Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, presented with the National Theatre, is set to close on 6 July after a full year of performances. It is the longest running show in London in Punchdrunk’s history and has already played to over 170,000 people in over 340 performances. This number is thought to increase to well in excess of 200,000 by the end of the run.
Punchdrunk has transformed a vast building next door to Paddington Station into the forgotten world of Temple Studios, a legendary film powerhouse. Audiences are asked to step into a world where the Hollywood studio system meets a forgotten land filled with dreamers who exist at the fringes of the movie industry. Celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world. This theatrical journey follows its protagonists between illusion and reality in a jaw-dropping phenomenon.
The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is inspired by Büchner’s fractured masterpiece Woyzeck and set in a seedy Hollywood underworld. Led by Felix Barrett, Punchdrunk – formed in 2000 – is the internationally acclaimed theatre company whose previous award-winning productions include Faust, The Masque of the Red Death, Tunnel 228, It Felt Like A Kiss, The Duchess of Malfi, Sleep No More and The Crash of the Elysium. Their current New York show Sleep No More won a 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and a Special Citation For Design And Choreography at the 2010-11 Obie Awards.
In 2008, the company formed its education and outreach department, Punchdrunk Enrichment, which works with schools and community groups across London to deliver innovative participatory projects. As well as producing theatrical productions, Punchdrunk occasionally works with corporate partners in the execution of unusual experiential projects and events. The company is currently presenting its New York debut, a new version of the critically acclaimed Sleep No More at the legendary McKittrick Hotel in the Chelsea district.