THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Encountering the Amazon without taking off my headphones.
By Alisha Giampola (writer/performer)

Last week I had the opportunity to see the opening night of the first play to open the 2016/17 season on Broadway, Simon McBurney's one-man immersive audio-experience, The Encounter. 

The circumstances that led me to be sitting in the very first row (in front of Kevin Kline, no less!) of this production were related to my husbands' work, so I actually had not prepared myself in any way for the show I was about to see until the lights were dimming. Well, unless you consider preparing yourself to include spending an inordinate amount of time deciding what to wear because I really wanted to feel fabulous at the party afterwards. "What's this called again?" I whispered to Daniel as we were instructed to put our headphones on and check that they were working. 

Opening night curtain call of The Encounter.
You can actually see Daniel's head just under the "T" of the "Exit" sign there in the front row, clapping. 
I was there too, but I'm about a foot shorter and standing to his left, so. 

The best way I can describe the experience of seeing The Encounter is.... well, have you ever done any drugs? Haha, I kid. But seriously, have you? Simon McBurney, alone, on a stage full of microphone and audio equipment and a whole lot of water bottles creates an aural experience that can only be described as a live psychedelic podcast. Both wildly broad and incredibly intimate, he is able to recreate the sounds, colors, and damp heat of the Amazon rainforest using only his ability to speak directly into your ears through an anthropomorphic microphone that sits in the center of the stage for the entire production. Silent, almost talismanic, his solitary high-tech scene partner is the only other humanoid on stage with him. And yet, you feel surrounded by an entire tribe of people, an entire jungle of creatures, and occasionally if feels as if the stage has transformed into the interior of a mind grappling with it's own consciousness.

So, trippy. It's very trippy. As in the literal meaning of that word: "trip". I have never felt so transported by so little while surrounded by so many people. At one point, I disengaged from the production happening before me to check in with my real-life surroundings. There I was, sitting in a huge Broadway theatre full of people wearing headphones. None of us could hear anything other than what was being piped directly into our ears. Someone arriving late, into the back of the theatre, would hear nothing but a faint distant whispering coming from the stage, perhaps. See an entire crowd, enraptured, but silent, fixated on a man presumably audio-mixing something from the stage using little else but his voice, water bottles and occasionally rolls of undeveloped film for sound. 

Perhaps the best suggestion for how to encounter The Encounter is to do so as I did. Knowing absolutely nothing about what you're getting into. (And also, pee first. There is no intermission and it's a solid 2 hours long). (If you can't handle the suspense, feel free to give yourself a few spoilers via all the rave reviews it's getting.) I will say that, for myself, I enjoyed it a lot, and we all know how much I love a good podcast and McBurney tells a hell of a story. The perfection (or was it irony?) of learning through this highly sophisticated aural technology about a little-known indigenous culture while simultaneously being confronted with how technology is destroying indigenous cultures was not lost on me.

But is a really good podcast, watching someone essentially produce a radio performance piece in front of you, a legitimate immersive theatre experience? More importantly, is it a play? These are the kinds of technological conundrums surrounding art that begin dividing the olds from the youngs as they do every twenty or fifty or a hundred years or so. Are selfies legitimate portraiture? And if it is, is Kim Kardashian a legitimate artist? Bach and the Beatles are both composers of great music, and even though McBurney's play can only be experienced via headphones, who is to say that it's not just natural artistic evolution: the theatrical medium simply adapting to encompass the way we currently consume media? 

No matter what, The Encounter is a limited engagement, and unlike other forms of theatre, there will be no way to enjoy it except for seeing it live. No script book, cast recording, or YouTube clip could even begin to do this one justice. And maybe that is exactly what makes it theatre at its most theatrical. 

image via. 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer whose favorite Kevin Kline movie is A Fish Called Wanda. Thanks for asking.
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Comments

[Morphy Richards]

That really sounds weird.. but interesting! I've never been to such event where the audience are all wearing headphones. And most of all, a man recreating the sound of Amazon forest? That's one of a kind!