Chainsaw became the buzzword at the last Manchester International Festival. Hundreds of attendees found themselves chased by baddies brandishing said gardening tool/weapon in the darkened corridors of a disused office building in Quay Street, Manchester city centre.
Within days, the public had gobbled up tickets for Punchdrunk’s It Felt Like A Kiss – a full-on fright ride into disturbing rooms where viewers were confronted with nightmarish visions, bathed in a disconcerting soundtrack and chased down corridors by slasher style villains. MIF organisers could have re-sold the show 10 times over such was the demand for tickets once the word got out.
It was like being immersed in a private horror movie. So scary was it, in fact, that security staff had to be stationed at the fire exits to make sure no terrified punters attempted to duck out early.
Most of us wouldn’t say no to 15 minutes of fame (although how many of us would grasp that in the form of being a femme fatale about to have her short life horribly snuffed out is certainly debatable) and the magical concept of suddenly finding yourself at the centre of your own cinematic experience is absolutely what informs the ideas of Felix Barrett – founder and artistic director of Punchdrunk.
Little wonder after the success of It Felt Like A Kiss, two yers ago, that MIF has invited Felix and the Punchdrunk team back in 2011. But this time, Felix has set his sights on a whole different audience: exclusively children, aged six to 12.
Reassuringly, he says the point of new show Crash Of The Elysium is not to repeat the terror of 2009 and traumatise the region’s youth. And in a concession that reflects that, the six to eight age group will be allowed to see the show with an adult; for age nine up, the kids get to see it alone.
And while he is expecting some tears – the reasons for which he’s staying tight lipped about – he’s mainly expecting the children to feel excited and empowered.
“I want them to go home and say, ‘Mum, you will never guess what happened to me today’,” he laughs.
“Every show we do, we just want to make the most exciting, impactive and also challenging work possible – for ourselves and for the audience.
“We’ve always aimed to encourage our adults audiences back into that childhood state of imaginative freedom and adventure. So you could say that creating a piece for six to 12 year olds is perfect for Punchdrunk.
“Our aim is not to scare children, it’s to bring out a sense of magic. It Felt Like A Kiss was a meditation on fear: political, cultural and the paranoia of the individual.
“Our aim is to create enchantment and transport the children so far away from the Manchester they’re used to, and so caught up in a fictional world, that they don’t know where the real and the fictional world begin and end.”
In the 10 years or so since Punchdrunk started staging productions, Felix has taken home fists full of awards. Sleep No More – the company’s Hitchcockian retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth – wowed crowds in New York when it debuted Punchdrunk’s work in the States in 2009, while last year’s The Duchess Of Malfi paired them up with the brilliant English National Opera.
One regular feature of Punchdrunk’s work is disused spaces, but while their commission for this year’s Manchester International Festival does employ a vacant bank in the shadow of MediaCity, it breaks the usual rules by constructing a new world upon it.
Hints of what’s to come have appeared online, including rumours of a sunken ship and a message from Doctor Who appealing for help. It’s all Punchdrunk will be revealing ahead of the opening on July 1.
Felix is thrilled that people are already talking about it online on the show’s blog, but his overriding sense of pride comes from having the opportunity to working with the BBC – and the Doctor Who series and writer Steven Moffat in particular – bringing together creative minds that MIF director Alex Poots thrillingly calls “architects of the imagination”.
Felix is a Doctor Who fan. He recalls watching the show with his mum and loving it. “I loved the fact it was the real world, everything was so familiar and yet there’s these fantastic plot lines and interventions,” he recalls.
“I’ve loved the new renaissance, particularly Steven Moffat’s episodes because they’re so suspense driven. I love the sparsity of that, that all the fear is implied, there’s a theatrical level of tension.”
The other way it breaks from Punchdrunk’s norms is that it has been designed to tour. In the past, their installations have been one offs, or (as was the case with Sleep No More) designed to be remodelled into different shows to work in different territories.
This time, plans to the get the show on the road are already underway, starting with the Cultural Olympiad at the London 2012 Games.
“It’s the first time we’ve built a show that can tour,” Felix smiles. “So places like Cardiff or Berwick Upon Tweed won’t know what’s hit them either!”
The exclusivity of a Punchdrunk show, then, will be all about numbers. Access to each performance is being kept on a small scale with groups of only 25 people permitted into the massive site at Salford Quays at a time.
“It’s good to do large-scale shows that only a few members of the public can get access to,” says Felix.
Expectations are no doubt high after the success of It Felt Like A Kiss. But Felix says it had no bearing on the company when they were putting together the new show. “It’s just so exciting to work with a whole different brief and a whole different demographic,” he says. “We were thrilled at how well It Felt Like A Kiss was received, and we just hope this one is the talk of the festival again in 2011.”
» Crash Of The Elysium opens on July 1 at MediaCity, tickets £20. Special preview shows run on June 30, £10.
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