Antonios Vitalis, Year 12
In my first month at LGB, I was given the opportunity to witness, in my opinion, one of the most innovative and incredible performances that I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. Along with fellow IB theatre students, I travelled to Lausanne to experience an incredible theatrical performance by Simon McBurney and his theatre company Complicité. The show was very well done as there was only one sole actor on stage, and hardly any visible props were used.
The performance follows a story set in 1969 about a photographer called Loren McIntyre who hopes to make contact with the Mayoruna people of the Amazon Rainforest during his visit there. He finds the tribe within hours but discovers that he is 400 miles deep in the Amazon and has no way of leaving or communicating to the outside. However, McIntyre soon comes to realise that he isn’t the only one with problems. The Mayoruna are experiencing their own problems with the deforestation and oil drilling occurring in the the Amazon. McIntyre soon finds a way to communicate with the natives and finds himself caught in a complex storyline that does not seem to have a definitive beginning or end.
This review will mention three key areas that made the performance unique and impressive: the effects of binaural technology, the simplicity of the performance and the overall effects that this performance had on the audience. When concluding, I will offer a brief personal statement on how I enjoyed the show.
One of the reasons that The Encounter did extraordinarily well at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre is the phenomenal use of audio to better portray its scenes and continue the developing storyline. McBurney and his team of backstage technicians did this superbly through the use of binaural technology. Binaural technology is recording and distributing audio the way our ears would naturally hear it in the real world. This involves the artificial splitting of recordings/sound in to left and right channels that are transmitted to listeners’ ears through a range of mediums- during the encounter the medium was a headphone.
McBurney stood on a bare and empty stage, as each audience member entered. Interestingly enough, audience members found sets of headphones on each seat individually hung and connected to a speaker attached to our seats. As soon as the show began McBurney did something I personally didn’t see coming- he broke the fourth wall. Considering the prestige and status of such an actor and director, McBurney’s openness and discussion with the audience surprised me and other LGB students as well. McBurney informed the audience the importance of wearing the headphones during the performance showing us the effects of binaural technology during this sharing of information. McBurney used a microphone in the shape of a geometric head resting on a stand that records the 3D like audio. Almost immediately the audio takes effect and transports us from the grim Lausanne theatre into the Amazon Rainforest by the simple sounds created by McBurney’s performance. The effect that I thought the binaural technology had on the overall performance was highly significant. The audio technology transported me into a world of imagination and allowed our minds to wander into our own imaginations corresponding to The Encounter storyline. Without the binaural technology I do not think that The Encounter would have been that successful or as unique and impressive as audience members ultimately found it to be.
The second key factor that made The Encounter an impressive and unique performance the simplicity of the performance. The Encounter is a solo piece of work performed by McBurney, yet it manages to implement other characters and different settings without backstage help. As mentioned previously, when entering the Theatre McBurney is seen standing on a nearly empty stage. The stage is practically empty aside from various objects that include packs of bottles of water, a box overflowing with celluloid strips, a circle of speaker and the big geometric grey head like microphone. Using these various pieces of equipment McBurney is able to produce so many sounds, as he plays with the various objects, his voice, movements with his body, and pre-recorded audio feeding into the live performance by his sound operators Ella Wahlstrom and Helen Skiera. These little bits and pieces of simple objects are used to such great effect that we are able to fully immerse ourselves into The Encounter’s 3D audio story. The simplicity of this performance is what makes the performance so unique, because it doesn’t rely on expensive and elaborated props for setting the various scenes. Therefore the simplicity of this performance is what makes the Encounter so successful in terms of being a unique and impressive theatrical performance.
The effect that this play has on the audience can be answered in various ways. Firstly the audience is never once distracted or bored by what is happening on stage, because, ironically, the performance isn’t happening on stage- it is happenign in our ears and minds. The binaural technology transports us to the Amazon forest where reporter Loren McIntyre is stranded and isolated from communicating with the outside world. Audiences are also forced to be attentive as the Encounter uses various transitions from different time periods that either relate or don’t relate to McIntyre’s story. Sometimes the audience is in the Amazon, exposed to its cold and jungle like atmosphere, while in other cases, we are back in McBurney’s house where he is producing the performance that we are watching, while having to put up with continual interruptions from his sleepless daughter. The effect that this has on the audience is one of personal connection. We relate more to The Encounter than we first realise, thanks to the domestic scenes that are produced; we come to appreciate the play better than we first did, because we subconsciously realise the time and effort that McBurney must have devoted to producing such an exquisite performance. The reaction the audience therefore has is mmensely positive towards Complicité and Simon McBurney.
In terms of my personal opinion of the whole performance, it really comes down to two points. Firstly, the fluidity of the performance followed by the subtle yet powerful moments that the main protagonist shares with the audience. The fluidity that I witnessed in The Encounter was well executed, due to the lack of dramatic or weak transitions. The play can easily be likened to an onion; it had so many different layers that flowed together perfectly, which lead to an audience that couldn’t help but admire the effort that McBurney and his team had put into in creating the piece. The subtlety of McIntyre’s monologues are incredibly powerful as they reflect his willingness to leave his past life to begin again- something that audience members can relate to when starting anew. I was so immersed during this performance that I would truly recommend it to everyone, preferably over the age of 12. The alternative use of audio to better engage audiences was done superbly and certainly made the performance what it is; unique and impressive.
