Complicite's 'The Encounter' Edinburgh International Conference Center, Edinburgh International Festival; 480 Seats; £32 ($50) Top

REVUE DE PRESSE

SIMON MCBURNEY The Encounter

08 – 12.09.2015

Edinburgh: The Encounter, International Conference Centre http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/edinburgh-the...

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THE ENCOUNTER IS ONE OF THE EARLY HITS OF THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL CREDIT: A. PHILLIPSON/LIVEPIX

BB y DDoommiinniicc CCaavveennddiisshh THEATRE CRITIC 9 AUGUST 2015 • 2:08PM

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1 sur 6 27.08.15 12:08 Edinburgh: The Encounter, International Conference Centre http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/edinburgh-the...

You are alone in the dense, almost inaccessible Amazon region of Brazil, 400 miles from "civilisation". The aim is to take photographs of an elusive, barely contacted tribes-people called the Mayoruna – to show the world what they look like. And, amazingly, you strike gold. There, suddenly, some of them are. You follow them, snapping as you go – failing, unlike Hansel and Gretel, to leave a trail behind you.

The story of the American photographer Loren McIntyre’s incredible 1969 encounter with “the cat people” (so named because of the whisker-like palm-spines adorning their lips and noses) is the stuﬀ of a twisting, turning, thoroughly engrossing fairytale. And in re-telling it, in this brilliant solo show mounted by his much-travelled company Complicite, Simon McBurney adopts a high-tech bedside manner that places the audience in the role of wide-eyed – or should that be wide-eared? – children.

Clipped to every seat in the large, functional theatre suite at the International Conference Centre is a set of headphones. What you hear has the intimacy of someone whispering in your ears, as if snuggled up beside you. But, more than that, thanks to an array of sonic gadgetry, at the centre of which stands a ‘binaural’ pick-up device, mounted on a mannequin human head, the eﬀect is fully immersive – so that you hear sounds from all sides, conjured with disconcerting pinpoint precision.

Close your eyes, and you can believe you’re in a far-ﬂung corner of the world – gnats and mosquitoes buzzing skin-pricklingly close, birds hooting in the trees. Keep them open, as you are mainly bound to, and you are aware of McBurney – scruﬀy in jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap – busily creating this perturbing, polyphonic paradise.

He partly, often amiably and entertainingly, chats in his own voice, conﬁding details about his inquisitive daughter and domestic life (samples of which we hear). He switches too – by putting on an accent, and talking into a pitch-lowering microphone – into McIntyre’s growly baritone. And with the help of a backstage team and looper-pedals, McBurney the magician can turn the sloshing of a water bottle into the lapping sound of a river; he can scrunch old VHS tape to evoke a trek through humid undergrowth; he transforms a crisp-packet crackle into a roaring ﬁre.

Such is the power of imagination that we are conscious of the artiﬁce but can lose ourselves, like McIntyre, in this alien terrain. We are miles away, yet somehow connected. Through this mesmerising theatrical trickery, McBurney captures the metaphysical spirit – as well as the pulse-quickening heart – of the experience, which was recorded in the 1991 factional novel Amazon Beaming by the Romanian Petru Popescu. McIntyre, who died in 2003, maintained that he developed the ability to communicate telepathically – “beam” – with certain of the Mayoruna, and in living among them entered a diﬀerent state of mind, and time.

Somehow, over two hours that leave its charismatic star exhausted and the audience elated, we too are taken into a synapse-altering space, ﬂoating free of modernity’s plastic trappings. Does that sound like a far-fetched claim? Honestly, with this head-turning, spellbinding show, hearing is believing.

2 sur 6 27.08.15 12:08

‘The Encounter’ Review: Edinburgh International Festival Pr... http://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh...

Edinburgh Theater Review: Complicite’s ‘The Encounter’

AUGUST 10, 2015 | 08:48AM PT ROBBIE JACK

Matt Trueman (http://variety.com/author/matt-trueman/)

Leaping off from Petru Popescu’s book “Amazon Beaming,” an account of an American photographer’s encounter with an indigenous tribe, Si- mon McBurney (http://variety.com/t/simon-mcburney/)’s solo show for his company Complicite (http://variety.com/t/complicite/) is quite extraordinary: a profound meditation on our relationship to time and a captivating piece of high-definition storytelling. “The Encounter,” premiering as part of the Edinburgh International Festival (http://variety.com/t/edinburgh-international-festival/) and moving to London’s Barbican in February, is theater that materializes out of next to nothing, with one of the world’s great theatermakers — and theater thinkers — working right on the cutting edge of his art-form to scintillating effect.

McBurney has long been fascinated by the presence of the past. (His father was a renowned archaeologist.) In “Mnemonic” (2003), he recounted the discovery of Ötzi, a 5,500 year-old corpse found preserved in the Alps. “The Encounter”1 sur 4 seeks out Ötzi’s living counterparts: the Mayoruna tribe, living 27.08.15 12:06 isolated in the Amazon rainforest. McBurney‘The Encounter’ stands Review: on a Edinburgh large soundstage, International Festivalits back Pr... wall patternedhttp://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh... with foam soundproofing. There’s a desk with a couple of microphones and, center stage, a head on a stick: a binaural microphone that records sound in space. When he whispers into its left ear, we in the audience, wearing headphones, feel his presence at our left shoulder. Gareth Fry’s design piles up layers of sounds — recorded interviews, foley effects, a soundscape of McBurney’s home study. The effect is a soundcloud of a process, in which fact and fiction, past and present, research and production intermingle, spinning a story out of the air.

One microphone drops McBurney’s voice a register. Adopting a slow American accent, he becomes Loren McIntyre, the American photojournalist who, in 1969, successfully located the Mayoruna people. In doing so, McIntyre dropped out of time. Having failed to mark a route back to civilization, he became marooned amid 400 square miles of dense, Brazilian rainforest. With no shared language and suspicion growing among the tribe, his survival hangs in the balance, dependent on the protection of its headman, whom he nicknames Barnacles. In time, the two men strike up a connection, apparently telepathic.

It’s a story told with vivid precision, both linguistic and theatrical. McBurney flies over the Amazon with a bamboo stick for a plane. He takes us right into the rainforest, looping his own animal whoops and insectoid croaks as he circles the stage, rustling plastic for leaves underfoot. The head-mic becomes the shamanic headman. It’s a deeply immersive experience, completely transporting. You seem to fall out of time with McIntyre and McBurney, rapt by this gripping thriller.

Time swirls through the whole piece: the modernity encroaching on and threatening Mayorunan existence, photographs that attempt to pause the present, sound recordings that bring back the past. It explores the psychology of time — the need to stay connected to it and the urge to surpass or escape it — as well as the philosophy. “More than one time is possible,” says a scientist in a recorded interview. McBurney makes it so.

History exists in our heads just as this show does. It’s a kind of telepathy in itself; McBurney’s voice transmitting direct to our brains. The show’s form doesn’t just echo its content, it elucidates it. All this technology serves the same primitive, human urges: the need to communicate, the itch to transcend time. Where Mayorunae lick frogs and dance for hours, we disappear into our 2 sur 4 27.08.15 12:06 smartphones. What‘The Encounter’ elevates Review:this story Edinburgh — a gripping International adventure Festival Pr...in its own righthttp://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh... — is that it so matters to McBurney. It’s born of a burning question: whether we need all this stuff; whether the gadgets and comforts are worth the intrusions into our lives and relationships; whether the march of materialism is worth everything it eradicates. He takes a hammer to his tech desk, then stops. Scattered around the stage are water bottles — exactly what the parched McIntyre needs to survive, exactly what McBurney needs to calm down. This is a piece that asks about the price of progress, but never forgets the possibilities. Sensational.

Edinburgh Theater Review: Complicite's 'The Encounter' Edinburgh International Conference Center, Edinburgh International Festival; 480 seats; £32 ($50) top. Opened Aug. 8, 2015. Reviewed Aug. 9. Running time: 2 HOURS.

Production A Complicite production of a play in one act by Simon McBurney.

Creative Written by Simon McBurney; Directed by Simon McBurney and Kirsty Housley. Design, Michael Levine; lighting, Paul Anderson; sound, Gareth Fry; projection, Will Duke.

Cast Simon McBurney.

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The Encounter (Edinburgh International Conference Centre) ... http://www.whatsonstage.com/edinburgh-theatre/reviews/the-...

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REVIEWS

The Encounter (Edinburgh  International Conference Centre)  Directed and performed by Simon McBurney, Complicite's new production traces a lost  photographer's journey into the depths of the Amazon rainforest

Michael Coveney • Edinburgh • 11 Aug 2015

WOS Rating: Reader Reviews: Be the first to review this show

Simon McBurney in The Encounter. 'This extraordinary show is a sonic blast and a half' © Robbie Jack

The theatre of the one-man show is usually a stand-up, or a low key confessional, or a comic rant. Several great performers - Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Ken

1 sur 5 27.08.15 12:11 The Encounter (Edinburgh International Conference Centre) ... http://www.whatsonstage.com/edinburgh-theatre/reviews/the-...

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LL OO NN DD OO NN TT HHEE AA TT RR EE AA LL LL CC I I TT I I EE SS DD I I SS CC OO UU NN TT SS NN E E WW SS TT HH EE AA TT RR EE CC LL UU BB MM O O R R E E Complicite; in a brilliant programming coup, McBurney plays back to back with Lepage's latest piece, 887, in this same venue later this week.

This extraordinary show is a sonic blast and a half, an epic journey to the dangerous heart of the Amazonian jungle from a writer's study in London where an importunate child pleads for her father's attention. McBurney humours the child, as he humours late-comers to the theatre.

For with his technical team, he has created a radio- stereophonic play in a live setting which we absorb through our personal headsets while also watching McBurney who is himself reading the script on an autocue at the back of the huge auditorium. Sometimes you catch yourself turning around in your seat, so convincing is the wrap-around aural babble of voices, insects, crackling fire, rushing rivers.

The literary source is a Romanian screenwriter's account of a photographer, Loren McIntyre, who, in 1969, gets lost in the Javari Valley on the border between Brazil and Peru. McBurney splits his identity with that of McIntyre as he becomes ever more enmeshed in danger, anthropological research and political theory about the decimation of the tribe he encounters.

Some of this becomes over-convoluted and hard to follow, but the broad sweep of it is irresistible. It's like a one-man version of Peter Brook's theatricalisation of Colin Turnbull's book about the lost tribe of The Iks, but at the opposite end of the purity scale, ie, McBurney gives us the works.

The Encounter is also a meditation on paternity, creativity and the merely providential in both artistic and "real" life. It's a plea for a shared humanity but not a soppy one, and some of the stories, and a lot of the detail, are both mind-boggling and hair-raising. A real festival triumph.

The Encounter runs at the Edinburgh International

2 sur 5 27.08.15 12:11 The Encounter, Edinburgh International Festival review: a ﬁve... http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/edinburgh-fe...

The Encounter, Edinburgh International Festival review: a five-star hallucinogenic trip with Complicite

Audiences wear headphones for Simon McBurney's new one-man show about the Amazon jungle

Alice Jones

Tuesday, 11 August 2015

In a festival already over-populated by men and microphones, Simon McBurney has produced something of a game-changer.

He hasn't taken up stand-up, though he begins his new solo show with a few minutes of deceptively low-key knockabout chat. After that, he gets on with the real business of transforming a chilly Edinburgh conference centre into the humid, hallucinogenic depths of the Amazon jungle, using only his voice and a couple of microphones.

Complicite's brand new show, which will transfer to London's Barbican in February 2016, is a hi-tech trip. The audience wear headphones that are of such quality that when McBurney speaks into the left ear of a mannequin on stage, you can practically feel his breath on your ear; and when he buzzes a mosquito sound around the right ear, you all but bat it away. This is binaural technology - sounds recorded and transmitted separately into each ear — and McBurney uses his new toy to bring his story thrillingly, intimately alive.

That story, based on Petru Popescu's new book, Amazon Beaming, traces the journey of the National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre into the Brazilian Amazon in 1969. He was there to shoot the Mayoruna tribe, but when he found them and began to follow them, he failed to mark his tracks back to his plane. Lost in the rainforest, he was forced to live among the tribe, though they shared no language.

It is an incredible story, beautifully written. The tribal leader has warts on his legs “like barnacles” and wears a “diadem of white egret feathers”. There are red-cheeked men and dancing boys, jaguars and maggots, fires and floods and rituals with hallucinogenic toads. It is, primarily, a cracking yarn but it sucks in bigger ideas at every narrative twist. Is it possible to communicate without words? What good are possessions? Could modern man to remove himself from time? What will become of these tribes if the oilmen win?

For all its sound wizardry (overseen by Gareth Fry), this is also rather lo-tech, old-fashioned storytelling, where a bottle of water makes the sound of a Cessna landing on the river, a packet of crisps stands in for a crackling fire and two brooms evoke the feeling of being trapped in a thorn bush. It's a bedtime tale, with added Foley effects.

1 sur 2 27.08.15 12:05 The Encounter, Edinburgh International Festival review: a ﬁve... http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/edinburgh-fe...

McBurney wheels and whirls around the stage, swapping voice from narrator to McIntyre to tribesman like a shaman. He is extraordinary.

Two hours without an interval is too long, but this is masterful storytelling from a man and a company who are incapable of remaining within known theatrical boundaries. A must-see - or perhaps I should say, a must-hear.

EICC, to 23 August (0131 473 2000; www.eif.co.uk).

2 sur 2 27.08.15 12:05 The Encounter, EICC, Review | Edinburgh Guide http://www.edinburghguide.com/festival/2015/theatre/cabaret/...

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EdinburghGuide » Edinburgh's Festivals » Festival 2015 Reviews The Encounter, EICC, Review

By Vivien Devlin - Posted on 11 August 2015

RELATED CABARET NEWS

The Encounter, EICC, Review 11 Aug '15

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Ballad of the Burning Star Review 13 Aug Show details '13 Venue: Edinburgh International Conference Centre Hotel de l’Avenir Review 19 Aug '11 Company: Complicite Running time: 120mins Mind Reading for Breakfast Review 07 Aug Production: Simon McBurney (director), Michael Levine (design), '11 Gareth Fry (sound design), Paul Anderson (lighting). Fringe 2011: Just the Tonic and Underbelly Performers: Simon McBurney Mix It Up 04 Aug '11

Smoke and Mirrors Review 24 Aug '10 Théâtre de Complicité was co-founded by actor and director Simon McBurney in 1983, a Lecoq-inspired company creating an Frances Rufelle - Beneath the Dress “inimitable style of visual and devised theatre - strong, Review 14 Aug '10 corporeal, poetic and surrealist.” Two years later they won the Ferris Bueller's Way of ... - Free Review 14 Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. Aug '10

Now, thirty years on, Complicite is on the Edinburgh International Festival with McBurney performing what is, in LATEST FESTIVAL NEWS & INFO essence, a stand up show – a man and a microphone on stage. 17 Border Crossings, Summerhall, Fringe review 26 Aug '15 But during this multi-layered, inventively theatrical experience, the audience encounters a host of characters and exotic Feast, Zoo Sanctuary, Review 26 Aug '15 creatures along the way, transported on a magical, mystery tour EIF 2015: Max Richter – in darkest Brazil. Recomposed/Memoryhouse, Edinburgh Playhouse, Review 26 Aug '15 Like taking any journey, arrive in good time at the EICC, down two ﬂights of escalators to the Lennox 3 suite, a vast arena with Edinburgh Book Festival: Janice Galloway, an extensive stage. The rows of plastic seats is more like a pop Sex Life & Parenthood, Review 26 Aug '15 up Fringe venue (bring a cushion) with ﬁtted head-phones. Sit We This Way, Summerhall, Review 26 Aug back to hear an extraordinary real life adventure story. '15

Loren McIntyre ﬁrst sailed the Amazon River in 1935 at the age Current Location, Summerhall, Review 26 of 18. Brandishing notebook and camera he toured Japan, China, Aug '15 Singapore, India, Africa and South America. with an insatiable Paperwork 2, Fringe Venue 208 (Edinburgh spirit for adventure. In the Peruvian Andes is Laguna McIntyre, Ski Club), Review 26 Aug '15 the uppermost source of the Amazon River which he discovered Vanity Bites Back, Gilded Balloon Study, in 1971. Review 26 Aug '15

“The Encounter” is based on as described in the book ” Amazon Edinburgh Book Festival: Roy Hattersley, In Beaming” by Petru Popescu. This is an account of McIntyre’s Praise of Equality 26 Aug '15 life-enriching, death-defying experience after being kidnapped EIF 2015: Rudolf Buchbinder: Beethoven by the Mayoruna tribe, sharing their magical spiritual journey to

1 sur 2 27.08.15 12:19 The Encounter, EICC, Review | Edinburgh Guide http://www.edinburghguide.com/festival/2015/theatre/cabaret/...

ﬁnd the "beginning of time" beyond the reach of civilization. Piano Sonatas, Playfair Library, Review 25 Aug '15 Simon McBurney stands on stage in baseball cap, T shirt and jeans. He is both himself as the narrator, switching in an instant More Edinburgh News to the role of McIntye (a deep, purring American voice akin to Harrison Ford). Time shifts from present to past, travelling in space and place from his London family home to the Amazon jungle, in a seamless, fast paced, rollercoaster ride of a performance.

On stage are just a few props – table and ofce chair, bottles of water, a box of discarded black video tape, a bamboo stick, and various microphones producing special aural efects.

As if being part of an elaborate radio documentary, we listen intently to the sound of a seaplane ﬂying low over the Javari River; we follow in Loren’s footsteps trekking through the lush undergrowth, sense the steamy heat, hear the buzzing of mosquitos, as we venture further into the jungle in pursuit of the nomadic Cat People, the legendary Mayoruna tribe with their tattoos and painted faces. Soon, lost in the rain forest, in a shimmering, misty light, we can virtually feel the splashing torrents of a monsoon shower drenching our skin.

Simon McBurney is like a magician with a box of tricks and technical wizardry, charging around the stage with efervescent energy, to create a vividly evocative soundscape with its myriad of voices and music revolving in our mind.

Just one man, a microphone and a mesmerising traveller’s tale, told with childlike imagination, humour and absorbing passion.

Show Times 7-10, 16-19, 21,22 August @ 7.30pm 14, 15, 20,23 August @ 2.30pm Ticket price £ 32

Tags Cabaret Edinburgh International Festival Theatre Theatre

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The Encounter

An unforgettable journey into the Amazon through 3D sound

Source: The List Date: 14 August 2015 Written by: Yasmin Sulaiman

comments

Credit: Gianmarco Bresadola

About a quarter of the way through Simon McBurney's new show with Complicite, I realise I am watching with my jaw open. So astonishing and inventive is this production that it feels like we're witnessing a real turning point in theatre, a performance that will be looked back on in years to come as hugely inﬂuential.

1 sur 3 27.08.15 12:12 The Encounter – An unforgettable journey into the Amazon t... https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/73550-the-encounter/

The Encounter uses binaural (3D) sound technology, which the audience experiences through the headphones provided, to bring Petru Popescu's Amazon Beaming to life on stage. Popescu's 1993 book tells the real-life tale of American photographer Loren McIntyre, who travels to the Amazon in 1969, encounters the 'uncontacted' Mayoruna tribe and is seemingly captured by them.

The Amazonian setting evokes images of rich, green vegetation and coursing rivers; but on stage here at the ultra-modern Conference Centre, McBurney has only a few props, a tangle of wires, some bottles of water, speakers and a head-shaped binaural microphone for company. Behind him on the expansive, empty-ish stage is a huge anechoic (echo-free) chamber wall, and its formidable appearance gets drawn into McBurney's tale-telling too.

What McBurney does so well is demystify binaural technology, explaining to us in entertaining detail how it works. So when he begins to tell McIntyre's story – loosely intercut with the actor's young daughter's amusing interjections during his working process ('Daddy, it's so boring') – we're not over-awed by the technology because we understand how it works. Instead, we're captivated by how McBurney uses it to create a deeply immersive world with almost no props.

It's an intense two hours and, thanks to its intelligent set-up and McBurney’s astounding performance, they're unforgettable. If Fergus Linehan continues to programme breathtaking works like this for the Edinburgh International Festival, we're in for a good few years ahead.

EICC, 473 2000, until 23 Aug, 7.30pm (20 Aug, 2.30pm), £32.

The Encounter

“…my hand, groping around the universe, has torn a corner open… why did I tear the corner open, if I’m not prepared for the encounter?” Twenty years ago Simon McBurney was given a book. Written by a Romanian who escaped the Ceaușescu regime to reinvent himself as a Los Angeles screenwriter, the book, Amazon Beaming…

2 sur 3 27.08.15 12:12 The Encounter review – kaleidoscopes through times and place... http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/aug/23/the-encounter...

The Encounter review – kaleidoscopes through times and place Edinburgh International Conference CentreSimon McBurney impresses with a visceral world of sound that transports his audience from the Amazonian rainforest to his daughter’s bedroom

Clare Brennan Sunday 23 August 2015 08.05 BST

imon McBurney, founder of Complicite, and I both studied at L’École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. After leaving, we worked together on a couple of productions and, in the decades since, I have been interested to see how he has developed S the skills we learned at the school. In The Encounter he takes storytelling in impressive new directions.

On the stage is a table, packs of bottles of water, a box overﬂowing with celluloid strips, a circle of speakers, and a grey, geometric head resting on a stand. This last is a microphone that records in “so-called 3D”. Across the backs of our seats hang earphones to be put on – through these we will hear the entire performance delivered as an extraordinary world of sound that surrounds each one of us, retreats from us, whispers close in our ear, moves to one side or the other. Some of the sounds are created before our eyes by McBurney, playing with objects, voice, body, eﬀects pedals; others are pre-recorded and are fed into the live performance by sound operators Helen Skiera and Ella Wahlström. This aural-physical combination achieves visceral intensities.

McBurney kaleidoscopes us through times and places. We are in the here and now of the performance as he talks to us about stories, identity and time. We are in the 1970s Amazonian rainforest, immersed in the encounter between North American photographer-explorer Loren McIntyre and a group of local Indian people, who have little contact with incomers (based on an account of the events by Romanian writer Petru Popescu). We are in McBurney’s home, where he is putting together the show we are watching while ﬁelding post-bedtime interruptions from his young, sleepless daughter.

Transitions are playfully managed: we think McBurney is speaking to us in the present; he turns his head; we realise the words we hear are recordings from a time past. These games with time are also thematic, intersecting the collective time of communal belief, the subjective time of individual perception, the passage of night and day, the private, timeless bedtime stories told across generations. We the audience become part of all these times, and add to them our own experience of this

1 sur 2 27.08.15 12:00 The Encounter review – kaleidoscopes through times and place... http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/aug/23/the-encounter...

time of storytelling movingly executed.

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Simon McBurney in Vidy-Lausanne Liebeserklärung an die Macht der Imagination Das Flaggschiff der Westschweizer Theater am Ufer des Genfersees bietet Gelegenheit, internationale Produktionen zu sehen. Zur Eröffnung gab's ein hinreissendes Solo.

von Andreas Klaeui 10.9.2015, 05:30 Uhr

Das Théâtre de Vidy direkt am Genfersee ist nicht nur das schönste, sondern auch das wichtigste Westschweizer Theater. Seit einem Jahr hat es einen neuen Direktor, den 47-jährigen Vincent Baudriller , der zuvor zehn Jahre lang mit grossem Erfolg das Programm des Festival d'Avignon verantwortete. Er steht für ein zeitgenössisches Theater, Grenzüberschreitungen, die Öffnung zu Tanz, Performance und bildender Kunst. Und er ist vernetzt wie wenige: Das Flaggschiff unter den Theatern der Romandie holte sich einen Kapitän, der es in fischreiche Gewässer steuern soll.

An den Quellen der Zeit Die Rentrée nun in Lausanne mutet in der Tat an wie ein Mini-Avignon: Unter dem Titel «Face à l'autre, face à soi» – «Angesichts des andern, angesichts seiner selbst» – startet das Theater mit sieben Produktionen in die Spielzeit, die auf ihre je eigene Weise die Konfrontation mit der Grundlage der Selbsterkenntnis aufnehmen. Teils sind es Gastspiele, teils Kreationen. Unter den Künstlern sind die Lausannerin Magali Tosato mit «Home-Made» nach Fritz Zorns «Mars»; der Deutschschweizer Milo Rau ( mit «The Dark Ages» ); die Franzosen Pascal Rambert und Karim Bel Kacem und zum Auftakt der Brite Simon McBurney, Mitgründer der Truppe Complicite, mit dem Solo «The Encounter».

Es geht darin um einen US-amerikanischen Fotografen und seine abenteuerliche Reise zu den Quellen des Amazonas. Unterwegs begegnet er, im sprachlosen, aber nicht weniger beseelten Austausch mit einem Indigenen-Häuptling, den Quellen der Zeit und seiner selbst. McBurney erzählt es vermittelt: gestützt auf den New-Age-Roman «Amazon Beaming» von Petru Popescu. Er erzählt sich selbst als Performer mit, im Arbeitszimmer, nebenan das Töchterchen, das nicht einschlafen will (und eine Geschichte einfordert). Und er erzählt es mit stupenden akustischen Kniffs: Die Zuschauer – die hier zuvörderst Hörer sind – erhalten individuelle Kopfhörer, über die der Performer sich direkt in ihre Köpfe einschleichen kann; ein Kunstkopf auf der Bühne sorgt für täuschend echte Richtungslokalisation.

McBurney verwickelt uns so in ein Geflecht der Wahrnehmungsebenen, das dem Castaneda-Gestrüpp der Vorlage durchaus angemessen ist – vor allem aber einen faszinierenden erzählerischen Sog entwickelt. Bei geschlossenen Augen hören wir das amazonische Lagerfeuer knistern, mit offenen sehen wir die Pommes-Chips-Tüte vor dem Mikrofon. Es ist die hinreissendste narrative Überrumpelung und eine kleine Liebeserklärung an die Macht der Imagination.

Und auch wenn McBurney das Looping-Pedal dann exzessiv nutzt und mit raunenden Echos den esoterischen Aspekt der Vorlage noch verstärkt, bleibt es eine so stupende wie furios berichtete Begegnung mit dem Andern. Man kann Vincent Baudriller nur beipflichten, wenn er sagt, das Erzähltheater sei alles andere als tot.

Keine positive Diskriminierung! «The Encounter» kam nach der Premiere am Edinburgh Festival für das Lausanner Gastspiel in die Schweiz. Das Théâtre de Vidy fungiert als

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Koproduzent: Auch dies will Baudriller forcieren. Ohne Partner ist ein kleines Haus wie das Vidy heutzutage aufgeschmissen.

Konfrontiert man man den Direktor mit dem in der Romandie gehörten Vorwurf, er sei zu international ausgerichtet, zu «pariserisch» und berücksichtige die einheimische Szene zu wenig, erwidert er klar: «Pas de discrimination positive!» Keine Quote, die Romands müssen dabei sein, aber alle sind mit derselben Elle zu messen. Baudriller ist ein «Passeur», ein «Fährmann», wie man im Französischen so schön zu den Ermöglichern und Begleitern sagt. Steht zu hoffen, dass er auch den konservativeren Teil des Lausanner Publikums an Bord holen kann.

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