The immersive theater company Punchdrunk has returned to New York City with “Viola’s Room” — and it couldn’t be more different than their signature international hit, “Sleep No More.”
Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:
Whereas “Sleep No More” — which ran in New York for 14 years and is now playing in Shanghai and soon to open in Seoul — is a large-scale, big-cast, multi-floor epic that plays to audiences of hundreds, “Viola’s Room” is an experience for no more than six people at a time, exploring a smaller-scale but elaborate installation and guided by the recorded voice of Helena Bonham Carter, speaking over headphones.
Throughout the show, barefoot audience members are led through a series of environments that tell the dreamy, occasionally spooky story of a princess’ mysterious connection to the moon. “The show is almost the most distilled form of Punchdrunk, in that it’s got the full DNA of wanting to pull people into our magical world so they forget the land outside,” said Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety‘s theater podcast. “But we wanted to try and do something that’s the most intimate show possible, so that it’s got all of the secrets and potency [of ‘Sleep No More’] but compressed to create something that really gets under the skin.”
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On “Stagecraft,” Barrett took listeners behind the scenes of a production that has no live actors but is orchestrated by a large team backstage. The production also features as many lighting cues as two or three Broadway shows, and includes bulbs that are so small they’re described as grains of barley.
Barrett also discussed his touring hopes for “Viola’s Room,” his stage adaptation of “Paranormal Activity” (set to play Chicago in October), and what lies ahead for Punchdrunk — including the surprisingly significant role that video games play in the company’s future.
This fall, he’s got an ambitious immersive adaptation of the hit Netflix animated series “Arcane” bowing in Shanghai in November. Surprisingly, it’s a musical. “The idea of staging something which has the poetry of animation with big, chunky, anthemic music, sung live, whilst an audience is promenading, is fraught with many challenges that, if we can put it off — it’s gonna be next level.”
He also said that video games in general are inspiring many of his ideas for other future projects.
“Video games are the most immersive entertainment form because the audience member has so much agency, and has the ability to craft and control and do whatever they want inside these alternate worlds,” he explained. “I’m convinced that the future of immersive theatre is going to be taking more from video games and applying it to live action, because that is really getting lost in something.”
He added, “If you could create something where the audience member has real control of what they do and how they do it, and they have the agency you have in a AAA adventure game — that is probably my big target over the coming years. We are in active work to try and start prototyping that and introduce a new form, which is the real fusion of theater and gaming.”
To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network. New episodes of “Stagecraft” are released every other week.
