Fernanda Prata as well as Sarah Dowling (Frances Grey), one of the performers in Punchdrunk’s current production, led me in a full day’s practical workshop on the set of ‘The Drowned Man.’ We predominantly explored one of the key concepts that Punchdrunk live by:

The relation of the performer to the space.

Punchdrunk tend to use professional dancers in their shows as opposed to trained actors, as they are innately more in-tune with their surroundings and know how to tell a story using their bodies and movement, as opposed to relying on a text. We were shown how to approach using this method of physical exploration as opposed to constantly focusing on text, and were also given an intricate insight into how Punchdrunk work as a company, including how they begin devising a piece by using a key text, normally an epic or classic story, and how they devise ways of expressing feelings within the play using physicality as opposed to adapting lines.

We were also intensely trained on utilising our bodies and our peripheral vision, as with the nature of Punchdrunk’s work being immersive on a phenomenal scale, the performers have to be fully aware of who and what is around them at all times. We spent hours exploring a space, testing its limits, knowing its corners and discovering its secrets until we felt fully in control in one room. However Punchdrunk performers would extend this by utilising this method in every area of their monumental set. 

We also explored three key concepts of movement: Impulse (attack and continue the movement), impact (continuous to a fast end to stop) and continuous (continuing the movement with no changes on the speed). We further pushed these methods of movement using archetypal features in a lot of Punchdrunk’s experimentation: Pressing and sliding, folding and stretching and rolling, turning and spiral. The workshop greatly helped develop my physical theatre abilities and understanding, and I also formed many strong connections with some of the other workshop members, and we hope to appropriate some of Punchdrunk’s style into a show we may devise.