The Encounter
Simon McBurney
Based on the Book Amazon
Beaming by Petru Popescu
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| Simon McBurney & The Binaural Head |
“I am now so close, in your ears ... I am now going to take
a walk across your head.”
The voice is somewhere inside each audience member as will
be in the next one hundred fifty-five minutes many voices of varying dialects
and languages; countless sounds of jungle, villages, and overhead planes; as
well as music, dancing feet, and a child’s midnight whispers to her
father. One man stands before us on a
wide stage populated with a single table, a computer, many bottles of water,
and a lone head with two big ears on a microphone stand. Through our individual microphones, a world unseen
becomes vividly real amid the sounds that enter into our mind’s eye from the
left, right, back, and front – to the point we may turn to see who is suddenly
behind us or may swish at some mosquito buzzing above our heads. Using technology that is amazingly current
(and one, the binaural head microphone on its mid-stage stand, that is actually
decades old), Simon McBurney employs the ancient art of storytelling to convey
a true tale of a man’s singular journey into undiscovered parts of the Amazon
to meet and live for a time with indigenous people. Along the way, the creator, director, and
sole performer of The Encounter (now
playing at the Curran Theatre) will hold his cocooned, wide-eyed audience
members in raptured attention as he challenges our concepts of time, place, and
reality.
Simon McBurney bases The
Encounter on a book by Petru Popescu, who in turn writes the story of Loren
McIntyre’s true-life adventure as a National
Geographic photographer when he ventures solo in 1969 into the remote Javari
Valley of Brazil. There, Mr. McIntyre
comes across some indigenous tribe members, follows them for hours into the
thick jungle, gets lost all the time taking pictures, and finally finds himself
in a village of the Mayoruna – a people totally separated from any signs or
contact with modern civilization. For
the next two months, the photographer lives with the nomadic tribe with no
common language; yet he finds himself increasingly in deep communication and
relationship with some of its members, particularly with one man he calls
Barnacle. As the days pass and as told
in the book and in this stage adaptation, the photographer sheds all signs of
his own ties to the outer world, including watch, sandals, and even camera and
film.
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| Simon McBurney |
The solo performance of this story’s telling is a tour de
force like none other any of us has probably ever seen. Mr. McBurney’s own voice transforms into a
variety of narrators and actors, aided by various microphones. His vocals blend and mix with sounds he
creates, records, and then plays back in echoes, random-like sequences, and
prescribed patterns. From a few taps on
bottles, boxes, or floor; hand claps and foot stomps; papers rattled or torn;
or nonsensical bellows and roars, jungle nightlife and rainstorms, tribal
mingling and dances, or annoying swarms of flying insects come to life in the
space around and within our listening heads.
Often as if in a frenzy and other times as if in meditative trance, the
actor/performer treks, runs, and jumps about the large stage as he tells
McIntyre’s story.
And as Mr. McBurney relates McIntyre’s encounters ranging
from enjoying a last bag of Cheetos to line dancing all night with the entire
tribe to communicating telepathically with his friend Barnacle, he
parenthetically addresses us with such questions as “Am I telling this story,
or is the story telling me?” We hear
quotes from the lost photographer that deserve more than just our passing
attention but have to be stored away for later contemplation: “I was in such a
panic that I saw my thoughts running in front of me” or “Death is a vast array
of lights being shut off, ” to highlight just a couple. And we begin to understand, as does McIntyre
himself, what it really means to be “with these people,” to “hold still in
time,” and to be on a journey to “go to the beginning.” We also receive lasting lessons on the fragility
of the remote environments of our world and of the ripple impact that even one
person’s action (like letting go of a rope) can have on an entire civilization.
The intimate, one-to-one storytelling that Simon McBurney
achieves is certainly not a one-person achievement. An entire team of sound engineers and
recording artists, headed by Gareth Fry along with Pete Malkin, has previously
ventured far and wide (including in the hot, sweaty, mosquito-laden jungles of
Brazil) to record many of the sounds we hear.
A number of that team is working throughout the performance like an
orchestra of a stage musical to provide a seamless soundtrack timed to the
second to the actions and narrative of Mr. McBurney.
While much of this story’s magic happens through the onstage
creation of sounds along with their being mixed with pre-recordings, the story
comes to full light (literally) by the incredible lighting design of Paul
Anderson, especially as it plays out in giant shadows and rippling colors
across a massive sound wall as part of Michael Levine’s overall stage
design. Will Duke’s projections enhance our
entrance into the jungle’s entanglements and environs. And all has been directed with precise timing
and pace by the performer himself, Mr. McBurney.
The Encounter’s title
not only describes a time when a lost photographer finds himself face-to-face
with an indigenous people heretofore unmet by modern times, the title also describes
our own experience as an audience of a personal, all-encompassing experience
with that man’s adventure and with the people he meets. Bravo to the Curran Theatre for exposing Bay
Area audiences to this storytelling achievement of paramount proportions by
Simon McBurney et al.
Rating: 5 E
The Encounter
continues through May 7, 2017 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary Street, San
Francisco. Tickets are available at https://sfcurran.com/
or by calling the Box Office at 415-358-1220 between 10 a.m. and 6 pm. Monday
through Friday.
Photo Credits: Robbie
Jack
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