The Erotic Voyeur: Sensorial Spectatorship in Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man
Abstract
The cultural industries often privilege the use of sight and sound as our main areas of experience. This is especially the case in theatre criticism; but what of taste, smell and touch? Punchdrunk’s manipulation of sensorial experience allows their immersive performance to become both an enticing and a destabilizing theatrical arena for the audience. The performance of intimacy constructed through the use of nostalgia-triggering aromas, invitations to explore the set and performers bodies through touch, and the inclusion of one-on-one encounters between performers and audience members, all allow the actor / spectator to be seduced by the ‘story-world’ of The Drowned Man (2013). With the hyper-reality achieved through the film noir soundscape and the chaotic dance theatre sequences created by the performers, the spectator can delve into a fantasy world of menace and eroticism. This article examines the role of the spectator as erotic voyeur in Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man. Through an examination of the company’s use of interactive, sensorial experience where audience members are encouraged to touch, inhabit and investigate the world around them, Punchdrunk invite the audience to become a part of the world and yet remain separate from it, reinforcing the erotically charged voyeuristic realm of the production.
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Bionote
Holly Maples is a Lecturer in Theatre at Brunel University London. Both a theatre practitioner and a scholar, she has directed productions in the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom. She trained at Central School of Speech and Drama and has a PhD in Drama from Trinity College Dublin. Her research examines the performance of collective identity in times of social change. Her book Culture War: Conflict, Commemoration and the Contemporary Abbey Theatre, was published in the Reimagining Ireland series (PeterLang) in 2011.
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Conference Welcome
- Introduction: Theatre and Spectatorship – Meditations on Participation, Agency and Trust
- Theatre in the “Forest of Things and Signs”
- Watching, Attending, Sense-making: Spectatorship in Immersive Theatres
- The Events: Immanence and the Audience
- Making Mistakes in Immersive Theatre: Spectatorship and Errant Immersion
- Challenging the Auditorium: Spectatorship(s) in ‘Off-site’ Performances
- Letting the Truth Get in the Way of a ‘Good’ Story: Spectating Solo and Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke
- On the Border of Participation: Spectatorship and the ‘Interactive Rituals’ of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra
- The Erotic Voyeur: Sensorial Spectatorship in Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man
- What do Audiences Do? Negotiating the Possible Worlds of Participatory Theatre
- It’s All about You: Immersive Theatre and Social Networking
- The Art of Spectatorship
- Spectatorship and the New (Critical) Sincerity: The Case of Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties
- Metatheatre and Dramaturgies of Reception in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present...
- “Who Is the Performer and Who Is the Spectator?”
- Performance, Experience, Transformation: What do Spectators Value in Theatre?
- Collaborating with Audiences
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Conference Welcome
- Introduction: Theatre and Spectatorship – Meditations on Participation, Agency and Trust
- Theatre in the “Forest of Things and Signs”
- Watching, Attending, Sense-making: Spectatorship in Immersive Theatres
- The Events: Immanence and the Audience
- Making Mistakes in Immersive Theatre: Spectatorship and Errant Immersion
- Challenging the Auditorium: Spectatorship(s) in ‘Off-site’ Performances
- Letting the Truth Get in the Way of a ‘Good’ Story: Spectating Solo and Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke
- On the Border of Participation: Spectatorship and the ‘Interactive Rituals’ of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra
- The Erotic Voyeur: Sensorial Spectatorship in Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man
- What do Audiences Do? Negotiating the Possible Worlds of Participatory Theatre
- It’s All about You: Immersive Theatre and Social Networking
- The Art of Spectatorship
- Spectatorship and the New (Critical) Sincerity: The Case of Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties
- Metatheatre and Dramaturgies of Reception in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present...
- “Who Is the Performer and Who Is the Spectator?”
- Performance, Experience, Transformation: What do Spectators Value in Theatre?
- Collaborating with Audiences
