ļ¬ve. She doesnāt believe I work at night, so Iām going to take a photo of you all on my iPhone to prove I was really here. I have more photographs of my children here than there are photographs of my entire life. And these are just the ones Iāve taken in the last week. And there are more photographs on a single page of my phone than I have of the whole of my fatherās childhood. Looking at these pictures of my children, I feel such a sense of responsibility. Because when they look at them, they feel as though theyāre looking back at their whole lives.
But it is not their lives, it is only a story. And I worry theyāll mistake this for reality, just as we all mistake stories for reality.
Thereās something uniquely human about telling stories. You might say that stories are what have allowed the human race to thrive. Stories, ļ¬ction, are how we explain, organise and agree on the meaning of our lives.
For example, two men who have never met might go to war together to ļ¬ght and die for something called the United Kingdom. But the United Kingston does not exist. Itās a ļ¬ctional idea that helps us organise ourselves intoā¦ what?
Two lawyers will ļ¬ght to defend someone they donāt know because they both believe in the existence of the law, justice and human rights. But these things donāt exist. Theyāre ļ¬ctions. Stories.
They donāt exist outside the collective imagination, but they allow us to organise ourselves by forming narratives we can all agree on wherever we are. They shape everything we see and believe in.
That is why I feel so responsible for the stories I tell my childrenā¦
I remember my father reading me bedtime stories as a child that transported me to other places and times. And that was how, for the ļ¬rst time, I started to get inside someone elseās head, and imagine what their experiences felt like.
And now I get into bed with my children at night, and tell them stories in the same way. I watch them empathising with the characters, discovering what connects and separates them from other people, other worlds. It is an intimate process.
It seems empathy and proximity are connected, so Iād like to get closer to you. Can you put your headphones on?
The following text is spoken into a microphone and is heard by the audience through their individual headphones. From now on, all narration, dialogue and other text, as well as all sound effects, are heard by the audience through the headphones.
So now instead of shouting I can be as close to you as I am to my children. Closer in fact, because now, instead of whispering in your ear, I am in the middle of your head.
I would like to check your headphones are all working, I will take a walk from one side of your head to the other, without even moving.
The sound the audience hears moves to the left ear.
I am now in your left ear, and nowā¦ I will move across to the right side.
The sound moves across towards the right ear. A very brief pause in case any audience members still have their headphones the wrong way round.
This is all being manipulated by technicians at the sound desk, but you have the feeling that my voice has āwalked acrossā your brain. I have not, but you āfeelā that I have.
Now you will feel that my voice is getting lower in pitch. It is not. It is simply being modiļ¬ed by a pitch modiļ¬er, also operated from the sound desk behind you. But it does appear that my voice has lowered.
The following is spoken into a different microphone, with voice-modiļ¬cation effects pitching the voice lower.
LOREN. And as my voice is getting lower, I too begin to āfeelā not quite myself. It feels more comfortable to me to speak now with an American accent. And this is the voice I will adopt for the principal character in the piece, the photographer Loren McIntyre. Loren McIntyre whose story unfolds in 1969. Here he is. And now you begin to accept this pitch as truly my own voice. So much so that when I speak in my ānormalā voice, the one I ļ¬rst usedā¦
The ACTOR moves to the other microphone which is not pitch modiļ¬ed.
ACTOR. Of course I immediately sound like Mickey Mouse.
My voice was modiļ¬ed in pitch. But how might we also play similarly with the idea of space?
The binaural head is now turned on, picking up the ACTORās voice and the acoustics of the space. The following is heard binaurally.
To do so Iām going to use another microphone, a binaural microphone, which imitates the human head. It places you aurally right here on the stage. As if these ears were yours. Itās as if you were standing onstage with me.
Itās a somewhat skewed impression because the right ear is your left ear and the left ear is your right ear. So Iām just going to turn it around so itās in the right conļ¬guration.
The head is turned to face upstage.
Now what I would like you to do is close your eyes. Iām going to take a little walk, around your head. You should have the impression that I really am beside you. This is not digital manipulation, this is what Iām really doing. Now Iām getting a little bit too close, maybe a little too intimate.
Iām a little bit dry, so I think Iāll have some water.
Pours and drinks water.
Thatās better.
And to give you a sense of how the brain mistakes ļ¬ction for reality, Iām going to breathe into your ear and it will literally start to heat up.
Breathes.
Oh and thereās just a little hair here that Iāll get for you. And while Iām here I think Iāll give you a little haircut.
Snips the scissors around the binaural head.
SFX on small hand-held speaker: a mosquito ļ¬ying around the head.
And now thereās this damned mosquito ļ¬ying around.
Please open your eyes.
The ACTOR is standing with a speaker in their hand.
And thereās no mosquito. Thereās just this speaker. It sounds real, but it is in fact just a ā
The following is pre-recorded, although that might not be immediately obvious.
RECORDING. ā speaker which is producing the sound of the mosquito. And as you look at it, the sound seems less convincing, simply because your eyes are telling you that you are listening to a recording. And in fact, itās not even a real mosquito, but a recording of someone blowing on a piece of paper and a combā¦ (Continues.)
LIVE. And what youāve probably realised by now is that this too is a recording. This is something that happened six months ago, when we were working on the show. Excuse me, can you turn the mosquito off now.
RECORDING. What?
LIVE. Can you turn that off; itās really annoying.
RECORDING. You want me to turn it off?
LIVE. Yes, itās really annoying.
RECORDING. Okay.
LIVE. Thank you. My voice over there is a recording, he doesnāt exist.
RECORDING. What do you mean I donāt exist?
LIVE. Youāre not real.
RECORDING. Well, of course Iām real.
LIVE. Heās a recording from the past.
RECORDING. No, Iām in the present and youāre in the future!
LIVE. No youāre in the past and Iām the present.
RECORDING. Well okay, Iām in the past. Shall we swap sides?
LIVE. Okay, no problem. Thatās not going to affect causality.
RECORDING. So, where are you?
LIVE. Iām on stage, at [name of theatre].
RECORDING. Oh my god! Should I be worried?
LIVE. No, not particularly.
RECORDING. How many people are there?
LIVE. Quite a few.
RECORDING. Howās it going?
LIVE. Well, they seem to be enjoying it.
RECORDING. Iāll just carry on talking then. Since Iām now clearly somewhere in the past, and I donāt really exist. Well actually, I think I do, because your past is probably more important to you than your present. And actually your past is probably more present to you than anything else. Itās created who you are. But your past is also a story. And we use that story to try to predict the future. So weāll look back and ...