THE BURNT CITY
2022 - 2023
Punchdrunk’s most ambitious production to date reimagined ancient Greek mythology. In collaboration with Lily Ockwell, Anna Finkel and the directing team, I devised the story of Persephone and Hades which unfolded in linear fashion over 2 and a half hours, woven through the looping action of the rest of the show. Working closely with designers in all production departments, I was responsible for making the Hades track and performed the role several hundred times over the course of an 18 month run.
As a Creative Associate on Punchdrunk’s longest-running London show, I had a special responsibility for composing text. I wrote scripts for live performance and also for prerecorded voiceovers. Other texts were printed, to be read by audience members while they explored the set. I also produced material for advertising campaigns to promote the show, and for a special experience for lottery winners sponsored by the headline partner, Porsche.
Trailer
From an article in The Stage by Anna James:
Punchdrunk is known for its loop structure – an hour-long story that repeats three times leading to a single finale. The Burnt City operates like this too – or seems to. For while the majority of the characters are forced to repeat these purgatorial loops, Hades and Persephone operate outside this construct. This allows Punchdrunk to create a mythology around its own formula, even creating suggestions of links with its former work. The in-story acknowledgment offers a way for it to break its own rules and play with ideas of performance, reality and the very nature of stories themselves.
“It’s my favourite bit of the show,” [Felix] Barrett says. “Since we started, it’s all about defying audience expectation. The first shows were about the expectations of conventional theatre, but as we’ve become more well-known, it’s about how do you defy those expectations? We’re in this strange, hybrid world that’s exciting to play with – where is the truth? Which layer of the narrative world is the real one?”
As Hades
With Mallory Gracenin as Persephone
Extracts from a Sky TV documentary produced in 2023