Home is set to host potentially one of the highlights of Manchester’s theatrical year, The Encounter, Simon McBurney’s spell-binding solo performance for Complicite.
In 1969, National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre became lost in a remote part of the Brazilian rainforest while searching for the Mayoruna people. His encounter was to test his perception of the world, bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus. Threading scenes of his own life with details of McIntyre’s journey, Simon McBurney incorporates objects and sound effects into this solo performance to evoke the depths of the Amazon rainforest.
The show was a huge hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and comes to Manchester as part of its UK tour.
The show’s ground-breaking binaural sound (3D audio) design, by Olivier Award Winner Gareth Fry, is transmitted to the audience through provided headphones and plugs into the power of the imagination, questioning our perceptions of time and our own consciousness.
A captioned performance on Thursday 17 March will trial Talking Birds’ The Difference Engine, a discreet new tool for making events and performances accessible to deaf or hard of hearing audience members through captioning to a mobile device – smartphone or tablet.
Simon McBurney has created and acted in more than 30 productions for Complicite. His directing credits with the company include Beware of Pity, The Master and Margarita, Shun-kin, A Disappearing Number, Measure For Measure, A Minute Too Late, The Elephant Vanishes, Strange Poetry, and The Street of Crocodiles. Other directing credits include All My Sons on Broadway and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Al Pacino in New York.
His opera credits include The Magic Flute and A Dog’s Heart, both produced by De Nederlandse Opera and English National Opera in collaboration with Complicite.
As an actor, Simon has appeared in many films and TV including Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, The Theory of Everything, Magic in the Moonlight, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Last King of Scotland, and JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. The Encounter is a Complicite co-production with the Barbican; Edinburgh International Festival; Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens; Schaubühne Berlin; Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne; and Warwick Arts Centre. The production is supported by Sennheiser and The Wellcome Trust.
The Encounter takes place at Manchester’s Home 16 – 19 March 2016.
