badlydrawndrownedman

[badlydrawndrownedman]

I saw a show this weekend, inspired in part by the same few paragraphs in Graves as the scene above from my own show - my Muses came out of the Maenads (I had thought of them originally but the final story and link to them really was inspired by the research of BK, the actor who played Erato) I smiled at Ozymandias and the thunder by the place where I had my last true 1:1. A promising start...

[badlydrawndrownedman]

Ha - given that I have been part of the improv scene over here and I've directed a fully immersive show I guess I need to come up with the format. Alas improv has next to no set or costume (although we're trying to up our production values in the UK) and about 1 in 10 people I meet have any sort of physical theatre training so...but ha! If I were going to create an improv format immersive would be my speciality!!

How was it?! What was it!?

You mean that improv thing? There wasn’t much to it; I’m glad it was only $10!

It was very basic. The play was “Romeo and Juliet,” and the soundtrack had been created in advance, but otherwise it was improv. The performers drew their character names at the start of the show, and the setting (”a funeral’) was called out by an audience member. 

The performers then made up random shit in Punchdrunk style, as the audience roamed around in Punchdrunk masks (it was a small theater - we and the characters could go onstage, backstage, or into the lobby). It was as random and logistically confusing as you’d imagine, though there were a couple of funny moments.

It did make me realize that an actual, planned and thought-through parody of a Punchdrunk show would be a lot of fun. Hopefully someone will do one someday!

[badlydrawndrownedman]

We've never had an ongoing show in the UK so I suspect TDM's public loop recording was an aberration - also we have 'lost' more shows - Malfi was largely undocumented - Faust was mapped only vaguely as I can't think of anyone who saw it more than 2-3 times. Red Death was mapped but mainly only because of The Gold Bug and the fact that we knew the building before and after made that process simpler so I can forgive the frantic mapping and recording of TDM - imagine if it really had only run til October 2013 - how much would have been lost. I despaired slightly that people seemed to think that the title 'Contains Spoilers' meant there was an all purveying licence to spoil everything - I lost count of the times I had to explain to people that containing spoilers didn't mean the site was there to ruin the whole bloody experience. I can think of lots of secrets still kept. They make me happy.

“That’s the only difference between an American audience and an English audience. That, I think here, there’s a sense that it’s a puzzle that can be solved and they’re trying to work out the logic so that you can almost create a sort of master plan, where–which we have, you know, at five past eight Lady Macduff will be in the ballroom with a candlestick–and there’s a desire for people to make sense of that, when I think it’s the English audience, strangely, almost go the other way, and they don’t want to demystify it.”

– Felix Barrett, 2011, in an interview with Studio 360

I wonder what he thinks of English audiences post-TDM. I missed the beginning of the SNM fandom, though obviously tumblr blogs such as Paisley Sweets worked hard to document a lot of the show (much to my appreciation), but it seems to me that the TDM fandom was more extreme in trying to make a master plan, documenting loops, 1:1s, and making that information widely available less than a year into the run. 

I wonder how Punchdrunk will continue to evolve its format as social media communities will continue to spring up around its work. I’ve seen companies create online forums for people to discuss their show. Perhaps that is something Punchdrunk can look into–a forum where they are in control, where only people who have seen the show have access?

Anyway, just some musings. And you should listen to the whole segment–it has some wonderful descriptions of the space for those of you missing the Hotel.

[badlydrawndrownedman]

“If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me?”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

Urania

“Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own.”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

ACT I

SCENE I. On a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard.

Enter a Master and a Boatswain

[badlydrawndrownedman]

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

Hast thou forgot?

...These last twelve years...

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

This damned witch Sycorax, For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Argier, Thou know’st, was banished.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air.”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

She calls me 'Sally for Sarah'

🍸💋🗝

Violet DeWinter - Ink and Watercolor

[badlydrawndrownedman]

"B"

[badlydrawndrownedman]

I don't know how to answer questions from my phone app - but one has to ask why Prospero disappeared and if he disappeared in the storm and why Miranda was so frightened to go beyond the White Room. Or if Prospero had held a part of Ariel back to stop Ariel from uniting and becoming free again. What I can tell you is we didn't ever play the full story out - for reasons I can't share.

“Now I will believe That there are unicorns, that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix at this hour reigning there!”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

Let it pass; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sensible Thing (via sarahs-delights)

[badlydrawndrownedman]

The Harpy's banquet

“Now I will believe That there are unicorns, that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix at this hour reigning there!”

[badlydrawndrownedman]

This isn't even the half of it, Sandy.

Chorus of the Muses

[badlydrawndrownedman]

THE TRASH HEAP HAS SPOKEN

I hate to keep asking this question but if there is a real "fraggle room" whats the purpose of it? What purpose does it serve in relation to the show

That’s like asking “What is the purpose of life?”

To me it’s to dance your cares away cause worry’s for another day.

[badlydrawndrownedman]

From the beginning I took two things - the idea of The Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I which graced the cover of my Norton Anthology (containing The Tempest) at Uni and the masque's idea of virginity and purity - also represented through Zombie Liz/Super Sycorax as I believe some of he fans call her

And Iris the rainbow, Juno the peacock and Ceres the - er cereal woman from the original masque blended into one messy rave. But yes - I was looking at the next great ideas immediately after Shakespeare died - Newton discovered refraction - after that point the rainbow became very obvious. We wanted it to be chaos, with order behind it.

Chorus of the Muses