#Alison Adnet

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Dune: Part Two 2024

[exitmurderer]

TBC #1-5 5-9 Jul 2022

Five visits to The Burnt City. Warning: possible spoilers.

I'm not going to try and recap every show. But here's the first one. I went in knowing a few things but mostly unspoiled. I had read or re-read Hecuba, the Oresteia, Metropolis, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I was in the first batch let in for each show, and every time we got the Troy entrance. I wandered and soon enough found some rooms in the Hotel Elysium. I kept wandering and eventually spooked another white mask while I was emerging from a particularly dark corner. Like they literally jumped and screamed, just because they suddenly noticed me. The first character I laid eyes on was the florist. Eventually he took another person for a 1:1. The Greeks invaded, Polyxena died, and knowing that Punchdrunk characters rarely stay dead for very long, I stayed and then followed her until she literally climbed a wall. I poked around and finally found Mycenae, which I explored, but by then the Clytemnestra/Agamemnon crowds were as dense as the Macbeth crowds in SNM, so I went back to Troy and followed Kampe a bit and then Zagreus for a while until inevitably losing him at a 1:1. More Greece, lots of exploring and then the finale there.

It's hard to tell how much of it's actually the intentional design of the show, or due to it still being new, or to COVID-19, or to how boiling hot it can get in there, but it was interesting to me how some things felt a bit more inconsistent than, say, SNM NYC. Most obviously, a couple of the characters don't loop--that's obviously intentional design. Some of the performers don't do 1:1s--or maybe they don't do them in certain loops? Hard to say. Related, some characters can be very different, not just in tone and small actions, depending on who is playing them. Particularly Kampe. Unrelated, it was really interesting to see how they used the bar in the show--"Lynchian" is an adjective that gets used a lot with Punchdrunk but to me the most Lynchian moment I've ever seen is Hades singing in Peep.

@sleepnomoreboston made an interesting point, that maybe it's time for Punchdrunk to move on from 1:1s, and I can see the truth in that. At the same time, of course, I'd love to eventually experience all of the ones in this show. As it stands, I had Luba's 1:1. Other folks in my group got many more than that, but as always, randomness and unknowability ruled the day.

A thing I'd ask Felix (or whoever) about the Punchdrunk model of show design: Are you designing a show that pushes the audience to be their best selves, or their worst selves?

What else? How about some stats and bullets?

Characters where I saw all their public loop: Iphigenia, Persephone, Kampe, Polyxena.

One walkout for me: Alison Adnet as Artemis. I believe that Alison went to the NC School of the Arts so let me just say: Fighting Pickles, represent!

Most moving scene: Easily, the comeuppance rave against Polymestor / the Troy finale. All cylinders of PD clicking for this: sound, lights, movement, narrative, performers. I saw it multiple times and every time was a tearjerker.

Performers who blew my mind above and beyond: Sam Booth, Lily Ockwell, Miranda Mac Letten, Fania Grigoriou.

The Abenes were in town and whitemasking some shows, so it'll be interesting to see what they cook up here.

That's all for now. I hope there's more to come, someday.