It's like being in a game - going inside Troy for PunchdrunkInt's immersive show The Burnt City
Punchdrunk is an award-winning immersive theatre company that transforms warehouses into enormous and elaborate sets, which audiences can freely walk around. And as they do, a play unfolds around them and with them. Here, the audience is not separate from the action but a part of it. And because of that,Here, Alan Wen and Bertie talk about their separate experiences of Punchdrunk's latest production, inspired by the fall of Troy -It's been a few weeks since I went to The Burnt City.
An image from the show, showing an actor watched by two masked audience members. Photos by Julian Abrams for Punchdrunk.So I purposely broke from the group I was with and went in the opposite direction, into a kind of Chinatown, with lanterns hanging from shop windows and tight, winding alleys, and the moment I turned the corner, two actors came at me and climbed the wall right next to my head - I had to jump quickly aside. I couldn't have gotten closer to the action if I'd tried.
But it took me ages to get my bearings and a sense of what the areas were and how they were linked. It's like a warren in there.Did you try to interact with any objects in the rooms? I was quite nervous about touching anything, in case one of the staff members clad in black and standing ominously at the edges of the set suddenly swooped in to tell me off. But I did wonder whether there was any actual interactive element that would make it more game-like.
On that point: what did you make of the story and the storylines - were you able to follow what was going on? Because I'm going to be blunt with you: I didn't have a clue.Oh yeah, it didn't make a narrative lick of sense to me! I have some passing knowledge of the Trojan Wars but I honestly didn't know when I was seeing characters who were mortals or gods.
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