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, the similarities between Punchdrunk’s shows and video games are many.
Here, Alan Wen and Bertie talk about their separate experiences of Punchdrunk’s latest production, inspired by the fall of Troy – The Burnt City. The show is running in London until the end of September.
Bertie: It’s been a few weeks since I went to The Burnt City. I remember there being a bitingly cold wind whipping around the Woolwich Arsenal in London when we were there. I’m still thinking about the show. And I’m keen to know how much you knew about Punchdrunk before you went? What were you expecting?
Alan: So that was my first ever visit to a Punchdrunk production but I used to have an interest in theatre and I remember friends telling me about Punchdrunk way back in the early noughties. But the idea of promenade/immersive theatre was what I had in my mind when reading about certain games having a theatrical quality to them, which sounds like a weird analogy if, like me, your experience of theatre had mostly been the cheap seats high up in the balcony in the West End.